The carefully selected elite of Southampton University caving club spent the week before Easter at Bull Pot farm in Yorkshire. Sitting right on top of the UK's largest cave system - Easegill, the Red Rose's caving hut was the perfect location for an excellent weeks caving.

Mike provided us with a list of Yorkshire classics which Rich, Crispin and I would all be able to rig. Armed with his advice, a folder of rigging topos stolen several years earlier from the same place we were staying in and the comprehensive Northern caves 1, 2, and 3 we started making plans. Darryl was insisting on doing Alum pot, we all knew Gaping Ghyll had to be done and because Easegill was so close it would be (as Mike so often puts it) "rude not to do it" 
Written by Chris Jewell

Day 1: Easegill, Cow Pot - Lancaster Hole exchange.

So day 1, many others and mine first ever caving trip using SRT equipment! But we weren't worried all of us new what we were doing and had had lots of practice beforehand.  So for the first day we decided

to do an exchange between cow pot and Lancaster hole in the East Gill cave system.  Rich showed his master rigging ability by taking about four hours to rig two pitches! And I showed of my master SRT skills by re-belaying on a deviation, then forgetting to clip my cow's tails and then slipping of the ledge I was leaning against before I had pulled the slack through my stopper. Oh well good job I had rigged my stop properly!

After which we went on to the main stream way which seem to resemble a water slide more than a stream way and so it was decided that we should return one day with a rubber ring for some proper all time comedy photo's! the main stream way then started to slow down and revealed some of the most impressive stalactites we'd ever seen, definitely well worth the effort.  After which all that was left was to prussic up out of the cave to enjoy Simon's cooking of spaghetti bolognese.

Day 2: Jingling pot, Bull pot, Rowten Pot.

After the first day when ace caver Neil Hatcher had decided to go on an epic hour long dig, he decided that he might actually bother going caving and he impressed us all by doing the total caving of the first pitch of Rowten's (well done Neil).  Although this turned out to be a wise choice as it was later found out that the 80m rope had a slight structural floor, in that part of the rope was missing the central core and so could of snapped at any time, (oh well!).  Bull pot and jingling pot were also descended that day and everybody was in agreement that jingling pot was without doubt the greatest cave they had ever seen. (Well not quite, basically it was a hole in the ground with two dead sheep at the bottom). 

Written by Phil Tedder 

Day 3: Mincing in the sun & Chris and Rich's trip

Mincing in the sun isn't very exciting although you might learn a bit of rigging courtesy of Neil. Instead Rich and I attempted Topsink to Lancaster, you can find out what happened in our presidential Adventures.

Day 4: Gaping Ghyll, Bar pot - Flood pot exchange

Gaping Ghyll is so far the only cave I've had do walk any significant distance to, at a distance of 2.5 miles.  The weather at the time was sunny and hot and there were lots of walkers wearing t-shirts so we must have looked very odd sweating away in our full cold-weather Yorkshire caving gear.

The trip was to be split into two routes, one into Gaping Ghyll via Bar pot and the other via Flood pot.

I was part of the Flood pot group, which consisted of Chris (rigging), Daryl, Simon and me.  The bar pot group consisted of Rich (rigging), Crispin, Paul and Phil.  Neil wasn't taking part that day as he was feeling feeble (again).  The two groups would meet up and have lunch together in the main chamber.

Having reached the general cave area we almost immediately found Bar pot (hard to miss) and I then found Flood pot starting with a much smaller hole to the right of the path.  As there were lots of people about each group attracted its own audience of onlookers.  The phrase I heard most often was, "They're cavers dear"!

Having reached Bar pot in full caving gear and after the walk, Crispin decided that he wouldn't fit through the entrance squeeze.  He then looked at the squeeze in the entrance to Flood pot and decided that was also a ‘Crispin trap'.  So all that was walking in vain.  He went to look at the surface entrance to Gaping Ghyll before walking back down and visiting the pub with Neil.

The entrance squeeze to Flood pot was indeed quite tight through the floor on an SRT pitch.  I think that I had a tackle sack at the time.  Rather have one going down than coming up, eh Simon?  More about that later.  At the bottom of the pitch there was a bit of following the zigzags, crawling and stooping before the short second pitch.  This ended in a small pool and off to the right, under a crawl, was the third pitch.  After that there was a traverse where the walls were in a V and there was a gap in the bottom of the V just big enough to get your ankle caught in.  The floor was only 2 foot from the bottom of the V though.  The fourth pitch was a joke.  It was definitely a Mendip free climb with a vertical range of about 3 metres and a horizontal range of the same!  Just at the bottom of this ‘pitch' there was a short crawl off to the right which lead to the impressive top of the fifth pitch.  The top of the pitch was circular with a diameter of approximately 15 feet.  Chris rigged an absolutely massive Y-hang after a traverse line around half the circumference of the pitch head.  The Y-hang lead to a re-belay and a descent to a large ledge at the bottom.  While Chris was rigging we heard Rich's group at the bottom of the pitch having got to the bottom first.  Rich said that at first he couldn't find us (before Chris had descended).  Maybe you should try looking up next time, eh Rich!

