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Croesor-Rhosydd A Shockingly Wet Adventure

chunky

Well-known member
A Birthday Trip For Me To Play With Some New Flash Guns :)

Present:
Chunky, Jess, Mark, Chloe & Loz


After our adventures in Lanzarote, it was something of a shock to the system to come back to the UK.....even more so when our first trip back was decided to be North Wales in January!

Myself, Jess, Loz, Chloe and Mark met up at the car park at 10am. As we did so another group of eight arrived and came over to ask where we were planning on going. It turned out we were both intending on the Croesor to Rhosydd through trip, but as our group were planning on spending some time taking photos we decided that it shouldn't cause any issues.

We let the other group head up the hill before us and begun our amble up ourselves.

At the entrance window the first group were just heading in, so we took our time kitting up and had a bite of our sandwiches before entering ourselves.

We caught the other party at the first abseil so I got out the camera and wasted some time taking a few shots and wound up doing the same again at the next pitch.

The last of their members were just crossing the zip line as we arrived but as this was my main objective for a photograph we wouldn't catch them again.
I begun unpacking the 15kg of camera kit I'd lugged up the hill for the shot. Jess unpacked the boat she had carried for me and the three girls begun blowing it up whilst I gave Mark a flash gun to take to the other side.

With the boat inflated Chloe begun bouncing around asking if she could be the one in the boat. She took the inflated dingy to the waters edge and Loz tried to steady things. Unfortunately this proved a little more awkward than anticipated and with a splosh Chloe went head first in to the deep, icy water. She scrambled to get back out with the cold taking her breath away and had another go. This time she managed to get in safely and I handed her a dry bag with a few flash guns in. I'd tested a similar set up around the corner and had to put some rocks in to get it to submerge.

After a couple of shots Chloe squealed from the boat saying the rocks I'd put in had pierced the bag and it was filling with water. She just made it back to shore when one of my new flash guns which was making an awful shrieking noise as it sat in a pool of water went bang and emitted a rather unpleasant electrical burning smell.

We popped the batteries out of the wet equipment, dried it off as best we could and continued on.

Chloe's least favourite part of the trip is the traverse which she finds hugely awkward and this time was no exception. After 20 minutes of fighting with it she finally dragged herself up the slope, but with all her adrenaline gone, being soaked to the skin, and the howling draught coming through the mine she was soon turning a rather unflattering shade of blue. We begun a quick game of strip caver and each donated some dry clothing for her to get her warmed back up and continued our way over the bridges of death, abseiled down in to the waiting boat and out via Rhosydd to a damp and windy night sky.

Although Jess and I were quite looking forward to a cosy evening in the van with our gas heating and 15 tog duvet, listening to the patter of rain on the roof, for some reason Chloe wasn't as keen on setting up her tent in the pouring rain and so it was decided we'd call it a day and retreat back to the Midlands where it almost never rains and is a nice constant twenty degree's all year round ;)

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A Dry Chloe Descends The 2nd Pitch

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A Shocking Time At The Zip Lines

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Chloe Struggles At The Traverse

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Loz At The Bridge Of Death
 
Duncan S said:
Super write up and excellent images!
More please :)

Thanks Duncan. Perhaps we'll even get a chance to get underground together this year some time!  :)
 
chunky said:
Thanks Duncan. Perhaps we'll even get a chance to get underground together this year some time!  :)
I'd love that!
I've been fairly quiet on the photo front recently while my caving skills and stamina have been brought up a notch, but that's about to change....
Some excellent plans being hatched at the moment; 2016 is looking like it could be a good year! :)
 
Duncan S said:
chunky said:
Thanks Duncan. Perhaps we'll even get a chance to get underground together this year some time!  :)
I'd love that!
I've been fairly quiet on the photo front recently while my caving skills and stamina have been brought up a notch, but that's about to change....
Some excellent plans being hatched at the moment; 2016 is looking like it could be a good year! :)

Good to hear that you'll be taking shots again soon, I look forward to seeing what you have planned for the year.

Will get in touch once the weather starts to improve and we'll hook up for a trip.
 
Love the photos Chunky! Especially the zip wire one. Did you lose any other flashguns in the flooded dry bag?

Doing the through trip in a couple of weeks. What's the state of all the fixed gear at the moment?
 
Thanks Ian, looking forward to more stuff from you and Alex soon?

Yeah I guess I may have over done it with the kit Fulk and I may have had a snack or two in the boxes ;)

Huge used 5 guns to light the water. Two were water logged. Amazingly after stripping them apart and having them in the airing cupboard for a couple of days they've both come back to life....for now.
Both the pitches are in fairly good condition, the zip wire has a strand of wire broken sticking out about half way which makes it awkward to retrieve the pulley and the twine for the canoe only just reaches the the Base of the pitch (looks like it's snapped and been retied)
We always take a rope to pull through and a dingy just in case, but haven't needed them the last couple of trips.

The only disconcerting thing was a wall has given way and collapsed near one of the bridges which wasn't like it last summer when we did the trip so it just goes to show how fragile some areas really are getting.

Sent from my SM-G928F using Tapatalk

 
Thanks for that Chunky. Yeah, we'll be taking our own rope and dingy etc. We'll look out for the wall!

Glad to hear your flashes are mainly OK.
 
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