Peak District Rigging Guide. CCPC

[wellyjen]

More than once, I've turned up at a Peak District cave, or mine with everything to do the trip, except a Derbyshire Key. Cursing, tantrums, walks back to the car, improvisation and broken nails result.
There is now a symbol for Derbyshire keys and another for the more conventional keys, or codes, used at a few places in the Rigging Guide. The idea being, if you use the rigging topo to pack the rope, slings, maillons and krabs for a trip, then you are reminded to pack a spanner, or bring the key too .
The symbols chosen are pretty self explanatory.

and

For example, Knotlow with Derbyshire keys and Titan with a padlock that needs a key.
Hopefully, I've updated all the topos with locked entrances in the rigging guide, but if I've missed one, let me know.
Jen

 

[rm128]

Can I ask a really simple question: Is a Derbyshire key simply a spanner? If so, are all "Derbyshire locks" the same size or is an adjustable spanner a good idea (as in your symbol)?

I do cave in the Peak from time to time, but I seem to (by luck, rather than judgement) limit such trips to caves/mines not requiring any sort of key.

 

[Brains]

Yes it's a spanner and no, the sizes are rarely the same. Some are nearly 2" AF, others are 13mm, and some are in between! Large adjustable is the way to go.
The now sealed Box Mines in Wiltshire needed a 17mm allen key, but I don't know of any allen bolts on Peak entrances

 

[rm128]

Yes it's a spanner and no, the sizes are rarely the same. Some are nearly 2" AF, others are 13mm, and some are in between! Large adjustable is the way to go.
The now sealed Box Mines in Wiltshire needed a 17mm allen key, but I don't know of any allen bolts on Peak entrances

Thanks Brains. That clears that up then.

 

[phizz4]

I don't know if this is the correct place to report, so just some observations. On a trip down Devonshire last night I found that there are 5 resin anchors on Hell's Well pitch, as there is one on the left wall as you enter the passage, which makes sense as a traverse line there is useful because of the slope of the floor.
Also, while exploring, I found three bolted petzl hangers in the passage to the left of the steps as you descend from the upper entrance and then, in the lower passages, below five ways chamber, what looked like two full sized resin anchors and two smaller diameter p style anchors, not set up as a Y hang.

 

[wellyjen]

I don't know if this is the correct place to report, so just some observations. On a trip down Devonshire last night I found that there are 5 resin anchors on Hell's Well pitch, as there is one on the left wall as you enter the passage, which makes sense as a traverse line there is useful because of the slope of the floor.
Also, while exploring, I found three bolted petzl hangers in the passage to the left of the steps as you descend from the upper entrance and then, in the lower passages, below five ways chamber, what looked like two full sized resin anchors and two smaller diameter p style anchors, not set up as a Y hang.

The DCA have put in some of the resin anchors on Hell's Well and a pitch opposite. They've produced a topo that can be downloaded. The CCPC guide has a written description of these, plus a written description of Kirkland shaft and a topo of the new pitch that lands near the foot of the stairs down from the upper entrance. Aside from adding in the new pitch topo, the CCPC entry for Devonshire is unaltered from Edition 11 in 2012. No one from the club has been down there with the intention of drawing up topos to replace the written descriptions yet. Will get round to it one day.
If you find anchors in there that the DCA don't have on peakdistrictcaving.info, then they were installed by some one else. That doesn't make them a bad anchor of course.
Devonshire is used a lot by guided groups of varying ability. I am guessing that some of the other anchors you've described are there to safeguard children and other vulnerable clients in places where you and I wouldn't bother.

 

[wellyjen]

For version 15.0, there have been a number of changes.
There is a new topo for Giant's Hole. When returning from Upper West Passage, there is a pitch alternative to down climbing to the streamway. This is particularly useful for novices, hence there is more detail given than you'd usually expect. Thanks to Pete Knight for the sketch and discussions on which this is based, which came from this recent thread on UKCaving. You'll notice a lot of blank space around it. There is another route that was due to go on this topo, but it will need a further visit to check a couple of things before it is ready for publication.
The page numbers have been adjusted to take account of the sheets that have been inserted since this was last done.
Back in June, I ran a poll, asking how UKCaving people used the guide. The overwhelming majority of those who voted indicated that they just download and print the topo(s) they require for the day. Doing this means that you don't get the page with the symbol key and aren't going to see the guides safety advice, other than the shortened version (You're Going to Die!) that appears as a click to close modal when visiting the rigging guide web page. Now, when downloading a pdf, you get two extra pages, with the topo key and the safety page. If there is more than one topo page for a site, you get all those pages. For example, downloading the pdf for Snake Mine will give you four pages; topo 1, topo 2, key and safety. When printing, you can just print the topos you want, avoiding unnecessary tree chopping. If you use the excellent CNCC topos, this approach will be familiar and I've shamelessly stolen it. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
There has been some background work going on that you won't see, automating more of the guide production workflow and generating the various files and formats required from the original vector graphics drawings. This will speed things up considerably for the compiler, once the drawings are done and hopefully reduce the number of mishtakes.