After meeting we took off our SRT kits and navigated the crawly passages to Gaping Ghyll.  This was great fun as for the most part the floor was completely flat so we had crawling races along the passages!  I reached the main chamber first and it was still daylight.  It is a spectacular sight to see the water falling as if in slow motion from the light outside into this massive dark chamber and smashing onto the rocks below.  Chris pointed out the ledge that Birbeck had stopped his decent on, presumably scared to continue, in 1842 and that the ledge was then named after him.  The first descent was made by E. A. Martel in 1895 on a rope ladder!  Chris also pointed out Dihedral, the route that he had taken with Mike before.  You could just about see it come out about half way up the wall.

We made our way back to the bottom of the fifth pitch (more crawling races) some of us by a slightly different way to that which we had intended to take.  Not my fault guv!  Actually the route turned out to be slightly faster.

The plan was then to have the two groups exchange routes.  However Rich had rigged his route slightly wrongly i.e. it had a couple of rub points in it.  Rich wanted him and Chris to go up his route and de-rig it but Chris wasn't keen and sent Rich all the way out of Flood, and back down Bar to de-rig his route.  This meant that everyone had to come out of Flood so there was going to be a bit of a queue.

What we ended up doing about the queue was to have Daryl, Paul and Phil wait and prussik up after Rich while Simon, Chris and I went off exploring.

Our route took us by the bottom of the Bar pot pitch and then onwards through some caverns to a small hole in the floor where Chris said it was only a small squeeze and then it opened out into larger passage.  Chris, what exactly is your idea of larger passage?  Is it really crawling on your belly through a tight muddy passage?  The tunnel reminded me of Lionel's hole (the later part of it to horifice two) but a little bit smaller.  Anyway we went for about fifteen minutes and then Simon banged his knee very hard against a rock so we then decided to turn back as we thought the queue for the fifth pitch would be gone.

When we got to the bottom of the pitch I went up first carrying a BDH.  I should really have taken the tackle sack and let Simon go up before me as he had requested as he had damaged his knee.  Sorry Si.

I continued on after the fifth pitch and caught up with Phil who was just starting at the bottom of the third pitch.  Daryl was showing Phil and Paul the way out as they had been down Bar pot and therefore didn't know the way out.  The three of them then went on when Phil was up and I caught up again at the bottom of the second pitch.  By the time I had reached the bottom of the first pitch Daryl was only just starting up it so I had to wait for him, Paul and Phil to prussik up.  I was almost past the re-belay on the first pitch when Simon turned up at the bottom cursing and swearing because of his knee and the fact that he had to carry a tackle sack full of wet rope as well.  I gave him a hand with the tackle sack at the top of the pitch (the squeeze) and pushed it out after him as it kept on getting caught.  Chris followed him de-rigging and I coiled up one of the ropes when he got to the top of the pitch.  We then made our way out of the cave.

It was freezing cold outside and everyone (including Rich who had de-rigged Bar pot) was waiting outside for Chris and me so we collected the kit and walked the 2.5 miles back to the bus.  Once there Simon solved the riddle of how to get into the minibus (left unattended by Neil and Crispin who were both in the pub).  The key was hidden inside an Aero wrapper wasn't it?

It was a really good day's caving with lots of different SRT pitches and a spectacular sight at the bottom of the cave.

In the evening we re visited the pub from the day before and I made the mistake of partaking in a couple of pints of Weston's Vintage Cider (7.3%) rather than the Stowford Press.  Ok, I admit it I was pissed (and earned the nickname of Two Pint Toby).  I swear Weston's does funny stuff to me.  It's not just the alcohol, honest.  I went to bed early and missed out on Paul's Chilli conCarne.  Serves me right!

Day 5: Alum Pot, Dolly Tubs - S.E. route exchange

We had a very late start to the day due to general nice weather and needing to sort out the kit as the number of screwgate krabs had been steadily declining.  I think we were still faffing around at about three o'clock so we can't have been in the cave until about four.

