Hi Pitlamp - I was involved in the KMC-VE opening, and have a little information for you.
I was on the trip that first exited via West Kingsdale Valley Entrance, and in fact the breakthrough occurred on my digging turn and I was the first to crawl out of the tight, soily, grassy little hole. This event was one of the highlights of my caving career (in the UK, anyway), but I lay no claims to glory over it. I was simply in the right place at the right time (in those days, being with one of the Brooke Brothers was often a lucky place to be!).
To save me typing it all in, I paste here a paragraph out of my own caving story that I wrote up a few years ago (I still have all my detailed caving notebooks from the sixties) -
Kingsdale System, Yorkshire Dales
22/01/67 With John Mendum, Mary Bates, etc. (ULSA). Simpsons Pot to Swinsto Pot via Kingsdale Master Cave.
April 67 With Alan Brook, Martin Rodgers, Bernie Reaveley, Mike Sutton (ULSA). Entered via Simpsons Pot, and went to the sump via the Master Cave. Then laddered over the Bridge, went along the Main Tunnel, past the Milky Way, through three ?ducks?, and along to a dig. We took spells at digging, and on my turn I squeezed out of a brand new entrance to this major cave system. Since this opening, the ?Valley Entrance? has been civilised by a large plastic tube, and is frequently used as an easy way into the Master Cave. It is used in virtually all diving visits, including the famous televised one where the first underwater through trip to Keld Head was achieved.
And another quote from my writings -
One of my best speleological episodes was my second trip, in April 1967, into the Simpsons/Swinsto system in Yorkshire, with ULSA. We entered through Simpson?s Pot on this day, and after a few hours, including using a ladder to ascend a large aven, we took a look at an ongoing internal ?dig?. We decided to give it some work since we were there, and took turns to scrape away at a rising passage. The dig at this time was 6 feet long, 1.5 feet high and 2.5 feet wide. Alan went in first, and as he scraped away the rock roof disappeared, to be replaced with only compacted earth. Before long we were pulling vegetation roots out. Martin saw the first specks of daylight, then I took over. I was fortunate enough to break through on my turn, and climbed out. No one had ever been through there before, since it had been blocked for thousands of years, and I was unbelievably thrilled. I did not really deserve it: others had done all the previous work. But the opening of that fast way into the far reaches of the system was highly significant in the Yorkshire caving world, and it has stayed with me as a highlight in my caving memories. In 2006 and again in 2008 I revisited the now-?civilised? entrance and went in just a few metres.
The breakthrough party consisted of Alan Brook, Martin Rodgers, Bernie Reaveley, Mike Sutton and myself. There were others in different parts of the system on that day. Rather unusually, my notes specify only the month, not the exact date.
I recall that, after we popped out, we looked around and saw our bus parked on the roadside not far away, and we all remarked on how we'd saved ourselves a long climb out through Swinsto! I think I also recall that Alan Brooke was unaware of where it would emerge (I suppose the surveying hadn't kept totally up with the exploration), and he looked around muttering something like "aha, I thought it might be about here ... ".
This occurred during a standard ULSA weekend bus meet. I was not deeply embedded into ULSA, mainly going simply on the bus meets. However, I was not new to caving: I'd been caving in Derbyshire, and more recently in Yorkshire, since I was 15, with my own small group of friends. Around age 21 I ceased caving and didn't seriously take it up again until age 56. I'm now in the midst of my revived and very active second caving career, making significant discoveries in the caves of Australia. I'm new as a poster on this forum, but I've lurked here for a few years.
By the way, the event is first recorded in the ULSA Review published in Autumn 1967. It describes the observation of flies, alive and dead, near the final choke, as the initial stimulus for the dig. Also, a survey had shown the passage to be within thirty feet of the surface, and a resistivity survey had been performed on the surface nearby. So Nod Rowan and the Wanderers had started the dig. The Saturday evening after the breakthrough was Mike Boon?s farewell party at the Hill Inn, so by Sunday the news was all over the Dales.
Good luck with your research into the Kingsdale VE topic, Pitlamp.