Langstroth through trip
Sunday, 10 June 2007
A craven club meet down Langstroth Pot gave me the ideal chance to do a trip I’d quite fancied doing for a while – the through trip to Langstroth Cave. After a slight delay involving myself going to inglesport to hire a reliable light which I could strap my back-up light to, myself, Tom and Dave Jarman went to catch up with the rigging group.
The drive over to langstrothdale was not without fun though as we came across a cycle race involving lots of old sweaty men and women struggling up a rather large hill…..rather them than me!
Soon underground and caught up with the riggers at the second pitch where the narrow pitch head was making its presence known. Soon past this and the cave was quickly rigged to the bottom. The streamway in after the second pitch is very pleasant!
Upon reaching the sump, I found I was the only one who was going to do the sumps, and so after applying more neoprene and a mask I dived through the first sump and gave the agreed three tugs on the line. The de-riggers were going to give me 15mins before pulling up the rope in case I decided to back-out.
The first 2m sump emerges in a very large airbell/large chamber. The start of the next sump was a short wade away at the other end of the chamber. The air seemed fresh, but the water was covered in places with scummy yellow froth. Nice!
I could see the line disappearing under the wall and so after a few good deep breaths I dived in and rolled onto my back, as this made diving easier as you can crawl along the roof and it was easy to spot the next airbell. This 3m sump required you to go bit deeper although didn’t really notice this too much.
This emerges into the small infamous airbell, where a duck under a little arch very quickly led to the line at the start of the last sump. Only a couple of breaths were had here even though the air seemed pretty fresh, and soon later I was submerged once again crawling along the roof for another ~4.5m.
Emerging into langstroth cave, a pleasant streamway was followed down to the bottom entrance where I emerged into the Sam Allshorne pleasant weather I had left a couple of hours ago.
Content with still being alive I wandered back up the hillside to Langstroth Pot to wait for the others to surface!
Awesome trip! A fine and exhilerating end to a superb cave! One to do again!
Comments
thanks to the person who bought me an ice cream.
tom baker
Monday, 11 June 2007