The Dolly Tubs group consisted of Chris (rigging), Daryl, Paul and me.  The S.E. route group consisted of Rich (rigging), Crispin, Simon and Phil.  Once again Neil wasn't participating due to his sudden fascination with pubs!

Neil did drive us around again which was very much appreciated.  The track up towards the caves was very rough but Neil managed to get the minibus all the way to the end of it so we didn't have to walk so far.  I think he secretly (actually maybe not so secretly) enjoyed that bit of off-roading!  Shortly after we arrived a Landrover turned up containing more cavers.  They turned out to be divers (or at least one of them was).  More on that later.

We disembarked from the minibus, got changed and set off towards the caves.  Once again Crispin was first in the race to get changed!  Don't know how he does it.  The S.E. route is the first route into Alum Pot that you come to after walking from the end of the track.  Everyone had a look over the edge whilst holding onto the tree (well I certainly was).  Our group then left and let Rich get on with rigging his route.

We made our way up to the Dolly Tubs entrance (don't ask about the name, I don't know why).  Alum pot had been Daryl's first SRT trip a couple of years back and he was anxious to revisit the cave.  When we were putting our SRT kits on at the entrance I had a problem fitting the wing nut to the battery which held everyone up.  Sorry!  The entrance to the cave was a stoop walking along a very slippery river bed.  However as we got further into the cave this slipperiness decreased (probably algae).  We continued along the passage and came to the two large pools which the book had described.  We skirted these and continued until we came to a waterfall which was pea hangered.  This did not fit the description and Chris reckoned that we had reached the entrance to Diccan.  This annoyed Chris somewhat and there were accusations that Daryl didn't know were he was going.  Which at the time was true!  Chris and I waited at the top of the wrong pitch while Daryl and Paul went back upstream to try and find the entrance to Dolly Tubs.  They shouted something back to us but we couldn't hear it and therefore decided to go back and meet them which further annoyed Chris.

It turned out that they had found the entrance which was an unlikely looking crawl off to the right (if you were going downstream) just after the entrance to the cave.  Shortly after the crawl we reached two holes in the floor which would have been the two pools described if the weather had been wetter.  The head of the pitch was then reached.  The pitch basically consisted of a re-belay at the top followed by a straight descent.  The distance between the downwards rope and the ledge was about 1.5 metres so getting onto the rope was going to be slightly unorthodox (as far as I was concerned anyway).  What I ended up doing was clipping the long cow's tail into the rope loop going into the re-belay and reaching out and grabbing the downwards rope.  I then rigged this into my stop, double checking that it was rigged correctly and hard locked it.  I then unclipped the long cows tail (too long) grabbed the loop and swung out over the pitch, lowering myself onto the stop.  This is NOT the right way to do it.  However I was feeling lazy.

On reaching the bottom of the pitch you follow your nose and the tunnel emerges about halfway up the S.E. rope.  When we got there it was still daylight despite our late start and it was a spectacular sight.  Opposite the S.E. route there was a waterfall cascading all the way to the bottom of the pot.  The pot was massive and I looked over it to see Chris rigging a traverse line around the edge towards the waterfall on the opposite side.  The cavers whom I mentioned before had also rigged the S.E. route but had taken a slightly different route around the ‘bridge' (mentioned later).

Before getting to the traverse line it was necessary to negotiate the ‘greasy slab'.  This was so called because it was wet and very slippery although the top part of it wasn't all that steep.  The rope was rigged straight down from one pea? hanger until it reached a re-belay point where the face went vertical after the slab.  The descent over the greasy slab was a bit annoying due to the fact that the rope kept snagging on boulders.  This would have been easily remedied if Chris had seen the two pea hangers a bit around from his first rigging point which would have made a lovely Y-(not)hang, but never mind.

At the bottom of the pitch you remained clipped on with the cow's tails and negotiated the traverse line.  All the way round the pot there was a good view of people descending (or not descending eh Phil) the S.E. route.

The traverse line lead to another awkward horizontal pitch over a large slab in the centre of the pot.  This effectively created a bridge from the traverse ledge to the end of the S.E. route on the opposite side.  Halfway over the ‘bridge' the angle changed from horizontal to 45⁰ as the slab was descended and there was a re-belay at the top of this.

On reaching the other side at the bottom of the S.E. route there was a small traverse line to another pitch where the rope was pressing against the rock until the re-belay point was reached, meaning that you had to push yourself away from the rock.  At the re-belay point you had to be careful which rope to use as one of them didn't go anywhere (although there was a knot in the end of it)!

