It was supposed to be a nice and easy Sunday trip to Aggy. Loz and Mark already completed it number of times in the past, the only difference this time was to find the shortcut via the High traverses. Loz wanted to do a decent trip before her birthday a week after. Mark wanted to test his caving fitness. And we even managed to convince Joe to come and join us for this sensible trip. Joe hasn't caved for 12 months so the idea was to get him back in the game after his last trip to Redhouse in April 2025. I was just happy to be caving again after rather less busy caving winter.
We were doing the route in the opposite way to the Chelsea
SS description, so made an excellent progress to North-West junction and down
the Main Stream Passage. Mark and Loz seem to have forgotten about the swimming
bits in the Main Stream (brrr), but we were still on track for a good exit
climbing down from Biza passage into the water again.
We found the climb up to the High Traverse and found ourselves
in the five-way passage/chamber, which Mark recognised immediately as the way
on into Priory way (no it wasn't!). After good almost 2hrs of circling around
within 50m on that place, having checked all the possible ways on (no we
didn't!), we decided that it is now time to give up and climb back down to the
Main Stream Passage and take the known route out via all of the Southern Stream
Passage (bleh). We took some beating going up the Southern Stream Passage but
eventually were out (with few more little getting lost misadventures that we
shouldn't mention here) before the call out.
Cavers: Mark B, Loz A, Joe W, Bartek B
