Mud Mud & More Mud In Nettle Pot

Having heard tales from Andy and Wal of the tight vertical squeezes Nettle Pot had to offer, when Wal suggested a trip one night at the club I, of course, signed myself and Jess up straight away!

Unfortunately on the day Wal wasn’t feeling well so then there were 3.

We made good time and arrived at around 10am to find 3 cars already parked. Andy was confident that people hardly ever go to Nettle and anyone here would be doing Oxlow or Maskhill. We were half changed when another car pulled up and a women jumped out exclaiming that as there were half naked people by the side of the road she must be in the right place! Turned out she wasn’t a swinger after all and was in fact waiting on yet another party to arrive for Oxlow.

As we finished changing a further 2 cars arrived and some lads jumped out asking if anyone was going to Nettle…. “Yes!”, Andy gruffed and soon packed them on their way sending them off to Giants :)

After trudging up the hill past the entrance to Oxlow we went through the gate and spent 15 minutes looking for the entrance before discovering we had walked straight past it.

Andy rigged and was soon sliding down the narrows in his loveable vocal caving style. I went next and was glad to find them more awkward than tight, especially with Jess's rather splendid idea of extending the stop on a sling from the D ring to hang above us rather than at waist height. 

Reaching the bottom of Bottle Pitch Andy declared he had a splitting headache and that he hadn’t wanted to let us know until he’d got us in the cave. After making sure he had a key and knew where the first aid kit was in the van for tablets he headed out and we headed off down The Flats …..and then there were 2. 

Reaching the levitation pitch at the end of the Flats we found this already rigged, but on inspection of the rope there was a cut in the sheath so we rigged our own and continued down. The traverse over Suicide Pot was also pre-rigged, but proved to be in good condition. Upon reaching the pull through we discovered there was no pull through cord and ropes were already in situ. As this was only a 5m pitch I tentatively went up to check the rigging and found it to be in decent condition for Jess to join me. The 2^nd pull through also turned out to be rigged so again I went up first to check with jess following. 

After a half an hour or exploring the very muddy and wet Far Flats, and not finding anything that could be described as a tight squeeze, we decided we had better head back to Andy. Reaching the head of the 30ft pitch it turned out that to aid her in her prussic up the rope Jess had decided it would be a good idea to tie off the tail of the rope to one of the pull through bolts. Unfortunately in doing this she had made the rope so taught there was no way of threading a stop. The only way down would be to down prussic the muddy rope. 

The exit through the Narrows proved awkward whilst hauling the heavy rope bag beneath me, then to top off Jess couldn’t undo a Krab and I had to do the Narrows again to de-rig!

Reaching the van Andy had a good laugh at the amount of mud we were caked in and upon examination of the guide book we found, although the rigging guide makes no mention of it, we in fact needed to find a 12m pitch down at the end of the Far Flats to find Freeze Squeeze and the way to Derbyshire Hall. Oh well a good excuse for a return visit! :)

Mark entering the 'Narrows'

Jess admiring formations in the 'Far Flats'

Jess sporting a rather fetching mud beard ;)

Present Andy Grimes, Jess Burkey & Mark Burkey

A Musical Introduction to Caving

After  a long trip in Ogof Draenen on the Saturday I think it's fair to say we were all suffering a little from lack of sleep for our Sunday trip in Agen Allwedd for Melissa's introduction to the motley Dudley crew and Caving in general.

Keith, Brendan, Jess and myself managed to drag ourselves to Abergavenny to meet with Melissa and start the day proper with the obligatory Luigi breakfast, whilst Chloe and Loz had a little extra bunk time back at 'White Walls'.

