This is a cave I have wanted to do for some time and so I put an email out letting the club know, as I was heading to Kendal for the film festival on the Friday, I planned on doing a quite technical SRT trip on the Saturday. Loz and Dave responded to say they'd be up for this and so a plan was made. We printed off guides and packed kit on the Thursday and you could tell Dave was pretty keen on getting his teeth in to something that would test his skills and so Dave would be our rigger and I would bring up the rear with a huge bag of camera kit.
The cave itself was smaller than I'd expected, but the rigging was most definitely technical with free hanging re-belays swinging in to tight rift passages to rig traverses and awkward take off's.....it was brilliant!
We bottomed the pitches and had a look at the sumps at the bottom, shivered and turned to leave these for another day. I had a rough plan of what I wanted to photograph and had brought walkie talkies but still the roar of the water was deafening and made shooting the pitches pretty challenging.
I sent Loz up the main pitch first and then I went up. Once there I hauled up the rope from the last pitch and rigged a second line for me to descend and photograph Dave from.
The head of the pitch is an awkward rift with no floor and so sorting camera kit was going to be a challenge. Loz carefully sorted this out with me and I soon found I couldn't get on the rope on the awkward pitch with he gear shoved in my suit and so I dropped through the tighter take off and Loz had to carefully pass me each piece of kit whilst communicating via walkie talkie to the others below that Dave could start up the main line.
Getting light in the right place for the pitch shot was far tougher than I'd expected, but Jess did a great job and we were soon heading back up the pitches.
At the entrance it was now dark, which was what I had been hoping for. I had an idea for a shot when were making our way in, but it wouldn't work with daylight pouring in through the entrance.
Dave was flash monkey this time and did a fab job positioning the flashes out one at a time whilst I tested them. Finally we had everything in place and the shot is one of my favourites that I've taken.
From here it was only five minutes to exit.
Very happy we made our way back to the cars and on to the Marton Arms for food and perhaps one or two too many beers!
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| Loz gets the kit ready in the beautiful Yorkshire sunshine.....for a change! |
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| Dave begins the rigging in The Eye Hole Route |
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| Jess is hot on his heels! |
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| Dave on the main pitch |
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| Loz, Jess and Dave on the pitches and balcony traverse |
Present: Loz, Dave, Jess and Mark
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