An excelent trip report on an epic trip into Stream Passage by James Gregory from 3 years ago on uk.rec.caving:
"James Gregory" <jrg107@york.ac.ukwrote in message
news:3CDFF2B8.74E3D830@york.ac.uk...
Trip reports on here are normally from super-experienced cavers talking
of the fun they had searching for some long forgotten passage with some
pretty formations. Pitches and traverses and things are taken for
granted as fairly easy after many years experience.
On Saturday I lead a trip down Stream (I think it's Grade IV?) without
all that much experience, certainly not much experience at rigging
things at any rate. I scared myself lots, so much so I felt compelled to
write it up. Not sure if anyone here will appreciate a trip report which
isn't about searching out well-hidden formations but rather about how
scared I am, but I thought it was worth a try.
This report is copied and pasted from a webpage, if the formatting is
totally out by the time it makes it to your newsreader, making it
impossible to read, first try maximising the window, if that doesn't
work there's a link on the front page at www.yucpc.org.uk. Just don't
read the Maskhill report as it was written for non-cavers and hence is
evidently rubbish if you've ever actually done it.
Stream passage - lets go caving by train!
Sitting in a university bar on the evening of Thursday 9th May no one
who owned a car or old enough to get a hire car wanted to go caving at
the weekend. In the past I'd suggested going caving by train, but
people had always pointed to the unfeasability of lugging all one's
personal gear and caving equipment and rigging gear from the station to a
cave, in addition to the fact it required getting up incredibly early in
the morning to get a very early train if one wanted any hope of making the
last train back. So this Thursday I didn't suggest it again. But Andrew did.
Me and Dave S foolishly accepted to go to. Blake initially accepted but
changed his mind when he saw what time we'd have to get up.
The trip of Saturday 11 May 2002 was ambitious to begin with, but it
ended up becoming (what I think could be described as) a bit of an epic.
Hence I felt the need to write it up properly. If you're not a
member of YUCPC, our trips usually make far better progress than the one
described here. It's just that even the most experienced person on the
trip (me) had only ever rigged a few things before (one pitch of
Eldon hole and the first pitch of Bull Pot of the Witches, neither of
which go out of sunlight, and one pitch of Bar Pot, plus a few easy things
in a sports hall). Plus I'm fairly incompetent to begin with. Plus I should
think that's the last time anyone goes caving without a car to carry
stuff and allow us to get up at a more reasonable time, for a while at
least. The times are just estimates, some of them may be a bit out:
Stream passage: James (me, leading), Dave J, Andrew G
Time:
Action:
04:30
Wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, etc. Fears about having to
get up early to go caving by train were well founded.
05:35
Set off to caving garage.
05:45
Get to garage, start finding ropes.
05:50
Andrew arrives, start packing ropes.
06:20
Dave arrives. I use Debs' bike to give in trip form and to check
the bus timetable. Finish packing stuff.
06:45
There is only one bus we might get and we don't want to totally
rely on it, so we set off on foot for the station. Fears about the
unfeasibility of carrying all of one's caving gear,
personal clothing and other personal items, rope and rigging
gear, along with a day's food and drink, were well founded. By the
evening my feet really hurt quite a lot.
07:20
Arrive station, buy tickets.
07:35
Train leaves, change at Leeds.
09:35
Train arrives Clapham. Looks set to be a lovely sunny day. Phone
around to try to find someone to be call out. Adrian agrees, set
call out for 23:00.Set off for Clapham and Ingleborough beyond it.
11:30
Reach Bar Bot.
11:45
Find Stream entrance. Eat a bit of lunch and have a bit of a rest
in the sun after the walk up Ingleborough carrying silly amounts of
stuff. Get changed.
12:30
Rig entrance down 4m of oil drums. I stand at bottom whilst
Andrew throws our stuff down, I catch it and put it all in an
alcove at the bottom.
13:00
Rig first pitch from rather constricted take off, after being
momentarily confused by permanent bolts (I'd been expecting
either spits or P hangers). Crab walk down 150m of rift to second
pitch. As rift both deepens and narrows we begin traversing along
top of rift, as desciption says.
13:45
Get to bit of traverse where the floor drops away for miles, and
footholds disappear requiring bracing against each wall (with no
protection). It scares me too much, I bottle it.
Go back to first pitch, Andrew gets on rope. Then I say maybe it
would have been easier if we'd have gone higher. We go back to
traverse again. Is indeed a bit easier slightly higher up, but 2
metres of it are nevertheless totally unprotected and very, very silly.