We gave Melissa a decent introduction to procrastination both at Luigi's and back at the Caving hut before finally deciding we could put it off no longer and we'd have to venture underground.
Unfortunately Keith had to be back early and with all the tea drinking time was already getting on, so it was decided that he and Brendan would walk us to the cave to wave us off whilst the rest of us would see if we could find our way through to the 'Music Hall'

Melissa seemed to enjoying the entrance series with it's many crawls, climbs and rift passage and had no trouble with any of these. We were soon through the boulder choke and making our way down the impressive main passage.
Brendan had advised making note of where we exit the choke for the return, so after taking a moment to catch our breath we continued on to our main objective.
Reaching 'The Music Hall' we again took a quick break before having a poke around the the 'Cliffs of Dover' and heading back via diversions to take in the Southern and Main Stream Ways.

Reaching the slope up to the Boulder Choke, thinking it would be fun to let Melissa guide us out,  I quickly realised I hadn't paid quite as much attention as I'd thought and we were soon hitting dead ends causing me to retrace our steps to the drop down I'd missed the first time.
Fortunately this was the only error and we were soon completing the entrance series back out in to a bright, but chilly afternoon.

We finished the day with Myself, Chloe, Loz and Melissa having a quick run through Eglwys Faen to exit via the Waterfall whilst Jess headed back to White Walls to get the kettle on.

Melissa seemed to particularly enjoy the flat out crawl in water to exit, exclaiming 'Holy Bum F**K' as she entered the icy water…up to this point I'd thought her such a polite lady…..still she should fit in a treat at Dudley :)

Present: Melissa, Laura Appleby, Chloe Burney, Jess Burkey & Mark Burkey

Coldfinger? Cold everything in Ogof Draenen!

Our club weekend started with……yep you guessed it, a fine breakfast at Luiggi’s where Brendan, Keith, myself, Jess, Chloe and Loz met up before heading off for the Ogof Draenen car park.

For those that don’t know my first trip in to Draenen lasted only about 20min’s as I was turned around at the awkward rift in the entrance series and so began my obsessive year of dieting!

The flat out entrance crawl, squeezes down body size holes in water and scaffold choke were all as much fun as I remembered, then came the awkward rift……I have to say I don’t know if it is that I am somewhat more experienced or the 3 stone less of belly that made the difference, but I slid through and hardly touched the sides. As it turned out that was a mistake that would cost me the next 11 hrs of my life ;)

That first time I hadn’t made it through Brendan had been on a mission to find a formation called ‘Coldfinger’, an unusual blue stalactite deep within the cave, as fate may have it this was also the objective of that days trip.

Our route took us through Carpet crawl, white arch passage, Lamb and Fox chamber, up to Indiana Highway, along Megadrive, the Nunnery (our first glimpse of something other than muddy boulders for some time) through the chapel choke and then dropped down in to the Wyvern series and on to Wyvern Hall. From here we went in to a Labyrinth of rift passages to finally emerge in Ponderosa before heading back through some flat out crawls to ‘The Blue Room.’ 

Here Brendan, Chloe, Jess and Loz paused to take some photographs of the unusual blue formations whilst Keith and I went off in search of the elusive Coldfinger formations. Unfortunately after a half an hour of searching we still hadn't managed to hunt it down! Defeated we headed back to the group down the unstable slope, almost taking down a large boulder on our way. By now we were several hours in to the trip so it was decided we should begin the long slog out. 

Brendan had navigated brilliantly in to the system and as we made our way out we each seemed to recall a different part of the passage and amazingly we again navigated our way without issue.  

After 12 hours of caving we finally made our way out through the frigid water and mud of the entrance series to a cold and frosty night sky. 

It was midnight before we made our weary way to White walls and 2 am by the time everyone was fed, watered and ready for bed. 

A great club trip only marred by the fact I didn’t manage to find my objective.  So who is up for round two of finding that elusive Coldfinger ;) ?!?!

Pictures by Brendan Marris

Present: Brendan Marris, Keith Edwards, Chloe Burney, Laura Appleby, Jess Burkey and Mark Burkey

Maskhill/Oxlow Exchange for a Major Miner!

