Ben Chaddock, Adam Balldock, Faris Alkhamesi
The trip started 2 days earlier on the Friday when Adan sent me the classic text- ‘trapdoor pot with me and Ben this Sunday?’. I immediately baulked, knowing it would be a hard trip and after reading Aidan’s beautifully unique copy of NFTFH and a few different trip reports online, I gave Adam the short and simple reply ‘no thank you, it looks vile’.
So 2 days later, waking up to my alarm clock at 0730 on a Sunday, it was perfectly reasonable of me to think ‘what on earth am I doing with my life?’ My second black book trip would be awkward and squeezy- two things which I famously try to avoid in a cave. Oh well, I thought, I’ll go as far as I feel comfortable, and then turn round and hopefully gain some good experience outside my comfort zone. Thus, we set off towards the BPC (Best Potholing Club) to pick up my oversuit before turning towards Dowlass Moss.
I was gratified to hear the others agreeing it was a longer walk than they remember, but I was alone in the extent of my moaning about actually having to walk to cave entrances. We arrived at the shakehole of Trapdoor pot panting, overheating, and generally a bit worse for wear and as usual, this wasn’t remedied until I headed off into the cool depths of the cave. Before that though, I was lucky enough to get a full frontal view of Adam pooing into a plastic bag on the lip of the shakehole: an all-time classic performance, I can’t recommend it enough. So with that in mind, I set to rigging the first pitch, which definitely set the tone of the cave- rigging off a natural, with an awkward wriggle to get onto the rope.
Shortly after that came the first tragedy of the day: squeezing through into the next chamber before foam pitch, I totally obliterated a dead vole and managed to mash it all over my back: this meant that the horrible smell of dead rat which permeated the chamber managed to follow me all throughout the cave! Brilliant stuff.
The first of the squeezes (the Ripper) was soon upon us, and though it posed no difficulty for me with SRT kit on, Ben had a tougher time. I watched (and heard) him struggling, and eventually emptying his lungs of all air and simply brute forcing through. It looked horrendous, and me and Adam agreed that had that been us, we would have turned around and gone to the pub. I later found out that Adam had gone full on ‘I’m too skinny for this to even be a squeeze’ mode, and with full SRT kit on, ended up jamming himself in horrifically between his coccyx and pubic bone. This was apparently his first time getting properly stuck, and naturally led to his first mini ‘cave panic attack’.
We made short work of the pitch and were soon at the FTSE boulder choke, which was the first obstacle which properly freaked me out. I made a total meal of rigging the next pitch: I tried to rig off the wrong scaffold bar, and got stuck trying to slide down to the true pitch head. While this shouldn’t have been so hard, it admittedly is harder for those with longer legs, especially on the way up.
Next up was the Gripper, which was fairly easy for all of us and led to the spacious Ready to Roll pitch. The rift below this pitch was awkward and seemed hard to reverse, but we cracked on to the third squeeze, the Stripper.
It starts in a constricted, descending rift before dropping into a slippery chimney, but with ample foot holds. You then move up and to the side into a slightly-more-than-body-length tube before righting yourself and dropping down into a small chamber. Honestly this squeeze was more fun than the others since it was more involved, but it wasn’t particularly difficult. We got changed again, and moved onto Electron pitch, and finally Megatron pitch, where I got totally strung up on the final Y-hang! To come out of such an awkward stereotypical Dowlass Moss cave into a chamber that big was truly something special. Descending into the inky black after seeing nothing but rock all around you for the past 3 hours was a beautiful respite.
At the bottom, we finally got to see what Adam’s surprise meal was: Ham croissants- delicious and totally worth all the excitement!
As we started ascending I had a few realisations: a pantin is a game-changer, and black book trips are special if for nothing else but for the teamwork required to get through. I thoroughly enjoyed juggling bags through the squeezes and awkward sections and working together to make our way out. I think the difficulty of the cave is something that demands good teamwork and for me that made the trip so much more enjoyable.
We soon made it out with no particular difficulty just in time to see the sunset, along with a faraway cloud inversion over the lakes.
For me this trip was often nervy and freaky, made bearable by Ben and Adam, and eventually becoming a thoroughly enjoyable adventure. We were all totally shagged and spent the next day lying around in a daze, trying not to unduly move our bruised and battered bodies. 10/10.