Fossil Pot
Saturday, 28 April 2007
After a heavy night at the NPC where the weekend’s supply of beer was consumed and various chairs were damaged or destroyed, most of us awoke to sore heads and queasy stomachs.
With everyone disappearing to various potholes, myself and Patrick headed over to Grassington and on to Fossil Pot. This was extended in 1999/2000 by the white rose and is now a 400m long, ~50m deep pothole, being located in a very interesting area a few kms from Mossdale.
Arriving at the entrance the first pitch was found to be rigged with ladder. The walls of the rift are extremely impressive here and appear as if they are formed completely out of fossils.
The entrance series provides easy but fun caving with some narrow rift sections, an easy and entertaining squeeze – the pie muncher, a couple more ladder climbs – one of which is fairly impressive and short easy crawls.
Eventually, we arrived in the main stream passage which was followed down to the sump. Heading upstream, a short wet section was passed to a continuation of large rift and various avens and climbs and an upstream sump.
After spending about half an hour exploring various climbs & side passages we headed back and reached the surface by around 2pm after a couple of hours underground.
Then back to the NPC for tea! Civilised caving at its best!!!