A Weekends Play in OFD II & Cwm Dwr

Having played in top entrance and the Labyrinth we exited in to a very windy and wet Saturday evening. After a hot shower and warm meal we discussed options for Sunday and came up with a route finding day in Cwm dwr.

Sunday morning we gathered our kit and were soon plodding over a wet quarry to the entrance. The sewer pipe had a flow of water running in and ensured we got a little damp right from the start.
We were quickly through the crawls and popping out a very wet exit in to Cwm Dwr Jama where we re-grouped.
Half way down the passage, after exploring all possible routes off, Brendan announced he had lost a contact lens. After 5 minutes spent searching we eventually gave up. This proved an interesting handicap at times as it left him with quite a blind spot only being able to see out of the one eye!
At the boulder choke although there was evidence of recent flooding through the choke, the water levels were fine to continue and we were soon at the Smithy and heading through to an upper series.
Having passed a couple of awkward climbs I decided it was time to test my new toys once more and was horrified to find the container which held my new flash guns had at some point cracked and let in water so was unable to use them on this trip (fortunately after a couple of days in the airing cupboard they are now fully functional and a new peli case is on order ;)
After an hour of poking around every possible route in the higher series I came across a very short traverse which led back down toward the Maypole. Still baffled as to where exactly we had been looking down upon we begun a search of the lower passageway until we found a cascade Brendan had previously photographed Jess at on an earlier trip and realised this was the passageway we had been looking down upon.
Poking around all routes Brendan and I found that two of the climbs up intersected and continued on through an awkward squeeze to a very well decorated chamber, which again Brendan realised he had visited a couple of years ago with Keith. We spent a while exploring before deciding that we'd better re-group with Jess who had gone off to look down some lower level passage.
Checking the time Brendan was shocked to see we only had an hour before our call out, so at full steam we headed out, making it back to the hut with only a few minutes to spare......that is until Brendan found out his watch was set an hour fast!

Pictures below from our Saturday trip in to top.

Jess admiring formations en route through the Labyrinth

Rare chance to see the man behind the lens in Gnome Passage

Present: Jessica Harding, Mark Burkey & Brendan(One eye)Marris