(A write up of a RRCPC trip down some shitholes on the forest of bowland)
Team keen (to explore a trio of caves on the forest of Bowland) consisted of me, Phil, Rowan and Charlotte. As Phil wrote up some excellent descriptions, presumably soon to be on the CNCC website I won’t go into extensive detail here.
Whitewell Pot
We began with Whitewell Pot on Phil’s logic that we should start with the best and end with the worst. The entrance is very well engineered, with an initial pitch met immediately after the entrance tube. The rest of the cave was quite interesting, with several stop and think moments on the way in. Char turned around after I abandoned her in the flat out crawl (sorry) that felt intimidating on the way in but was far more pleasant on the way out. After the flat out crawl is a bit more passage (some quite large!) before the cave eventually closes down.
Tl:dr some excellent rigging off naturals & an impressively engineered entrance. A lot of interest packed into a short trip; 7/10.
Whitewell Cave
Whitewell Cave is a lovely entrance in a small deciduous copse of trees. Unfortunately the rest of the cave doesn’t live up to its entrance and consists largely of loose boulders with plastic sacks seemingly holding it all together. Some more stop & think moments included the initial squeeze (surrounded by mobile cobbles) and short crawl/squeeze to an improbable ~2 m drop.
Rowan summed this cave up well for me “I don’t mind tight, I don’t mind loose, but both at the same time is a bit much”. On the way out a climb tried to eject me by collapsing. All in all a slightly draining cave; 5/10.
Hell Hole
Hell Hole was another pretty entrance betrayed by the character of the cave beyond. This cave consists of four pitches of varying pleasantness. The first is a lovely drop into a shady shakehole, the second down a disintegrating oil drum that you could see daylight around the outside along with the viewing windows allowing you to see the loose fill that the disintegrating mm thick drum was holding back. The third pitch has a tight pitch head that is deceptively easy on the way down. Whilst the fourth pitch drops to a tight squeeze and drop beyond (which we did not do).
Rowan and Charlotte were sensible and did not come beyond the bottom of the second pitch. On the way out, upwards progress on the third pitch required me to use Phil as a human step ladder as I got myself thoroughly wedged. Phil was worryingly quiet (as ever…) on the same pitch but effortlessly styled out getting between the rope and the wall. This trip didn’t really offer any reward for it’s challenge; 5/10.
Summary
Overall, a good day out with pleasant company but I’m not in a rush to return! Whitewell Pot was interesting but I suspect it might be some time before I revisit the others!