The Main Attraction at Ingleton Waterfalls Trail
Saturday, 22 October 2016
Sacking off caving because caving is shite we all decided to go to the Ingleton Waterfalls trail for some excellent canyon action. In addition, professional kiwi tramper Ivanhoe was getting withdrawal from not standing in a river and so required immediate aqueous stimulation. Saturday morning saw us off to a flying start with Rob outright refusing to go, having been awoken in the early hours by a drunk Caroline with a fire extinguisher and as result was extremely grumpy. A thorough gassing of the house made for suboptimal sleeping conditions, Luke cleverly made use of a bouldering mat on the kitchen floor. Operating on ~3 hours sleep we gathered our kit, brushing off the layer of Chubb Powder, and eventually set off no later than 10:00 am.
After grease consumption at Bernies and a quick check for cheap produce in the co-op we departed for the Waterfalls trail. People wasted no time in mocking me for wearing two wetsuits; needless to say I had the last laugh. An array of wetsuits was donned and Nathan successfully echolocated his car keys. As we began making our way downstream, Rob remained skeptical that there would be sufficient water in the canyon to make it worthwhile and insisted on not wearing his helmet until absolutely necessary.
It soon became clear that his doubts were misplaced and much fun was had splashing down the river and jumping into pools. Little did we know that we had unintentionally become enrolled in a zoo type attraction and we were the newest installation. Chief gibbon Wob Rotson took to the skies with finesse and precision in a display of air supremacy, while footpath dwelling common folk watched on in awe and took photos. Everyone else soon followed suit and most of the time was spent jumping into the deep pools much to the amusement of the gathering tourists (apparently they even pay to go there!). Chimpanzee Bender caught a case of stage fright atop the diving platform but was eventually coaxed over the edge with threats of being thrown overboard. Silverback Stangroom was forced to have fun and eventually joined in so as not to be seen as weak. The band of simians floated on downstream and the pitches were descended with little faff, one was bypassed because of a particularly tricky pitch head that required some boldness and/or levitation. Also by this point most of us were a bit cold and needed to do some moving. After not too long we were soon at the point where trail becomes less of a canyon and more of an exercise in falling over in a river, time to turn around.
On the walk back up to the car we stopped again to do some more jumping before heading back once again against the flow of tourists. Zoo experience over we headed back to Leeds after dropping off Katie at Bull Pot Farm and a failed Micra hijacking. Excellent trip, would recommend.
Comments
Useful info for anyone planning to do the waterfalls:
Drive up Oddie’s lane to parjk at top falls car park to avoid paying.
There is a good 8m jump from the rope swing which is unlikely to be too shallow to jump.
I couldn’t find more than 1 bolt for most of the abseils which was very frustrating and certainly not the safest, though it is P bolted. the first abseil could be a jump but I was unsure on depth and it was a very slippy take-off.
After this you get to the big jump which is about 12m or so. just before this, to access the pool, you can either crawl/climb along a ledge with overhang above and jump in or you can climb up to about 7m and then jump, this jump requires quite a bit of precision so get someone to check depths. The 12m jump is really fun, and is unlikely ever to be out of depth I don’t think.
Then there are 2 abseils, the first is definitely necessary as the water below is barely knee deep; the second has quite a dangerous take-off and you want to be qutie careful not to get washed over the edge when accessing the bolts (this was the only abseil i remember having 2 bolts). have someone at the bottom guiding the rope for less experienced canyoners/less strong swimmers to avoid people getting sucked into the big hydraulic at the bottom.
Then you get to a rather dodgy abseil where you have to go along a very greasy ledge to a single bolt. to get to this, you could rig a pull through traverese line from a small tree above, having 2 roese or a tagline might be useful for this but you could get by with one
longish (40m or so) rope, but we didn’t fancy this. you can climb down on the true right. after this is 1 more abseil which is quite fun to do as a lide at the bottom.
Wob Rotson
Monday, 24 October 2016