 

[wellyjen]

The rigging topo for Winnats Head Cave has been updated. The fixed rope access pitches used to reach the downstream pitches have been corrected to show the extra anchors and Y hangs installed since our last update. The upstream pitches to reach Wigwam Aven have been added. We missed these up till now. The route was set up with stainless steel anchors shortly after the last paper guide was published in 2012. A mistake in the topo Key page has been corrected. The F for fixed ropes should have had a circle round it.

 

[Tangent_tracker]

Crewe Climbing and Potholing Club have been producing the Peak District Rigging Guide as a booklet for some years. It has gone through eleven editions as new routes were added and existing ones changed. The most recent edition came out in 2012. Sales of the paper version have declined in recent years.

For edition twelve we have decided to move the guide to our web site and make it free to use by all cavers. You can still download and print your own paper copies if you wish, but the topos can also be viewed, zoomed and panned on a screen. The layout and information ties in with that supplied by the DCA, making use of the https://peakdistrictcaving.info/ web site for location and up to date access news and the Caves of the Peak District guide for more general cave info.

The guide can be found at http://www.ccpc.org.uk/rigging.html, or from a menu link on any page of the clubs web site https://www.ccpc.org.uk.

As the guide is updated with new, or altered topos you can keep your paper guide up to date by printing new pages and adding, or substituting them.

We hope you find the new guide useful. If/when you find any errors, or omissions there is a feedback form to let us know. The guide has been the product of much work by a lot of people over the years and the new version will hopefully make it useful for years to come.

Jen

Fantastic job and thank you for the hard work by all. Must admit I prefer yours over others as the rope lengths are more realistic and I guess assume better use of said rope. Keep up the good work..

BTW maybe a little suggestion that clubs pass on a small donation to CCC for use/new editions of your work?

 

[wellyjen]

Fantastic job and thank you for the hard work by all. Must admit I prefer yours over others as the rope lengths are more realistic and I guess assume better use of said rope. Keep up the good work..

BTW maybe a little suggestion that clubs pass on a small donation to CCC for use/new editions of your work?

Thank you, on behalf of CCPC. A lot of work has gone in to our guide over the years by many club members, with help from others in the local caving community.
Opinion on our stated rope lengths vary from caver to caver. They work well when people rig conservatively, with no excess in traverse lines, short loops at rebelays and so on. Others can find themselves having to improvise to reach the floor on occasion. More recent length recommendations are more generous than some of the older ones that haven't been reviewed in decades. As with any SRT, make sure there is a knot in the end of the rope before packing it in the tackle bag!
When we sold the paper guides, we used to donate any profit to the DCA bolting fund. Later on, we donated to Derbyshire Cave Rescue too. There is a button to donate to DCRO on the rigging guide page and doing this would be a great way to show appreciation for the guide. Our web hosting for the club web site and rigging guide is currently generously provided by one of our overseas members, so we don't have any real costs ourselves. Trips to get new information for the guide are a great excuse to go caving!

 

[Tangent_tracker]

To be honest, I certainly have not rigged all the trips off your topo, but the one's I have done I have had no issues with. Never use bunny ears and don't generally waste rope, but hate rope sitting on the floor too. I guess if it's all kept up to date to account for new hanger placement etc. then that's all the matters

 

[wellyjen]

We've released a new route in the Rigging Guide. The DCA provide a diagram showing their anchors from Garland's Pot in Giant's Hole, leading eventually to Chert Hall, but without an indication of which to use for a route. In practice this can be done using the anchors shown, traversing round the right of Garland's, but is difficult.
Our topo concentrates on a similar route using a short roof tunnel above and to the right of Garland's Pot, which we found to be significantly easier to rig than traversing from the pitch head directly to the ledges. This tunnel leads to a short pitch down, rejoining the DCA route on broad, easy ledges that lead to Chert Hall. The pitch means that it can only be rigged from the Garland's end. We have shown the resin anchors and drilled thread for the DCA traverse, but not drawn in the rope route across, as we don't have a good rigging approach to recommend here. Our topo is a side elevation, rather than the DCA's plan view, which we believe complements it well. There are discussions and pictures in the most recent CCPC Newsletter (140) between pages 3 and 9.

