Dudley Caving Club: Ogof Pant Y Llyn the quest for the grail

Friday, 19 June 2015

Ogof Pant Y Llyn the quest for the grail

On our second day we decided to head out west from our base at SWCC. Our target was Ogof Pant Y Llyn located above the only turlough in the UK at the Carmel woods in Glan Gwenlais. Although only a little over 20 miles from SWCC the drive was quite long and we arrived on a gloriously sunny day. We changed and headed to the cave, our first aim to locate all the entrances in the immediate area. There are six cave entrances with three of them connecting into Ogof Pant Y Llyn, each linking into a different level in the cave. We started with the top entrance which has a cosy squeeze at the bottom of a steeply descending entrance passage. Mark tried to enter this feet first but could not make it past the tightest spot. We decided to go in via the most straightforward entrance, the large Lower Entrance. At the back of the short section of large passage a duck is found, formed in the u bend produced by the digging out of the mud to gain entry to the cave. Once through the duck a clamber over boulders this led into the top of a steeply descending bedding chamber, with much loose rock on the upper slopes. We descended following the obvious route until we reached the bottom of this chamber. Here a climb up of about 3m took us to a higher level where a passage headed down dip past some formations to a climb up to a dig. Going the other was we ascended a very muddy steep tube to reach an area of breakdown and a horizontal slot with a half tube in the roof above giving us access to the Upper chamber above. Although very muddy in the lower section, as we headed upwards this chamber became more pleasant. We headed to the left through the appropriately named Totem Passage and then descended into a section of massive phreatic passage out of character with the rest of the cave. A low silted crawl at the end had to be dug out to get into Disappointment Chamber that had a tall aven leading off. We took photos on the way out and then looked for the Upper Entrance connecting with the Upper Chamber this was easily found and Mark decided that he preferred to go out the horrible squeeze than retrace our steps through the rest of the cave. Once above ground we headed to the new entrance and Mark followed this to connect to the main route in.