(On the bus back from York station I ask if anyone saw a flake we
could have used as protection. They both say yes. But it's a bit
late by then, though.)
14:15
Start rigging 2nd pitch.
14:45
Start rigging 3rd pitch. Can't find bolt at beginning of
traverse. I therefore begin the traverse over a very big drop with
a hand jammer and cows tail in a knot on the trailing end of the
rope from the last pitch. This is a bit silly because falling
would mean a big fall and a big swing into a rock face before the
rope caught me. Traverse then gets very very exposed, but by this
point there's lots of bolts to clip in to.
15:30
Everyone at bottom of 3rd pitch. I say that if we want any chance
at all of making last train back (Railtrack website said 20:00,
board in station said 21:00) we must turn back now.
Andrew says he's got nothing to do tommorrow and wants to
continue. Neither Dave nor I mind what we do, so we continue.
15:40
Go between big holes in floor with no protection - rather scary
but this time it's definitely not me missing things to use as
protection, as description notes the danger here - "careful",
it warns. Start rigging 4th pitch.
16:10
Everyone at bottom of 4th pitch. Start exploring bottom of cave.
Description says dash past waterfalls (do this), along passage
(do this), to big Stream Chamber (do this), around massive boulder
to your right (do this), squeeze through some boulders (did we
get the right boulders? Still not sure). Description says
find route through boulder choke to stream.
There's a boulder choke and we can hear the stream beyond it, but
after a while searching the only way through looks totally
unworn and we worry we might not be able to get back
up it again (haha).
17:00
Turn back, go back to first boulder squeeze. Only Andrew can
squeeze back up through the boulders. Immense amounts of
struggling to get up doesn't work, even with SRT kits
taken off - my and Dave's legs are too long to bend to be able to
use all the footholds. Andrew builds a sling and crab contraption
hung round a rock from above. We're still not able to get up,
as our arms are far too tired to be able to pull up our full body
weight with our legs free hanging. I put a pile of rocks beneath
the squeeze, and hold them in place as an extra foothold. Dave gets
up. Andrew comes back down to hold the rocks in place whilst I get
up, then comes up again himself.
17:30
Everyone is much more tired than we were half an hour ago, so we
decide not to look for another way on and just to turn back. We
get lost for about 10 minutes after taking a wrong turn by the
waterfalls.
17:50
Everyone at bottom of 4th pitch again, we start heading back up,
I derig without a huge number of issues though I'm extremely
tired. Also, on managing to get off the constricted top of the
first pitch I think wow, almost there now, and can just about
see one of the other two eating a sandwich a short distance
away. Only then I find a krab won't undo and so I have to
squeeze back out on to the rope again.
21:30
Everyone is back in the entrance where we left all our stuff. Eat
some food we'd left in our bags here, drink water as all of us are
very dehydrated. Dave goes out, shouts down that there is still
sunlight. Andrew ties things on to the rope for Dave to haul up,
I mainly sit and rest.
22:00
Everyone out of the cave, a tiny amount of sunlight is gone
within a few minutes. Change into walking boots, pack entrance/
first pitch rope, pack bags with stuff. Luckily Dave's phone
gets a signal twenty metres walk from the cave, otherwise
we wouldn't have been able to cancel the call out in time.
Spend ten minutes getting lost before finding the tourist
track down to Clapham. Have a couple of 10 minute breaks on the
tourist trail, resting whilst looking at the very clear sky above,
full of stars.
00:45
Back at station, there isn't a waiting room but there is a little
brick structure with walls on three sides and a roof. Get in
survival bags (first time I've ever seen what a caving survival
bag looks like out of its packaging). As Andrew said the following
morning, "I had no idea it was going to be that cold". Not quite
sure how cold it was, but anyway I woke up from a fitful "sleep"
every half an hour to an hour, shivering in a soaking wet survival bag
(the result of breathing in it).
06:30
It's quite sunny by now and it looks warmer out in the sun than
it does where I am lying. I get up, other two follow within the
next half an hour. We realise the first train of the day isn't
until 13:19.
07:50
We hide our stuff behind a wall and set off for Clapham to buy
food.
08:10
Buy food from village store. Eat. Doze off in sun on benches
outside New Inn.
10:00
Set off back for station.
10:20
Lie on grass by trees, near the station. Doze off in the lovely
warm sun.
13:21
Get on train which is 2 minutes late. Change at Leeds.
15:20
Back at York station. Wait 15 minutes for bus back to university.
15:45
Get back to caving garage, pack stuff away.
