White Scar Cave
Sunday, 12 October 2008
Another excellent trip into this very fine cave on a CPC meet, which was well attended with 33 venturing underground soon after 10am on a bright and dry sunday morning.
The show cave was quickly passed (‘the squeeze’ causing only minor difficulties) and we were soon all swimming/walking along Long Stop Lake. At the boulder choke, things ground to a halt as 33 bodies transformed it into a ‘people choke’ but we were soon stomping up the rather fine streamway.
At the pretties, Sam Allshorn, mark and dan carried on upstream to visit the sumps while tom and myself headed back to find the Sleepwalker series. After rooting around in the wrong choke, we found the correct one and climbed up the boulders into the start of the series. The description and survey was quickly put away as we followed a grey wire through fairly large passage with numerous boulder chokes and climbs.
The ‘pincher’ was soon encountered, being an easy hole leading to a climb with an electron ladder hanging down it – one side had snapped, so the wire tether was wrapped around the rung providing an inspiring belay.
Once past this, a fine stream passage, again with numerous boulder piles led to a short section of nicer streamway and aven 49 with ladders and ‘beer jug’ at base. Past this the passage soon lowered to a crawl in a wide canal and the sump.
We then had a look in the Wet Dream extensions, which begins with an awkward wriggle and climb up to REM aven. A bedding then led to an awkward tight squeeze (passed with tom pushing on my feet from below) up into a decorated sandy chamber. Had a quick poke around here, following a low sandy crawl to a small maze of passages on different levels before returning to REM aven where tom was waiting patiently. Also found a topic wrapper from 1987.
Then back out! The fine main streamway was enjoyed once again, as well as the swim and we emerged (last out) after a pleasant 5hr trip.
Good stuff!