 

[wellyjen]

I've made a pigs ear of the link to the CCPC Newsletters in the previous post, so here it is done right, hopefully!
https://www.ccpc.org.uk/newsletters.html

 

[pwhole]

Those Winnats photos of Gaz are superb, hahah. Perfectly convey the misery. That top squeeze below Main Chamber is funny, as once you figure it out it's fairly easy, but not until then

 

[wellyjen]

Those Winnats photos of Gaz are superb, hahah. Perfectly convey the misery. That top squeeze below Main Chamber is funny, as once you figure it out it's fairly easy, but not until then

They capture the Winnats experience.

 

[wellyjen]

Some updates to the guide for edition 15.3:

• Replaced the written descriptions with drawn topos for Kirkland Shaft and the two internal training pitches, including Hell's Well, in Devonshire Cavern.
• Added the Gentlewoman's Pipe Engine Shaft to the Deep Shaft (previously known as Day Shaft) topo.
• Flower Pot, on the Carleswark Cavern topo, gets the new symbol for a scaffold pole, used to belay a short ladder to help climb the narrow plastic pipe. This got missed when the scaff pole symbol was introduced in edition 14.1.
• Added a symbol for flowing water and its direction in normal conditions to the official guide Key and inserted it in topos where it is useful.

The new flowing water symbol was recently used in the Winnats Head and Pindale End Mine topos and was thought to be a useful addition for other rigging topos. The water may disappear in drought. In flood, flow can increase considerably, and water can appear in unexpected places. The Giant's Hole, P8, Cliff Cavern, Day Shaft, Titan, Rowter and Knotlow topos have had this symbol added for pitches where water often has to been considered when rigging, or when it is useful for route finding. Its absence on a topo does not mean that the pitch is entirely dry under all, or any conditions.
The Devonshire topos were part of a plan over the last couple of years to replace the written descriptions for some sites with drawn topos. The two internal pitches, Hell's Well and the nameless one opposite, have a lot of detail, as they make good training and practice sites. The extra resin anchors on Hell's Well, including one that Phizz4 mentioned in a reply above, allow deviations and rebelays to be practised a couple of metres off the ground.
Only Putwell Hill Mine is left now with a text description, but since there is no official access agreement at the moment, it would not be politic just yet!
The Gentlewoman's Shaft scaffold pole belay is in a bit of a sorry state and mostly buried in mud. A couple of 10mm through bolts have appeared on the top and underside of the rock over the top of the shaft. These provide a reasonable hang. With a tree back up, the scaff bar isn't needed.
Jen

 

[pwhole]

Those throughbolts in the Gentlewoman's shaft boulder cap worry me - they're loaded axially, and if there was a failure, I'm not sure if a backup on top of the boulder would really be much help, given the multiple rub-points that would be involved, and especially with a sudden drop. I've always been glad to get to the bottom of that one. In the absence of any agreement to remove the boulder and create a proper cap, I think it would be prudent to think about extra security for SRT.

On a lighter note, the last time I dropped it, a mouse came out from under the boulder and watched me rig the Y-hang from start to finish from the top of the ledge, without running away - it seemed fascinated, to be honest.

 

[wellyjen]

Those throughbolts in the Gentlewoman's shaft boulder cap worry me - they're loaded axially, and if there was a failure, I'm not sure if a backup on top of the boulder would really be much help, given the multiple rub-points that would be involved, and especially with a sudden drop. I've always been glad to get to the bottom of that one. In the absence of any agreement to remove the boulder and create a proper cap, I think it would be prudent to think about extra security for SRT.

On a lighter note, the last time I dropped it, a mouse came out from under the boulder and watched me rig the Y-hang from start to finish from the top of the ledge, without running away - it seemed fascinated, to be honest.

I had similar thoughts, I must admit. Also, the stresses from the expansion collars in the bolts and their effect on a not terribly big stone block, supported on three edges. We rigged it with a long sling from the top anchor, running down the side, which would take out one of the right angle rub points on the rope if the bottom through bolt popped out. As you say, an agreement for a proper cap would be ideal.
I'll add mice to cows in the list of animals that are fascinated by cavers rigging.

 

[wellyjen]

A couple of corrections to the guide.

• Corrected the name to Gentlewoman's Pipe Climbing Shaft from Engine Shaft, as the engine shaft is a different one, in the next field and under a concrete cap. Thanks to Mike Higgins, DCA Vice Chair, for pointing out the error. The name in peakdistrictcaving.info has been altered to make this clearer.
• Fixed an error in the Victorian Aven topo, where one "rabbit ear" of a Y hang on the right hand rope was missing.

 

[wellyjen]

Following the changes to the rigging and the work to make the area at the top of the left hand route a bit safer that took place last year, the topo for Victoria Aven in Peak Cavern has been updated. Since the rigging is already there, this isn't so much a rigging guide as an indication of what you are likely to find as you head up the ropes.