Colostomy Crawl photos

[yrammy]

A local FACEBOOK group is doing a series of questions about Derbyshire. A recent one was about the Peak/Speedwell link.

Both Bograt and I answered it correctly as Colostomy Crawl  - but they are interested to see a photo!   

Is anyone mad enough to have taken one!

[Mark Wright]

A local FACEBOOK group is doing a series of questions about Derbyshire. A recent one was about the Peak/Speedwell link.

Both Bograt and I answered it correctly as Colostomy Crawl  - but they are interested to see a photo!   

Is anyone mad enough to have taken one!

Technically speaking Liam's Way is the link between Colostomy Crawl (Speedwell Cavern) and the Trenches (Peak Cavern). It was named after my son who was born earlier that year.

We didn't take any photographs when we discovered the link and I haven't seen any since. It's hard to believe it was December 1984 when we made the link.

Mark

[nickwilliams]

How do you take a meaningful picture of a flat-out crawl half filled with gloop?

[alastairgott]

I found a photo, but it’s essentially me and another face in a black background... not the most useful.

[Pitlamp]

Make that more than half filled with gloop. Oh - and thixotropic, not liquid.
Mark is entirely right; the actual link is Liam's Way.

Brian Hague and I found Colostomy Crawl, after we'd bolted up Egnaro Aven. He shoved me to the front, as it looked a bit "snug". It started off half filled with the most vile mud I've ever seen but it soon got worse. As I moved along it turned thixotropic but then flowed in behind me and started to set. I managed to make it to a point 40 m from Egnaro Aven but Brian couldn't have got to me to help by this stage and I was getting seriously concerned about being able to return. Perhaps the name given to this place now makes more sense?

Mark & friends were extending the Trenches beyond Wind Tunnel a bit later. (This was before Ben Bentham opened the Fawlty Towers bypass to the Wind Tunnel, so digging trips at the end were challengingl Wind Tunnel is one of those places where your head always seems to be 2 or 3 bends in front of your feet.) They reached a point in a horrible low muddy crawl similar to Colostomy but what made them keep going was the sound of the Speedwell river. After some hard pushing they got through and the overland connection we'd dreamed of for years became reality. Mark wrote a superb article about this in the next TSG Journal.

However, my own involvement with Colostomy etc ended before the dry connection, because I was one of those lucky enough to go into Speedwell via Treasury Sump. The next time I went back was donkeys years later when we did the first Titan to Peak through trip. I just didn't recognise Colostomy; all the gloop had vanished and it was now a rocky crawl. I really thought we must have gone wrong somewhere until Moose explained that the passage of cavers over the many years since we found it had effectively cleared it out.

I mention all the above because anyone new to Colostomy Crawl nowadays might not understand why it was so named. So there you go.

[Rob]

However if it's flatout in gloop you're after you don't need to go far. The northern end of the Wind Tunnel is where it's all moved to! I did it about 10 years ago and there was only about 2 inches of airspace!!! 

[nickwilliams]

My claim to fame in this was that I was one of a party of six from the Wessex who did the through trip to Speedwell shortly after the Fawlty Towers dig went. We were led by Ben, and each of us had a five foot length of iron signal ladder tied to a sling round an ankle, dragging behind us in the crawl. The pieces were subsequently bolted together to form the ladder up Egnaro Aven.

By the time we got through to the Speedwell streamway we were all completely covered in mud, and when Pete Hann took his glasses off it looked like there was a small pile of mud with two eyes on the top.

Coming back towards Peak Cavern the passage is slightly down hill so without the ladders acting like an anchor we just scooted along, lubricated by the mud. The only problem was that if you stopped and the the next person behind you didn't, you were quite likely to get completely immersed by their bow-wave.

It was certainly one of the muddiest places I've ever been.

[Groundhog]

I've found this photo of the late John Bennison emerging from the Egnaro Aven end of Colostomy in about 1995 I think. I never got my camera out in the crawl itself for obvious reasons!

[yrammy]

Thanks everyone!  Groundhog - may I send that picture to my contact? It will certainly give her group and idea of what it is like.

Mary

[Groundhog]

 "Groundhog - may I send that picture to my contact? It will certainly give her group and idea of what it is like.

Mary"

Of course.