• The Derbyshire Caver, No. 158

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Twin Stalactites in Hensler's Series

langcliffe

langcliffe

Well-known member
Once upon a time, there was a pair of large stalactites in the passage between Hensler's Master Cave and the bottom pitch in Disappointment Pot. They were still there after the war, but subsequently disappeared (together with their smaller companions). The photograph below was taken the day after their discovery by Fred Dacid. The subject is Peter Binns.

I would like to know when they were destroyed. Do any of the more venerable members of this forum recollect seeing them? I believe I first passed that way in August 1968, and they were gone by then.


twinstals.jpg
 
langcliffe

langcliffe

Well-known member
Ian Ball said:
Sad loss, they look so white!
Click to expand...

A very sad loss. I can't imagine anyone going down Disappointment and destroying them, and so it is likely to have occurred after the New Hensler's connection was made in May 1961. On that trip, Eric Hensler actually returned via Disappointment Pot, and he made no reference to them being missing in his caving log. As it seems to have his first visit since 1947, I am sure that he would have done so if they had been.

So my current best guess is that they were destroyed between 1961 and 1968.

We have three photographs of them, and the exact location on Myer's survey notes for Disappointment Pot.

Incidentally, Peter Binns had been through Hensler's Crawl in that raincoat! And it wasn't Fred Dacid who took the photograph – I mistyped. It was Fred Davis.
 
Pitlamp

Pitlamp

Well-known member
You would think that something would have appeared in contemporary caving literature about this sad loss.
I don't recall seeing anything about it in Speleologist magazine when I've been reading it (and I'm sure I would have noticed). From memory, Speleologist began late 1964 or early 1965. Does that perhaps further constrain the date of the damage, at least to the first part of the period you've identified?

The Bratf'd publications throughout the 1960s are excellent and contain all sorts of GG-related information. Maybe the answer lies somewhere in there? There are BPC members who know their way around their club's literature very well. If you can't immediately think of someone then PM me and I may be able to act as an intermediary for you!

Does the period in question overlap at all with Bob Leakey's Cave Preservation Society? As Bob was so closely associated with the Disappointment Pot discoveries, maybe he mentioned something about the disappearance of those stalactites in his various writings around the time?

The other potentially useful source of a record of this damage happening would be Cave Research Group Newsletters, which span that period. (I could make a suggestion as to how you might arrange to have access to a set of these, if you don't have them yourself.)

There is a certain person I could ask on your behalf, who was caving prolifically in the Dales throughout the 1960s and who has an excellent memory. Again, PM me if you'd like to follow that up.
 
I

Ian Ball

Well-known member
14 years between trips, I wonder if I would notice them gone or assume I'd missed them? Though you can't miss those really, they were too prominent, probably what did for them though!

Is there a chance of flood damage or does it have to be vandalising theft?

Once again a vintage photo of many years ago makes me feel a bit of a fair weather caver.
 
langcliffe

langcliffe

Well-known member
Pitlamp said:
You would think that something would have appeared in contemporary caving literature about this sad loss.
I don't recall seeing anything about it in Speleologist magazine when I've been reading it (and I'm sure I would have noticed). From memory, Speleologist began late 1964 or early 1965. Does that perhaps further constrain the date of the damage, at least to the first part of the period you've identified?

The Bratf'd publications throughout the 1960s are excellent and contain all sorts of GG-related information. Maybe the answer lies somewhere in there? There are BPC members who know their way around their club's literature very well. If you can't immediately think of someone then PM me and I may be able to act as an intermediary for you!

Does the period in question overlap at all with Bob Leakey's Cave Preservation Society? As Bob was so closely associated with the Disappointment Pot discoveries, maybe he mentioned something about the disappearance of those stalactites in his various writings around the time?

The other potentially useful source of a record of this damage happening would be Cave Research Group Newsletters, which span that period. (I could make a suggestion as to how you might arrange to have access to a set of these, if you don't have them yourself.)

There is a certain person I could ask on your behalf, who was caving prolifically in the Dales throughout the 1960s and who has an excellent memory. Again, PM me if you'd like to follow that up.
Click to expand...

Good thinking, Pitlamp. I'll check with Ged and Harry.
 
Badlad

Badlad

Administrator
Staff member
Those formations look to be in a very vulnerable position. This is also an era where conserving such things did not hold the importance it does now. Trophy hunting and sheer vandalism were much more common, accepted even. It is a shame but no great surprise they are gone. I'd like to think that if they were discovered now, or had been in the last decade or two they would survive intact.
 
Pitlamp

Pitlamp

Well-known member
Completely agree, Badlad.

I also agree with Langcliffe that flooding almost certainly wasn't responsible for the stalactites' demise. If they were susceptibte to being swept away by floodwaters, they's have gone long before cavers found them in the 1940s. The passage they're in is a minimum of many tens of thousands of years old (and quite possibly an order of magnitude older still). Ponder on how may major floods have occurreed in that time - some probably far greater than we cavers have ever experienced, especially during the deglaciation stage of the Devensian (most recent) major ice advance.

I suspect the answer lies in vandalism, in an era when environmental thinking was a universe apart from how things are today.

There is one other possibility; some exhausted caver stumping along with the poor lighting of the day, may simly have blundered into them. I once saw this happen to Link Pot's China Dog formation, shortly after it was discovered. (We mended it shortly afterwards but that's another story.) A novice caver (not with us!) just walked straight through and kept going as if nothing had happened.

Whatever the reason, the twin stalactites are now a distant memory and only survive in photographs.
Perhaps there are useful lessons we can all learn from this.
 
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