After receiving a request from Andy Kempster for an SRT trip for his first outing with Dudley, and having found out Alum Pot was his first SRT outing, we realised we’d need something a little tastier than a normal novice trip for him. Carl, Grant and Chloe had also expressed an interest so as there would be sufficient bodies available a Maskhill/Oxlow exchange was decided upon.

Jess and I picked up Chloe on the way and met up with Andy, Carl and Grant at 9am (Carl would like a special shout out to point out they were actually 15 minutes early!)

Carl and Grant were to rig Oxlow whilst Andy, Jess Chloe and I would go in to Maskhill. As we anticipated taking longer going in Maskhill it was decided that we would set off ahead of the lads to give us a head start.

Although the weather was far kinder than our recent trips to these mines I decided to head up the hill and get the entrance pitches rigged whilst the others finished changing so there wouldn’t be too much standing around in the cold. Everyone made short work of the pitches and within a couple of hours we were heading through to the West Chamber to meet up with the lads. Unfortunately the lads had given us a bit more of a head start than I’d anticipated and we had an hour wait for them to join us.

United we set the pull through to Pilgrim’s way so I could take another look at the route to the Chamber of Horrors. Grant elected to take a break whilst we went to explore. The crawls went on quite a bit longer than I’d remembered and it was 20 minutes before we reached the flat out crawls in a very cold stream way.  Carl decided to head back to keep Grant company (probably the most intelligent of us). I headed in first and was soon at the tight s-bend. This time with helmet off I managed to get my chest around the corner only to find the passage continue to tighten. Worried that I wouldn’t be able to reverse if I got too stuck, Chloe volunteered to lead the way (well maybe ‘volunteer’ is a bit strong ;) To avoid drowning she went through on her back, but finding her nose was touching the rock roof, she too was a little nervous of getting stuck with her legs contorted around the corner. With no one smaller to send in to see if it would be do-able, or dig-able we headed back to continue the trip.

We swiftly rigged the Waterfall Chamber. Andy and myself then descended Pool Chamber before, very cold and wet, we began the long climb out.

Andy, Jess and Chloe continued with the exchange while, to help with the de-rig, I exited out Maskhill with Grant and Carl.

Grant wasn’t feeling too good on the way out, so Carl and I were left to haul out the heavy rope bags between the two of us. Even so we still managed to exit before the other group and managed to call Mr Grimes (our call out) with only minutes to spare.  Half an hour later and the other team joined us. The Oxlow pitches had proven somewhat wetter than usual, and everyone was glad to get warm and dry.

Andy had no problems with this big exchange trip, other than the fact Jess had decided to tie on a bag to his rope before he exited the head of a pitch and nearly pulled him off! Even so he seemed very happy with the trip and even eager to join us on a future outing…..the crazy fool!

 

Andy on the abseil traverse above Waterfall Chamber

Present: Grant Wilkes, Carl Knot, Chloe Burney, Jess Burkey, Mark Burkey and Andy Kempster

Daren Cilau to Cnwc Through Trip

Wanting to cement the route finding for the Daren to Cnwc through trip, Jess, Loz , and I headed in to a very wet Darren crawl for our 5 1/2 hr Sunday trip.

 

Water levels were somewhat higher than I had experienced before and ensured we kept a steady pace to combat against the cold as we made our way in. 

We were soon through the first obstacle, my favourite,  ‘The Vice’, Jess found this so roomy this time around she even tried to thrutch through with a kit bag attached to her belt!

After an hour of crawling and slithering through S-Bends and Stal Squeezes filled with pools of ice cold water we finally reached the end of the crawl and made our way through The Cascade breakthrough choke to Jigsaw passage.

Onward through The Wriggle we were soon at ‘Big Chamber Nowhere Near The Entrance.’ As we were doing well for time we back tracked to mud traverses in Surveyors Passage to have a poke around before continuing on to Epocalypse Passage and The White Company, past The Kitchen, where the water was looking rather brown and muddy, and through the connection to Antler passage where Loz’s skinny butt managed to squeeze down the hole before the climb down.  After proving my butt would not fit through I opted to climb down.

