Better late than never...heres my trip report too
Masson Mine to Youd`s Level Through Trip
Saturday 20th January
Jasonbirder, Wazzafish, Drainrat and Pete
Over the Christmas period
Wazzafish and I had been getting lazy and content with a couple of easy evening trips… (
Brightgate Cave anyone?) So, with a Saturday free we had decided it was time to get back up the
Peak District and do something more challenging! A phone call from
Drainrat and he quickly agreed to join us up at the
Orpheus Club Hut on Saturday for a trip out!
Wazza was round at my house early doors and together we drove up to Derbyshire, stopping off at Morrison’s en route to pick up the ingredients for a fry up and in Matlock for a 4.5v flat pack battery for my Headlight. With the essentials covered (food…light) we headed up to the Caving Club Cottage at
Parsley Hay to find
Drainrat and Pete already waiting for us!
After exchanging pleasantries in a surprisingly empty club hut we soon had the Frying Pan and the Kettle going whilst we got down to the serious business of choosing a trip…In the end it came down to a choice between
Nettle Pot and a through trip from
Masson Mine to
Youds Level. In the end the possibility of a trip we’d not done before or heard much about – coupled with the fact is was a through trip (in one mine…out another) was enough to tip the balance…so with a single Rope Bag packed we loaded the gear into two cars and headed over to
Matlock
Parking in a pay and display car park by the
River Derwent we wandered over to have a look at the entrance to
Youd`s Level which consists of a heavy manhole cover right in the middle of a kiddies playground!
Youds Level is a drainage sough that consists of a handpicked coffin level driven through Toadstone and Limestone that runs into the adjacent
River Derwent and was dug to de-water the many Lead Mines in the hills above
Matlock.
A bit of faffing about was the order of the day – as we needed to leave one car in the car park here to ferry us back to the top of the hill on our exit or else we would face a long walk uphill back to where we had entered the mine. With all the caving kit loaded in one car we drove off, through the centre of
Matlock and up to a parking pull in by the entrance to
Masson Quarry. As we started to get changed some prat realised he’d left his neofleece in the car at the bottom of the hill (you guessed it – that prat was me!) and we had to drive back,collect my undersuit and return before we could get down to the serious business of getting changed and ready for our trip! We met some cavers who were getting ready for a jaunt into
Jug Holes but they were obviously amateurs when it came to faffing and were changed and on their way long before we were ready!
A walk up and over the hill brought us to the edge of a huge scar in the ground –
Masson Quarry with sheer vertical walls and a floor littered with shattered Limestone Blocks it could have been something from the surface of the moon! Many of the walls were bolted for climbers but as we looked down we could see a number of mine levels that had obviously been intersected by the quarrying operations – some potential explores for another day! Looking downhill we could see
Matlock far beneath us looking almost like a toy village – this was obviously going to be one hell of a deep through trip!
Our journey was to be down a nearby vertical shaft –
Gentlewoman’s Shaft – the top of which was concealed by a huge boulder in a field away from the Quarry. The approach to the pitch was a flat out squeeze under the boulder – which had to be done backwards so you could get your feet into position down the shaft and the stand up on the ginging – awkward or what! Pete rigged the rope from a dodgy looking bit of scaffold bar and then clipped into the knot and proceeded to wriggle backwards into the shaft – once in position he could then put his stop on the rope and begin his descent – definitely not the textbook way of getting on the rope at a pitch – but the only one that would work! One by one the others did the same leaving me on the surface alone…how come I always seem to be left till last?
My turn came and with a single cowstail clipped into the knot, lay on my belly and squirmed backwards through the squeeze - whilst I couldn’t see where I was going I could feel as my legs came out above the shaft and with a bit of manoeuvring was able to position myself, stood perched on ledges in the drystone ginging at the shaft head, whilst I threaded my stop onto the rope, tested it, locked it off, unclipped my cowstail and began my descent!
Gentlewoman’s Shaft is about 170 feet deep and is pretty tight in places – I struggled to keep my hands round my stop as it was squeezed into my chest in places and in other parts I found myself manoeuvring to one side of the shaft or the other to find the widest route as I descended! It also boasted one or two dubious looking rub points so I was glad that the plan didn’t involve ascending the shaft as well! Before too long I could hear voices below me and I was pleased when I dropped through a slot in the roof of a small chamber below which dumped me on a very muddy floor alongside Pete,
Wazza and
Drainrat.
