Dudley CC Yorkshire Meet Friday & Saturday

We started the weekend off with myself, Carl and Brendan meeting up at the YSS on friday before heading off for a quick through trip from Yordas Pot to come out through Yordas Cave with Carl leading the way. We then headed off to do Heron Pot where we swiftly made our way down the pitches to take a look around the fossil passage at the bottom. I did the crawl to the surface before a quick about turn to join the others to de-rig. Back at the surface though I could only remember that I'd exited at the base of a tree following the water out and couldn't find the other entrance from the surface!

Carl rigging the Yordas Pot entrance

Mark descends Yordas Pot

Mark in Yordas Cave

Carl and Mark at the Heron Pot top entrance

Present: (Yordas & Heron Pot) Mark Burkey, Brendan Marris & Carl Knot

Saturday
On Saturday we were joined by Tony, Rob, Loz and Andy K for another through trip, this time Browgill to Calf Holes. Loz had a play with her shiny new gear whilst the others had fun navigating the hidden connection.
We then set off in search of the new and old entrances to Dismal Hill Cave. First we headed down the rifts of the Old entrance to the tight flat out crawl where Loz was the only one skinny enough to get in the tight bedding plane to have a poke around so we all headed to the surface to try the other entrance, but not before Andy K had a moment when the ledge he was climbing gave way!
All back to the surface safe and sound we rigged the ladder in the new entrance and headed down to play. We found traverse lines going in both directions and after a good play we unfortunately failed to find the connecting passage to Old Ing. It was only after reaching the surface did we realise we had assumed we were heading down stream for the connection but we should have in fact been pushing in the other direction ;) Doh!

Carl Looking down the waterfall at the top of Calf Holes

Andy Kempster in Brow Gill

Rob Campbell in Calf Holes

Tony Ferran in Calf Holes

Present: (Browgill to Calf Holes and Dismal Hill Cave) Loz Appleby, Carl Knot, Mark Burkey, Andy Kempster, Brendan Marris, Tony Ferran and Rob Campbell

Yorkshire Caving - Heron Pot

Having taken part in the Peak Cavern trip photographic extravaganza for Jess' birthday, we thought we'd better take a camera to Yorkshire for Mark's birthday caving weekend.
Saturday saw us joining Heather and some friends from Crewe to do an SRT trip in Bull Pot of the Witches - with 15 of us shimmying up and down ropes it became an exercise in logistics as well as ropework! As we were out by half 3, we popped off for a quick through trip from Calf holes to Browgill to finish the day off.
Sunday we set off to find Heron Pot - as recommended by Andy G. Armed with O.S. coordinates but having mislaid the GPS, we nonetheless managed to pinpoint the pot straight away - or so we thought! It fitted the description perfectly so we kitted up and slid in to the first chamber...to find that we way on was a very tight flat out passage. We hummed and hah'd over the fact that Andy said it wasn't a tight cave, and the description didn't mention it either. Climbing back out rather despondantly, we then noticed a very obvious cave entrance only feet away, which we'd been standing with our backs to, doh!
Once we got into the real Heron Pot we really enjoyed the trip - full of formations, interesting passages and not much water. The pitches weren't the most straightforward to rig but by combining Andy's advice with the couple of descriptions we'd taken, Mark managed to rig the pitches quickly and efficiently. We explored the cave down to the start of the through-trip wet crawl, including a climb up to a well-decorated chamber and a look at the upper fossil series, which is accessed up a calcite slope. We decided to give the "long wet crawl" to the valley a miss as we weren't doing the through trip, and returned to the pitches.
At the bottom of the first pitch I managed to swing right into the waterfall as I started prussicking up, which was a real incentive to prussick fast as I spluttered to Mark "Hold the rope! It's not going through my ascender!" It was at this point Mark remembered Andy had mentioned something about a deviation??? Sure enough, half way up there was a p-bolt that wasn't mentioned in either of the descriptions, but would have just kept that rope out of the waterfall :0(
We were back at the car and toasty again just as other cavers were popping out of holes all over the hillside - such is the beauty of Yorkshire!

There were formations throughout the cave, including the famous "pickled onion" formation (above).

The passages were full of calcite curtains and flowstone.

Present: Heron Pot - Mark "the chin" Burkey and Jess "Globetrotter" Harding