Climbs, traverses, route finding and getting stuck.....again!

On the Saturday Jess and I spent a staggering 7 hours in OFD II diving in every hole, crawl, rift and passage we came across whilst never venturing more than 500 meters from the entrance! We had great fun connecting passage we were familiar with to cave we weren’t. Only once did we come a little unstuck. Jess was in a crawl pushing a tackle bag ahead of her when I heard it go thumping down a hole. Reaching her I looked down several feet to see her bag at the bottom of a small hole. Not thinking I jumped in, jiggling this way and that till I popped through and handed her bag back before realising that getting back up was going to be a tad more interesting as the hole had been quite tight and there were no foot holds to assist me. 2 minutes to pop down the hole……20 to get back out again…..that’ll teach me to look before I leap! J

Chloe braving a traverse

On the Sunday we were joined by Chloe and Ian for another jaunt around top. The route took us up the climb to the mini columns, where a belay was rigged for Chloe and Ian, through some nice wet muddy crawls and down the calcite slope at speedy caver. After this we took Edward’s shortcut to frozen river, then on to shatter pillar and Selenite tunnel before giving Ian a peek at the Trident and the Judge.  Continuing we took in swamp creek and the pitch head to the Nave before exiting via Salubrious.




Jess at Frozen River



Ian viewing a fomation in Swamp Creek

                          

Present: Mark Burkey, Jessica Harding, Chloe Burnley & Ian Millward