Hard Rock Cafe

Today's trip was to be a fairly tough one, involving roughly three miles of varied caving, reported to take 10 hours. This included the infamous Daren Entrance Series, the ladder up into Higher Things and a few “Velcro-mud” belly crawls for good measure. Having done the Draenen round trip with Anne and Loz two days prior, I was feeling a little unenthused about this trip. However, the thought of reaching Hard Rock Cafe - as well as it being George's first experience of Daren Cilau (despite several planned trips all of which had to be cancelled) - was sufficient encouragement to crack on with the trip.

We made good time through the Entrance Series which took us just over an hour carrying bags. From there, easy stomping led to Big Chamber Nowhere Near the Entrance, and before long we had completed the various crawls and squeezes into Preliminary Passage. Here we stopped to have a quick drink, and eye up the delights of the ladder up Welly Boy Aven. I went up first, swinging around as is inevitable, and got myself set up to belay George from the top. It was evident that George didn't enjoy this bit of the trip very much. It feels quite insecure climbing the wobbly ladder with a belt for safety rather than a harness. And I don't think this was made any better by my comment while George was halfway up that the lifeline didn't really add much safety as it was virtually impossible to take in the rope quickly enough as he climbed.

Nonetheless, we both made it to Higher Things and before long had completed the traverse and climbs down into White Passage. At this point, it really struck me how committing trips into the further reaches of Daren are. You head deeper into the cave with no easy way out, the thought of exiting through the entrance crawls in your mind, and the knowledge that rescue would be incredibly complex and protracted. These thoughts can transform Daren from a fun - if challenging - cave to one that is quite oppressive. Indeed, boulder-hoping through the Time Machine and Bonsai Streamway I was very aware of the possibility of a twisted ankle, and catching my feet on a few occasions didn't help.

After arriving at Hard Rock Cafe without incident, we started the long trip out. Somehow we managed to shave 90 minutes off our inward time, and make it back to daylight in just three hours. I have no clue how we did this; I was definitely feeling a lot more tired on the way out. However, it probably had something to do with George motoring through the crawls and dragging both bags behind him like a hero (does that man ever get tired!?). This meant I just had to try and keep up, and not cry or whimper too much about the Vice (my own psychological nemesis).

Of course, the problem with completing this trip is now I think that pushing on to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe is possible, or even Spaderunner. It looks like a Dudley trip to the end of Daren may be on the cards in the future…

Cavers: George and Dave
Trip rerpot: Dave
Photo: George

Draenen Short Round Trip

Due to pregnancy I missed the Dudley’s recent excursions into Draenen. Keen to put this right, I joined Dave and Loz for the Short Round Trip. It’s called “short” but compared to other round trips (e.g. in Aggy) it certainly felt long. I'm not sure how they compare in distance; it could be due to Draenen’s draining boulder-hoping terrain.

A leisurely start meant we entered the cave around 11am. We hit the ground crawling in the entrance series through squiggly terrain before we broke through into the main cave passages. From this point on, a lot of boulder-hopping merged together, although I'm told we went via Cairn Junction, Beer Challenge, and White Arch passage to Indiana Highway. Here the traversing was good fun and before long we arrived in Megadrive before reaching the Nunnery and the start of Perseverance II.

From here, we sniffed out the route to St David’s Hall and then through Squirrel Rifts, although these rifts proved a little more challenging to navigate. At one point, Dave attempted to post himself through a small, highly-polished crawl, before backing out when it got too tight. It appears the polish was due to lots of other people making the same mistake, as the main way on was to drop down a rift immediately before this crawl, which we had traversed over.

After dropping down to the very bottom of this rift, we located the tight, elongated squeeze into Haggis Basher Number One. Here I discovered that breast-feeding makes squeezes a lot harder and more painful, and after grunting and whimpering for a few minutes, I was relieved to escape the squeeze into larger passage. From here we sploshed up the intriguingly-named Far Agent Blorenge streamway to eventually encounter the Sewer. The recent dry weather meant the water levels were fairly low, but we still got a good soaking (nice to cool off in an otherwise hot cave). The duck in the Sewer II was also fairly low and after this we encountered a fun little traverse which took a bit of oomph to climb up to. Next we did some more sploshing downstream to the Confluence where we joined the Beyond a Choke Streamway.

