Crescent Pot
Saturday, 5 May 2007
Excellent trip down another fine East Kingsdale classic!
Reached the entrance at around 1pm after spending far too much money in inglesport replacing knackered bits of kit, and for Tom, purchasing a neofleece.
Quickly rigged entrance pitches, then down some very impressive shoring (comprising rotten timbers and homemade rotting wooden ladders) to a low crawl which required a little bit of excavation. More enjoyable horizontal stuff quickly led to the fourth pitch which involved a crawl-traverse in a roof tube which plops you out over the short 5m pitch. 5th and 6th pitches quickly follow, with the 6th pitch comprising a really nice set of cascades.
Then the crawling begins, and whilst never difficult, the floor is rather sharp and encourages steady progress to avoid tearing already disintegrating oversuits to shreds.
The 8m duck was soon reached and involved helmets off, floating on back with nose pressed against ceiling. Nice! Then more crawling to the free-climable 8th pitch. Easier hands and knees crawling then continued to a short wet, flat out section in scummy water to the sump. The streamway was also full of shrimp-like creatures!
On the way back, decided to have a look in the passages of slime and outer slime. The passage of slime is rather shite, involving a flat-out crawl through muddy pools for about 90m. Then the junction with the unspeakable passage of outer slime is reached where we had a quick nosey around before heading out.
The ascent went smoothly with the pair enjoying the cave for a second time. The duck proved slightly chillier on the return, but the crawling soon warms one up. Then back up the pitches, collecting an old abandoned rope on the way to make the tacklebags heavier, and the entrance was reached at around 8.30pm.
A pleasant walk brought us back to Tom’s faithful ‘Berlingo’, then back to the Craven for lots of beer until around 3am.
Fantastic trip! One of the best! Hopefully our brains haven’t been invaded with shrimps!
Comments
I completely agree, probably one of the most enjoyable trips I have done. cheers mike.
tom baker
Wednesday, 09 May 2007