Taking off our SRT kit and packing it in a tacklebag tied off to the rope ready to be hauled to the surface on our return we gathered ourselves up and prepared to head off…there were two ways off a muddy looking cartgate and a tight headfirst downhill squeeze…guess which way we went! After the three skinny members of the party wriggled through it was my turn to follow – making it look much harder I squeezed through on my belly skidded down a loose scree slope and through another flat out squeeze, before Pete announced that it didn’t look familiar and we should have taken the other exit! Going uphill through the slot proved much more interesting and it took a bit of scrabbling and straining before I popped out the other side! We then headed off down the stooping height Cartgate, hoping to find our way through the Mine!
Walking alongside large piles of stacked deads against the walls of the passage we continued deeper into the mine, stopping to admire beautiful crystal formations of Dogtooth Fluorspar in the walls. Before too long the easy progress we were making came to a halt as we entered the pipe veins where the lead ore was actually extracted! Here because of the way the molten metal was originally deposited, instead of being worked in vertical stopes it was extracted from pipe veins that twisted and turned on many levels as they followed the ore vein through the rock. After some hands and knees crawling and some scrambling up loose debris slopes we came to a point where the only way forward was an impenetrably tight squeeze at floor level or a climb up into some higher level workings. Making use of some sparse and slippery footholds we climbed up and continued at a higher level for a short while before a bold stop across a big drop and a head first squeeze through a letterbox – on the other side of the letterbox was a tiny ledge and a ten foot drop – so care was needed as you came through before using an in place handline to climb back down to floor level.
Another climb into the roof soon looked to be needed as Pete climbed up and zoomed off ahead to check we were on the right route! I watched nervously as
Wazza disappeared upwards higher and higher above my head before he called me up behind him! I managed the tricky climb to the point where an awkward turn round was needed to continue round an upwards corkscrew, which left you feeling very exposed as you pushed you feet under you and your head and chest out into nothing ready for the next set of ledges upwards! Luckily there was at this point an awesome crystal formation in a little alcove – it looked like Superman’s retreat with long angular clear crystals jutting out at all different angles, which took my mind off just how exposed I was…up and up I went following Pete and
Wazza who were no doubt fed up of my moaning…I don’t like this…oh this feels very exposed…you call that a foothold? Luckily after an awkward step out over nothing we finally reached a ledge wide enough to perch my bottom on and collect myself whilst the ever so nimble
Drainrat caught up.
At this point Pete raised my flagging spirits by telling me that that was the climbing over…though what he meant was the climbing up was over…we still had plenty of traversing and climbing down to do!
We now continued by traversing along – doing our best to avoid looking down at the horrendous drop below us – sometimes progressing on ledges with feet on opposite walls, sometimes where there weren’t enough ledges, by chimneying along with our back against one wall and two feet pushing against the other. I had one very wobbly moment where you needed to swing both feet across to a distant ledge…like a horse at a tricky fence I had a couple of refusals before I gathered the courage to make the move! Eventually we reached the point where we could begin climbing down…though my morale wasn’t helped by
Drainrat a- competent climber telling me that it looked so bad it had got his sphincter twitching! Actually this wasn’t the worst bit - apart from one awkward move where there weren’t enough holds or ledges and you needed to just jam yourself into the gap with your elbows and thrutch forwards over a seemingly bottomless black pit, the climb down was in a narrow chimney and it was simply a case of jamming yourself in with elbows and knees and chimneying down. When we finally reached solid ground I was so relieved I could have fallen to my knees and kissed the ground,
Wazza predictably enough monkeyed down with no problems whatsoever! One thing was for sure…when we came to the squeezes & ducks…I was going through come hell or high water…there was no way I was retracing my steps!
We made relatively easy progress now, through some worked out stopes and small natural cavities…the floor was an unstable shifting mix of rubble and gravel…which made scrambling down a couple of steep slopes an interesting experience to say the least! At one point we passed under a high Aven or Rift that disappeared upwards high above our heads…whether the miners had ever altered it to create a shaft or not we couldn’t tell.
Scrambling down a few more rubble cones and we eventually connected with the streamway…a dirty brown fast flowing covering of water in the bottom of the passage – yuk! A bit of hands and knees crawling in the water followed – I was glad I had worn my neo fleece before the stream disappeared beneath the floor. A downhill crawl and a sharp left hand bend brought us to the first of the ducks…which Pete tackled ahead of me.
