Callaun 2
Sunday, 5 April 2015 – Monday, 6 April 2015
Despite the fact I’d finished most of my alcohol the night before I still managed to get so drunk that I was (apparently) wondering around declaring my intention to climb the tree (but not able to say the word tree), another rather disturbing feature of the night was the ‘pretty girls competition’ (think Rob in drag but so so much worse…). Waking up at a late 11.30 (still a bit drunk) was acceptable as Tony wanted to spend the morning doing shop things. Thus we managed to get underground by mid afternoon.
Due to competence issues I was without wellies particularly sad as Callaun 2 is a stream cave. Consisting of a mostly straightforward narrow rift with occasional crawling and climbing over blocks/avoiding formations made only slightly obnoxious by carrying diving gear.
After a ~50 minute walk the ~10m pitch is reached. It was initially rigged off 2 shitty looking chert naturals achieving a shit hang. To create a better hang (still a bit wank tho) Tony climbed above the pitch and put in another two naturals (it was only upon derigging I got to look at these…they where a bit wank.) After I nearly dropped Tony’s line reel down the pitch/stream he kitted up (after disassembling his simple to use as a screwdriver) and was off, descending elegantly into the sump.
A ~1.5 hour wait saw me sitting in my plastic bag thinking I’d pissed myself at one point (turns out my legs were just warm). Tony arrived back. Made some whale noises, dekitted and after some debate we decided to leave the kit at the bottom and come back the following day; meaning Tony would be able to get 2 dives in here.
The following day saw me wake up nice and early; refreshed after a night of not really drinking. But still managing to be relatively social. After packing up the shop we were off. This time we were joined by a slovakian caver who seemed a bit hungover. Again the sump was quickly reached but instead of hanging round once Tony was underwater we headed out to sit in a very pleasant, green forest. After a brief pause we headed back underground to find Tony up the pitch. I derigged whilst the other 2 set of. At the top of the pitch I found a bag left for, considering it appeared to only have rope in it was disproportionately heavy. Ah…no drainage holes… The bag was still quite heavy but oh well off I went (it had weights in it…).
Once out we headed to Lisdoonvarna for some food and a romantic drive along the coast road towards Galway. Powering on we slept in a carpark relatively near Dublin. Catching the ferry at 9am we got off at Liverpool at ~6pm (delayed to ‘tides’…)
All in all an excellent adventure (through incompetence) abroad. Cheers to DIT for organising an excellent piss up and T.S. for being a top bloke and sorting lots of stuff/giving me a lift home.