Here the description told us to go upstream, however the low water levels made it difficult to decide which way this was. After experimenting, we figured it out and began the long splash up the streamway back to Tea Junction. This streamway was very beautiful with some lovely decorations, cascades and pools. It would be a great place to visit in its own right, but we simply wanted to press on and complete the trip.

With some relief we reached Tea Junction and the unmistakable, familiar route out of the cave. Exiting was about as much fun as could be expected, but after tight, drippy squirreling we eventually popped through the gate into daylight. I felt pretty exhausted at this point, but encouraged that I could do a “proper” caving trip 3 months after childbirth. I'm looking forward to going back to Draenen and exploring some more.

Cavers: Loz, Anne and Dave
Trip reprot: Anne
Photo: Anne

Titan

 

Titan

It was a long-awaited trip to Titan for the four of us who had never visited it before. Since we weren’t planning to go far into the system but were only doing a bounce trip with a potential look into the connection, we weren’t in a rush to get going first thing in the morning.

After separating with the group that went to Moss Chamber, we made our way to the entrance via Cave Dale and were underground within an hour. Apart from a few moments of hesitation, the rigging went smoothly, and once we had all bottomed out, we began the exit slog on very bouncy ropes. Since we had taken the camera, we also decided for a couple of dangly shots on the way up. We established a rough plan for where to stop for the shot beforehand and came up with a whistling signal system to confirm readiness in position. Due to the distance and enormous echo, we didn’t really manage to communicate much up and down the pitches, so final micro-adjustments of positioning weren’t really possible (radios would have worked much better, but someone never thought about bringing them).

Considering the difficulties of the environment, exposure, and lack of planning, we still managed to get a couple of shots and all really enjoyed the cave, especially George. 

Cavers: Bartek, George T, Paulina, Pheobe 

A Weekend Trip To Parys

Anyone who heard that the Dudley were planning a weekend trip to “Parys” might have envisaged us all drinking wine by the Seine. No such luck this time: this was an excursion to “Parys” not “Paris”. But what an amazing trip it was!

A handful of Dudley members plus one extra, met at the surface workings of Parys copper mine on Anglesey. Before setting off, we spent a moment admiring the surface landscape which is a beautiful surreal place; full of heaps of multi-coloured rocks and minerals.Very fascinating and well worth a look.

We were ably guided by Tim, a member of the Parys Underground Group. The plan was to do the through trip from Mona mine back through to Parys.

Having changed, we went through the hidden entrance into Mona. Once underground we quickly came upon formations that gave us a taster of the unusual decorations to come.. Here, what looked like black calcite was actually formed from fragile rust. Tim explained that the mine is on a volcanic plug and contains just about every mineral going. This meant we were treated to the most amazingly coloured formations, from bright pink through to yellow and greens, and even bright blues (more of that later).

Naturally this resulted in much stopping for photos. The lighting crew and models were mostly very tolerant of this, although you can see evidence of the beginnings of a protest movement if you look carefully...

The route went up and down through different levels. Due caution was a necessity as much of the structure supporting the mine is in an advanced state of decay. Some of the water was also very acidic - as illustrated by these stainless steel bolts and a karabiner that have been left in a puddle. One particularly blood coloured pool also had arsenic and other nasties in it - not the best spot for a swim…

We learnt that much more of the mine used to be flooded, but because of the acidity of the water a concrete dam holding much of the water in, had gone worryingly mushy so the Environment Agency had to pump it out. This has opened up more levels of the mine for exploration and also resulted in a very beautiful geological phenomena:

As the minerals leached through into the newly drained chambers they started to form these bright blue crystals. They have formed over about 20 years and as the mineral all leaches out they start to disintegrate again. Or at least that’s how my non-geologically trained brain understood it. Tim said other areas in the mine have had these blue formations in the past but now they have vanished.

If that wasn’t enough scientific curiosity, we were also treated to a pipe growing iron-eating fungi...

...plenty of snottites...

...bits of non-corroded pink copper...

...iron formations that look like dragon eyes and a bronze age section of mine complete with the hammer stones that the miners had brought from some distance to help them extract the copper.

All in all an amazing mine exploration. I don’t think I’ve heard “Wow!” quite so often on a a Dudley exploit before.

Cavers: Bartek & Paulina, Dave & Anne, Firas and John
Trip Report: Anne
Photos: Bartek