Judi Durber
Member
From MaxF
Thursday 2nd January 2014
With a trip planned in the evening to Mangle Hole, Pete Hall and myself decided to visit a few more caves during the day which we were not familiar with. First on the agenda was Lionel's Hole, I had visited before but around 2 years ago and we did the mini version of the round trip in there whilst Pete hadn't been in the cave.
I vaguely remembered where we should be heading once we were down the entrance section but it didn't take long before we resorted to looking at every obvious turning for the 'way on'. There was the sound of running water in most parts of the cave and after a bit of looking around we found a little climb down to a small section of streamway.
If this was the route to the rest of the stream way today was not the day to attempt it as the water was filling up much of the stream passage. After climbing back out of this little pot continued searching around more boulders/ chambers and found another route down to the stream way, again it didn't look like much progress could be made along if this was to be followed today. We again climbed out of this area and decided we should head back the way we came in, about a minute later we had lost the way we had come in so began searching for parts of the cave we recognized.
After a bit of searching we started to recognize areas and Pete had his Lionel's Epithany (i'm still waiting for mine). He traced a route back his way and i traced my route another way to the long narrow rift chamber. Along the way I found another climb down with the loud noise of water emanating from it so quickly climbed down to see what was down there. This was the 3rd bit of stream way we had found and again seemed impassible in today's conditions.
Instead of heading out the way we had come in 'we' felt confident we could close the loop of the mini round trip and head back to the entrance straight from the chamber above our 3rd visit to the stream way. My Lionel's epithany still hadn't arrive at this point so I have to give full credit to Pete for getting us out of the cave.
We left the cave after about 2 hours happy with what we had achieved and vowed to go back soon to see more of this fun maze.
East Twin Swallet was next on the list and as it was on the way back to the cars (mostly) we popped in for a quick visit. The amount of water pooling around the entrance was impressive, as was the first section of the cave climbing down amongst the maelstrom of white water.
The engineering works in this cave are seriously impressive, we were both in awe of the dam building and spoil transport systems in place. We climbed over various dams to the flooded dig at the end, the over head track visibly dispearing into the murk of the sump pool.
Having noted a passage on the way down we climbed back up to it and entered the Spar pot connection, some crawling and wriggling saw us at the point where a rift disapears down and to the right and a climb over some mud continues up into a narrow rift straight ahead (visible as a junction in the new MU survey). I stopped here as I was getting quite hungry at this point, Pete very keenly took his helmet off and pushed on in the rift for a bit further.
We were soon tucking into some hard earned lunch at the Burrington Inn pouring over a copy of Mendip Underground to see where we had been and what we had missed.
After our failed attempt at finding Read's Cavern a few weekends earlier we thought we better have another go. We had gone wrong in thinking Reads was the same side of the fence as the rest of the caves on the top of Burrington. Due to the amount of rain in the last few days there was no missing the stream and the entrance to Reads, a lively torrent was washing into the cave.
We climbed down the wet way and admired the size of the entrance chamber before swinging around to the right and finding the route down through some boulders. The rocks soon became very sharp and we adopted a very slow cautious approach to avoid damaging our oversuits. We were soon down the pitch and wriggling through the wind tunnel which was carrying a small stream. Meeting up with the main torrent of water again I followed it down a passage until it sumped in a little chamber. Quite wet by this point we decided to head out and get a cup of tea before the evening trip to Mangle Hole.
Mangle Hole
We met Sean & Steph at the Ski centre cafe, Steph sensibly left us to and after a bit more caving chat we headed back down to the car park and met PJ.
I very reluctantly put on wet gear (for the 2nd time of the day) and got ready to go back underground. None of us had visited the cave before and i think we all had the same impression of what to expect....
We had to spread out on the hillside to find the entrance as it was dark by this point. I was elected to rig the ropes through the cave, all of us opting for SRT over ladders.
I wriggled my way through the entrance rift which was full of horrible forest mud/ leafy stuff. I soon found myself on the rock bridge concious that the rope had been rubbing horribly the whole way through the entrance. At this point i was sure i had missed some bolts and the only one i could see was a single bolt along a traverse out over the next pitch/ slope.
Deciding that was the way I was going to head I traversed out to the single bolt, rope still rubbing horribly above me all the way up to the entrance. I rebelayed to this bolt and backed it up with a natural thread to the right of the bolt which seemed better than nothing as if this bolt failed the large amount of slack needed in the rope to reach this point would mean a massive fall for whoever happened to on it at the time.
I carried on down the slope to the next single bolt and rebelayed again concious of the not enough slack vs too much slack argument. One making passing the belay easy, the other meaning a large fall in the event of the single bolt failing.
After landing on the slope down to the next pitch i saw 2 bolts and thought a Y hang at last ! Traversing out to these bolts on the side of the 'Mangle Block' i rigged the last section and headed down to the muddy areas which make up the bottom of the section of the cave.
A small stream was flowing in the direction of the final chamber of the cave and we had a good look around the various muddy boulders in the area. Pj found the climb up which leads to the Aldermaston squeeze, it was quite full of water and mud and had a stream running into it...No one could be temped through today !
We started to exit the cave, Pete valiantly derigging and carrying 85 m of rope back through the entrance rift.