We then took a quick detour to show Loz the stunning Urchin Oxbow before stopping for a drink and chocolate bar at the Antlers formation.

Re-charged we headed out through Antler passage’s numerous climbs and ladders to Busmans Holiday, Prices Prophecy and out through Cnwc in to a snow filled afternoon. 

Navigating the slippery snow covered muddy path proved some fun and we were all glad to get changed and warm.

Stopping off for a well deserved meal on the way back Jess and Loz compared war wounds in the shape of the numerous leopard print like bruises covering their arms and legs, though Loz probably won the competition with nasty swelling and bruising to her finger resulting in an A&E trip on the Monday!

Mark Approaching The Tighter Section of The Vice

Jess admiring the Antlers formation

Jess in Urchin Oxbow

Present: Laura (Loz) Appleby, Jess Burkey & Mark Burkey
(Photo's from our previous trips)

A 7hr epic round trip to Lowe’s chain?

Saturday morning saw myself, Jess and Brendan sat around as usual in the SWCC hut nursing a full teapot. I had abstained from making any trip decisions and Brendan was looking worse for wear after not a lot of sleep courtesy of a heavy snorer in the bunk below him the night before. After a couple of teapots we finally decided to see what the water levels were like in OFD1 for a possible trip in to OFD1 ½.

Plodding down the hill we were soon at ‘The Step’ checking out the water level. Although high it was probably at a doable level, but as the forecast was more rain we decided to abandon our original trip plans and have a poke around passages that Jess and I hadn’t been to before on the round trip.

En route we diverted to check out The Maypole Traverse before continuing through to explore Slime Street, then in to the Subway to re-emerge in Bridge passage. After getting a little giddy in the roll over crawl we continued on to Starlight Chamber, where Brendan and I went for a play in the tight bedding planes and chokes past Coronation Aven before heading to Lowe’s Climb. The water levels were pretty impressive and we were glad we had decided to do our alternative rather than push on in the stream way. On the way out we checked back at the step and were awed to find that the stream level had risen a good 3 feet from when we had entered!

After the slog back up the hill we were surprised to find we had managed to spend a full 7hrs playing underground and were all glad to see the familiar teapot back at the hut.

A good fun trip visiting some interesting parts of the system normally passed when on the ‘trade routes’

Present: Brendan Marris, Jess Burkey & Mark Burkey

OFD1 - Fault Free Round Trip

After complicated travel arrangements for the weekend with Keith travelling down with Brendan and then going home with Mark, Jess and Brendan awaited the arrival of Phil and Andrew. With the pair arriving in good time we decided that as it had not rained for almost a day and a half we would have a bash at the OFD 1 round trip. Not expecting to be able to do it we had not brought cowstails, we then spent the next 30 minutes creating cowstails for the group.
Kitted up we headed down the hill and we were soon at The Step. With the water only a couple of inches over The Step we headed upstream until we reached Boulder Chamber. There we backtracked and then climbed up into Lows Passage without any incident at all. A brisk climb up into the fossil passages followed and soon we found ourselves in Pi Chamber ready for the climb down to Bolt Traverse. The climb down and the crossing of Bolt Traverse were completed without trouble and soon we were back at the start of the Round Trip. With plenty of time to spare we went back to the streamway and making the most of its sporty nature we lay in the water and enjoyed the water slide. Then we headed downstream to head back out via Pluto's Bath. The final diversion was to climb up into the Fault Series for a few photos before we headed out the cave and back up the hill.

Phil Lester - Fault Series - OFD 1

Andrew Williams - Fault Series - OFD 1

Andrew Williams - Fault Series - OFD 1

Andrew Williams - Fault Series - OFD 1

A Faultless trip completed with style, we will have to take Andrew somewhere a bit tastier next time.

Present: Jessica Burkey, Phil Lester, Andrew(3) Williams, Brendan Marris