Swildon's Hole short round trip report

[andymorgan]

Swildon's Hole Short Round Trip. Saturday 18th June

Starring Andy P and myself.

I was in the area for the Shatter Cave trip and having done relatively few Mendip trips this year, (having been seduced by other caving areas, and living away) I thought that I should try and squeeze in another trip that weekend. My usual caving partner was away hanky waving (Morris dancing) that weekend, so I sent an email around the
club list.
Andy got in contact with me. I wanted a strenous trip and was thinking about Eastwater, but we didn't have the survey and didn't know it that well. Andy suggested the round trip in Swildon's. I hadn't done it before so it seemed a good idea.
So on probably the hottest day of the year we met at Priddy Green, got changed, then headed off to the cave. I was absolutley roasting as I wanted to try out my new neofleece. To cool off, we headed down the wet way. Very refreshing! The water levels were higher than I expected, although not as high as it can get in the winter.
After swiftly rigging and descending the 20 foot pitch we headed on and took the easy climb up into Tratman's Temple. A nice bit of flat out crawling soon followed before we came to a pool and were able to stand up. The air was pretty bad between here and the Mud Sump, both of us were out of breath just walking along. We thought about turning back but we decided that as we could speak a few sentences we will press on and see if it improves.
The Mud Sump has quite an impressive set up for bailing with lots of tubes and dams. There was an airspace in the sump which Andy thought he could get through, but I didn't fancy it. I hadn't been through a sump for about 18 months. We bailed out a bottom dams worth of water but it didn't appear to lower the water much . We were both knackered from lifting buckets and the poor air so decided to attempt go to through it. Andy went through straight away. At this point I was like a small child on the beach dipping their toes in the sea then hopping out because it was too cold. After about five attempts of sitting in the water then standing up saying I couldn't do it, with Andy P's encouragement I eventually went through. It was much shorter than it looked and I wondered what I was fussing about.
The passage was quite impressive at this point, and the air seemed much better. We headed on to the Troubles with a few route finding difficulties (although we made no wrong turns). The first Trouble was quite full (apparently) so we set up the siphon and headed down Blue Pencil Passage to the Swildons Four streamway. I was a bit disappointed about it, it wasn't difficult and was much shorter than I expected. It reminded me of bits of the Maze in Goatchurch with its T-shaped passage form. I think if my legs were two inches longer/fatter the right angle bend would have been quite difficult.
I was impressed with the Swildons Four streamway, it was nicely sculptured and had a very different character to Swildon's One. After
first heading up to sump three then down to sump four before heading
back through Blue Pencil to the Troubles.
The water level had dropped a fair bit but looked quite high to me still. No messing this time I went through first time. Now this duck has a slight dogleg in it and instead of following the air space my nose went below the surface of the water. I panicked a bit and breathed in a bit of water, I trashed around a bit and Andy P grabbed by head to stop me smacking it on the ceiling beyond the duck as I had taken my helmet off to go through the duck. Talking about helmets I couldn't find mine. I thought I floated it through the duck to Andy. Looking back it was in the water on the other side of the duck. F that I thought, I'm not going back through there to get it. Luckily I managed to just reach it with my hand.
Andy brightened me up with the news that there were three more ducks
to go (I thought there was only one more). Pressing on we came to the second trouble which I was nervous about, but it was very easy. Two more to go... The other two were very easy as well in the end. Immediately after the last duck was Birthday squeeze: The Capn's
nemesis. Again I was a tad disappointed: it wasn't a squeeze. I didn't even have to take my helmet off.
We slid down the landing in to the Swildons Two streamway, which was the most fun part of the trip! Eventually we met sump one. By this point I was cold and wet and just dived straight through ahead of Andy P so I wouldn't sit around thinking about it. We headed on out via the short dry way to a lovely warm evening. The trip took us a leisurely five hours in total.

Next the long round trip, or the round trip in Eastwater.

 

[Andy Sparrow]

I think if my legs were two inches longer/fatter the right angle bend would have been quite difficult.

Strangely enough this is another bit of cave passage that has shrunk over the last few years. When we did it last year I could not persuade my legs to go round the corner first so I reversed and, for the first time, went head first. This resolved the problem with the bend but emerging into the streamway proved interesting to say the least!

 

[cap n chris]

It appears that my jealousy about thin cavers has been vindicated; Blue Pencil and the Birthday Squeeze are seriously hard sections of cave for anyone whose legs don't snap in mild breezes.

I imagine there are bits of cave somewhere, however, which will give these slim-jims a run for their money and then they can find out how the rest of us feel.

Thanks for writing up a report, by the way - it's good to read others' versions of trips; the bad air you report has also been noted by another group visiting Mud Sump as well - also bad air at other sites on Mendip seems to be giving cause for concern at the moment too.