Thursday 2nd January 2014
Mangle Hole, Lionel's, East Twin Swallet, Read's Cavern with Pete Hall
With a trip planned in the evening to Mangle Hole, Pete Hall and myself decided to visit a few more caves during the day which we were not familiar with. First on the agenda was Lionel's Hole, I had visited before but around 2 years ago and we did the mini version of the round trip in there whilst Pete hadn't been in the cave.
I vaguely remembered where we should be heading once we were down the entrance section but it didn't take long before we resorted to looking at every obvious turning for the 'way on'. There was the sound of running water in most parts of the cave and after a bit of looking around we found a little climb down to a small section of streamway.
If this was the route to the rest of the stream way today was not the day to attempt it as the water was filling up much of the stream passage. After climbing back out of this little pot continued searching around more boulders/ chambers and found another route down to the stream way, again it didn't look like much progress could be made along if this was to be followed today. We again climbed out of this area and decided we should head back the way we came in, about a minute later we had lost the way we had come in so began searching for parts of the cave we recognized.
After a bit of searching we started to recognize areas and Pete had his Lionel's Epithany (i'm still waiting for mine). He traced a route back his way and i traced my route another way to the long narrow rift chamber. Along the way I found another climb down with the loud noise of water emanating from it so quickly climbed down to see what was down there. This was the 3rd bit of stream way we had found and again seemed impassible in today's conditions.
Instead of heading out the way we had come in 'we' felt confident we could close the loop of the mini round trip and head back to the entrance straight from the chamber above our 3rd visit to the stream way. My Lionel's epithany still hadn't arrive at this point so I have to give full credit to Pete for getting us out of the cave.
We left the cave after about 2 hours happy with what we had achieved and vowed to go back soon to see more of this fun maze.
East Twin Swallet was next on the list and as it was on the way back to the cars (mostly) we popped in for a quick visit. The amount of water pooling around the entrance was impressive, as was the first section of the cave climbing down amongst the maelstrom of white water.
The engineering works in this cave are seriously impressive, we were both in awe of the dam building and spoil transport systems in place. We climbed over various dams to the flooded dig at the end, the over head track visibly dispearing into the murk of the sump pool.
Having noted a passage on the way down we climbed back up to it and entered the Spar pot connection, some crawling and wriggling saw us at the point where a rift disapears down and to the right and a climb over some mud continues up into a narrow rift straight ahead (visible as a junction in the new MU survey). I stopped here as I was getting quite hungry at this point, Pete very keenly took his helmet off and pushed on in the rift for a bit further.
We were soon tucking into some hard earned lunch at the Burrington Inn pouring over a copy of Mendip Underground to see where we had been and what we had missed.
After our failed attempt at finding Read's Cavern a few weekends earlier we thought we better have another go. We had gone wrong in thinking Reads was the same side of the fence as the rest of the caves on the top of Burrington. Due to the amount of rain in the last few days there was no missing the stream and the entrance to Reads, a lively torrent was washing into the cave.
We climbed down the wet way and admired the size of the entrance chamber before swinging around to the right and finding the route down through some boulders. The rocks soon became very sharp and we adopted a very slow cautious approach to avoid damaging our oversuits. We were soon down the pitch and wriggling through the wind tunnel which was carrying a small stream. Meeting up with the main torrent of water again I followed it down a passage until it sumped in a little chamber. Quite wet by this point we decided to head out and get a cup of tea before the evening trip to Mangle Hole.
Mangle Hole
We met Sean & Steph at the Ski centre cafe, Steph sensibly left us to and after a bit more caving chat we headed back down to the car park and met PJ.
I very reluctantly put on wet gear (for the 2nd time of the day) and got ready to go back underground. None of us had visited the cave before and i think we all had the same impression of what to expect....
We had to spread out on the hillside to find the entrance as it was dark by this point. I was elected to rig the ropes through the cave, all of us opting for SRT over ladders.
I wriggled my way through the entrance rift which was full of horrible forest mud/ leafy stuff. I soon found myself on the rock bridge concious that the rope had been rubbing horribly the whole way through the entrance. At this point i was sure i had missed some bolts and the only one i could see was a single bolt along a traverse out over the next pitch/ slope.
Deciding that was the way I was going to head I traversed out to the single bolt, rope still rubbing horribly above me all the way up to the entrance. I rebelayed to this bolt and backed it up with a natural thread to the right of the bolt which seemed better than nothing as if this bolt failed the large amount of slack needed in the rope to reach this point would mean a massive fall for whoever happened to on it at the time.
I carried on down the slope to the next single bolt and rebelayed again concious of the not enough slack vs too much slack argument. One making passing the belay easy, the other meaning a large fall in the event of the single bolt failing.
After landing on the slope down to the next pitch i saw 2 bolts and thought a Y hang at last ! Traversing out to these bolts on the side of the 'Mangle Block' i rigged the last section and headed down to the muddy areas which make up the bottom of the section of the cave.
A small stream was flowing in the direction of the final chamber of the cave and we had a good look around the various muddy boulders in the area. Pj found the climb up which leads to the Aldermaston squeeze, it was quite full of water and mud and had a stream running into it...No one could be temped through today !
We started to exit the cave, Pete valiantly derigging and carrying 85 m of rope back through the entrance rift.