The duck was an awkward squeeze at floor level going downstream, passing through involved lying down flat on your back and moving through the squeeze feet first with your helmet off and nose and mouth in the narrow airspace up against the ceiling. Because of the way the route went round a sharp right hand bend, once half way through you needed to stop, roll onto your side and continue round the corner…awkward or what! Pete made light work if it and I lay down in the puddle to pass his helmet through to him – then it was my turn! The stream was cold, particularly when I got my uncovered head in the water….brrrrr! Wriggling through with my face pressed against the rocky ceiling I squeezed through…even the twist and turn maneuver couldn’t stop me and soon
Wazza was passing me my helmet as I turned and followed Pete through a tiny hands and knees chamber to the second duck.
This looked a lot easier – which is where I came unstuck! Overconfidence took hold of me and instead of going through slowly lying on my back I dropped to my tummy and proceeded to crawl through face down – bad move – even with my helmet off and head to one side, there wasn’t enough airspace and so after taking a forced mouthful of the cold water I retreated and approached it again…this time doing it the proper way! Helmet off lying on my back I made easy progress through the short duck and was soon on the other side…happy to have passed the last of the obstacles on the way out! A string of curses from behind me meant that
Drainrat hadn’t been too careful while manoeuvring with his helmet off, but before long we were safely in a larger chamber in the
Old Jant Mine.
Continuing onwards we came to the base of
Overseer Shaft a climbing shaft to the surface that was used by the Overseer – who was not a particularly popular figure in the mine, as his job was to inspect the loads of ore that the miners had dug and decide whether they were of sufficient quantity and quality – graffiti etched into the mine walls near the base of this shaft which showed him dressed up as witch complete with hat & broom – was obviously from the T’owd man expressing their dislike for him!
We passed through a couple of large chambers where the ground had been levelled and walled off to create a Dressing Floor – where the ore would have been separated from the waste rock and then through what was probably at one time a
Workshop - the floor littered with rusted ancient mining artefacts – the remnants of Pick Heads, Prickers, some barrel bands and the bottom of a Kibble – all fascinating stuff. Further along we rejoined the stream – rushing downhill on its way to the
River Derwent and we came across a beautifully preserved Jingling Box – a sunken wooden trough that would have used the flow from the stream to separate the heavier metal bearing ore from the lighter waste rock.
Down some more unstable debris slopes and chambers containing dressing floors before we came to a final tight squeeze that involved me getting down, lying on my back and pushing myself through with my feet, before I popped out at a T-Junction in more familiar territory in
Youds Level. Heading towards the exit we entered a tiny handpicked coffin level – carved out of solid limestone. This was the drainage sough that had been driven from the
River Derwent to de-water the lead mines above. As daily progress digging it out was measured in inches rather than feet – driving it this far was obviously an epic achievement! The Coffin level had definitely not been dug to accommodate the 6 foot + frames of myself and
Drainrat so slow progress was made – sometimes gorilla walking with our shoulders pressed against the ceiling, sometimes having to drop to our hands and knees in the lower section.
A large junction and we backtracked in bigger passage to reach the base of
Day Shaft a massive and impressive vertical shaft to the surface and further past this a flooded shaft at floor level – the crystal clear and totally still water disappearing into the depths beneath our feet. Retracing our steps we rejoined the coffin level and stream and continued downstream – making steady progress, though occasionally our technique faltered and there was a thump and a curse as a helmet of shoulder blade banged against the ceiling! It was interesting to see the strata in the rock – particularly as it cut through a region of a green crumbly rock called
Toadstone.
A roaring sound from up ahead meant that we were approaching the base of
Railway Shaft – a flow of water dropping unhindered vertically from the surface a couple of hundred feet above! Crawling beneath it felt like being hit in the back by a jetwash the flow was that powerful! The tight confines of the Coffin level gave way to more open passageway – with occasional crosscuts and we needed to watch our step carefully to avoid flooded stopes beneath our feet – the drops into their depths hidden by the muddy water our passage had stirred up! Before long we knew we were nearly at the exit – the passage walls and roof lined by drystone walling and a smell familiar to me from my drain exploring days as we passed under the main A6 through
Matlock Bath – the passage continued on a short distance before emptying into the
River Derwent but a fixed iron ladder took us up to a manhole cover which we pushed up to emerge in daylight in the unusual surroundings of a childrens playground!
Back at the car we stripped out of our wet gear, laughing at the enormous hole that had developed in the seat of my oversuit (my recent patching efforts obviously having given way!) It was then a drive back up to the top of the hill to retrieve the rope we had descended and once changed we headed over to the
Jug and Glass for some excellent fodder and a well deserved pint!
Back at the club hut, we washed the ropes and
Wazza became the butt of everyones jokes as he confessed to being responsible for Health & Safety at work! All in all an excellent days caving and a fantastic through trip…
Thanks Pete!
