You ask about the Boxhead Pot story - here it is.
Alan Box was a club mate and close friend to many of us. He was a fun, affable character with a strong passion for caving (although we wouldn't have used the word passion at the time). We did a ton of caving in the Dales together and several trips abroad - Mexico and Austria spring to mind. The one thing about Alan was that he was always skint. Coming from the north east work was hard to come by and poorly paid. Never the less he always managed to come caving often on a shoe string - literally. He made very good use of bailer twine which seemed to hold much of his kit together. His nick name was Boxhead and I can see his smiling face now - 25 years since his last fatal caving trip.
In a way his death was ironic. We'd recently introduced him to rope access and he was set to make some decent money for the first time in his life. The year before I'd been to Matienzo with Mark Wright and we attempted to scale the Astra Dome, a 100m+ high massive circular aven in Cueva Hoyuca, Four valleys System. We got close to the top but were thwarted by thick bands of poor rock with the top in sight.
The following year, 1994, I couldn't make the Matienzo trip and Mark recruited Boxhead for the job. It was technical rigging, using lightweight maypoling to get over the poor rock and eventually they succeeded in reaching the top. Tired and with poor lights they decided to descend and leave the exploration for another day. In the conditions Boxhead made the fatal error of getting on a short tail of rope and abseiled off the end falling 100m to the floor below. Boxhead was dead but spare a thought for Mark who had to exit the cave alone and raise the alarm. I have no hesitation writing this piece because I know Mark thinks about this day, everyday anyway.
We were all greatly saddened by the loss of our good friend. We wrote the usual obituaries in the caving magazines of the time. There were so many tales to recount of fun and daring do. Unfortunately Boxhead was not a big name caver and magazines edited the pieces down to just a short 'vale'.
Boxhead died on 17th August 1994 and a few months later a big wake was planned at the Punch Bowl inn at Low Row. Shortly before this event a new entrance had opened up on Leck Fell where glacial debris covering a shaft had collapsed. Mick Nunwick had previously climbed these avens from below but had been unable to connect them to the surface. On the day of the wake the two of us made the first descent of the new shaft. It wasn't stable like it is now and there was still heaps of debris perched on the edge. We measured the depth of the new shaft at 101m. As we walked back across the fell to head up to Low Row, Mick turned to me and said, "well, I suppose that's Boxhead Pot then" and it was.
Most cavers today will not know Alan Box but many will know of Boxhead Pot. There's no plaque to Alan, little in his obituary, few hits on google search, but the cave named after him will endure. Boxhead Pot is a lasting and low key tribute to our friend... and now a few more people will have heard of him. Cheers Al