Thinking of hanging up your fins. Never say never again.

chunky

chunky

Well-known member
In 1974 Geoff Yeadon first surfaced and viewed in awe what would later become known as Aquamole Aven. Later in 2001, after some epic bolt climbing, it would be opened to the surface, creating a divers through trip which today is something of a right of passage for the new generation.
Geoff retired from cave diving in 1997, but at the weekend revisited the fruits of his labour, finally doing the through trip from Aquamole pot, through the sumps beneath West Kingsdale to exit Kingsdale master cave via 'Valley entrance'

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Caver Keith

Caver Keith

Well-known member
As I said in a previous post there were hundreds of photos as well as over a hundred minutes of video taken on the day.

The plan is to make a documentary of the preparations and the dive. If all goes according to plan then hopefully it will be ready for Hidden Earth.

We need to ensure that the documentary does not contain any factual errors. Firstly I need to establish a timeline of events and this is what I've come up with so far. If anyone can point out the multiple errors and add anything else important that's missing, I would be extremely grateful.

Thanks,

Keith
  1. In 1966 Alan and Dave Brook , who were leading members of the University of Leeds Speleological Association, during a trip down Simpson’s Pot followed up a lead and pushed a crawl from Swinsto Great Aven through to a hitherto unknown underground stream. This was the discovery of West Kingsdale Master Cave.
  2. In July 1966 shortly after its discovery, Rowten Pot was linked with Kingsdale Master Cave by diving through the three relatively short downstream sumps.
  3. Later in 1966, upstream from the bottom of Rowten Pot, Bill Frakes and John Ogden, dived a 46 metre sump and discovered Frake’s Series.
  4. Valley Entrance was dug out in 1967.
  5. The upstream sump from Frakes Passage was dived by Martyn Farr (when?) who laid out 122 metres of line. I understand that at the time this was thought to be the maximum limit for a cave dive and consequently it was abandoned.
  6. However, in 1974 the sump was passed by Geoff Yeadon and Oliver 'Bear' Statham. It proved to be 168 metres long. They discovered an impressive 40-metre high aven which was named Aquamole Aven after a little used nickname for Geoff.
  7. In the late 70s and 80s Aquamole Aven was climbed by a mixture of bolting and scaling poles to top out quite near to the surface, very close to Jingling Pot.
  8. In 1992, cave diver Rupe Skorupka started pushing the upstream sump from the bottom of Aquamole Aven. After numerous dives he was keen to find an easier access route to the sump.
  9. Geoff Yeadon retired from cave diving in 1997.
  10. Beginning in winter 2000 Rupe Skorupka and Martin Holroyd scaled Aquamole Aven to a height of 50 metres. It pinched out, but they were able to gain access to a second series of inlet passages, the top of which was radio-located to a point 10 metres below the surface.
  11. Rupe was joined by Bob Jacklin and members of the Northern Speleological Group and work started in January 2002 to dig out a surface shaft. Aquamole Aven was finally connected to the surface in June 2002.
 
langcliffe

langcliffe

Well-known member
It might be worth pointing out that the original set of avens climbed (from the sump level) were totally different from the ones Rupe et alia climbed.
 
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