At the end of this pitch I met Crispin and he directed me to follow the cave downwards (still in open air).  There turned out to be an easy climb over a small waterfall and the divers' rope was hanging down terminating at the bottom of the waterfall.  The cave was again followed down until the last pitch was reached.  This was an easy pitch of about 20 feet finishing in a pool.

After the last pitch there was a short walk and then the tunnel split with a steep waterfall off to the right and a tighter but much shallower passage off to the left which led down to the bottom of the cave.  Chris, Rich, Daryl, Paul and Simon were all hanging around, some of them right at the bottom of the cave and some at the top of the last waterfall.  They were looking a bit hungry and unfortunately for them I was last down carrying half the lunch.  The other half of the lunch was being carried by Phil, but he had left to go back out and taken the lunch with him.  I left my bit of the lunch with them and went off to have a look at the last part of the cave.

The cave ends in a circular pool about ten feet across.  This pool is actually the entrance to a massive sump which one of the divers had been exploring.  The cylinders that the guy was using were massive and I gathered from the others that he had got the furthest that day that he had ever been at a distance of 800 metres, and he still hadn't reached the end!  Sounds very interesting, I wonder where it emerges or perhaps it chokes?  Perhaps we should send Mike and Greg down to find out. 

As the others had spoken to the diver guy he had asked them to carry his two massive cylinders as far towards the entrance as we could.  They weighed enough empty but we took them up to the ledge at the top of the last waterfall before stopping to have half-lunch.  As I was last out of that bit of the cave I had a bit of a look round and spotted some gloves lying on a large metal contraption which was rusting away down in the bottom of the cave (it looked like a massive metal bucket).  They turned out to be Simon's.

We sat around at the top of the waterfall and ate the bit of lunch I was carrying, split between us hungry cavers.  The worst part of it was the major shortage of Polar Bars!

After lunch we decided that Daryl and Paul should go out first as Daryl was going to do the S.E. route and Paul had decided that he would rather not do the S.E. route but was going to go out the way he had come in instead.  The rest of us (Chris, Rich, Simon and I) waited around for some time to allow Daryl and Paul enough time to get as far gone as possible.  We then carried the cylinders as far upstream as we could, leaving them at the bottom of the last pitch.  I don't think the diver picked them up that day because we saw their group leave in the Landrover when we got out of the cave.   I then continued out and up the last pitch and up the waterfall until I reached the bottom of the next pitch where I saw Phil!  I'm not really sure what Phil was doing.  He was supposed to be going out via Dolly Tubs but I gather he had already been up the pitch towards the exit but had then come back down it which was where I met him, standing at the bottom.  And you still had our lunch, didn't you Phil?

Paul was nearly past the re-belay and as I waited for him Simon turned up.  When Paul was up I then prussiked up, leaving Phil and Simon to continue up after me.

I was now at the bottom of the first pitch of the S.E. route, which is a very long prussik.  I had a look up to see if Daryl was still there and I couldn't see his light, as it was now dark.  Just as I was about to attach myself to the rope I noticed that it was still shaking about.  I looked up very carefully and could just about make out his arse way above me in the darkness!  He then turned his halogen on.  It turned out that his LEDs had once again failed due to lack of battery, this time when he was halfway up the pitch.  He was therefore trying to conserve power so he could use his halogen (for a very short length of time) to negotiate the re-belay near the top.

Once he had called rope free I started up.  Because of the angle of the rope at the bottom of the pitch and its elasticity I had to pull as much slack through my jammers as I possibly could before swinging out about 20 feet so the rope became vertical.  At the bottom of the pitch the rope bounce was really bad.  It always makes me feel sea sick when you are going up and down but have no frame of reference to look at.  I tried therefore to prussik looking at the wall rather than out over the pot (now in darkness).  When I reached the re-belay Crispin turned up, looking down at me whilst leaning on the tree (which was right on the edge).  After negotiating the re-belay and reaching the top I was anxious to stay clipped to the rope as it was a long way down!  Crispin and I then walked back to the track (where the minibus should have been) leaving Chris to de-rig everything.  Well it was getting cold!

As we were out a bit earlier than expected Neil was not yet there with the minibus.  Neither was Daryl.  We therefore walked down the track a bit until we found Daryl.  We almost walked past him because he had no light.  Neil turned up fifteen minutes later and we got changed and waited for every one else.  They were another fifteen minutes to half an hour.  It turned out that Dickie had gone right rather than left near the Dolly Tubs entrance (he would have been able to see daylight if it hadn't been dark) and had ended up at the head of the pitch leading into Diccan, just like we did to start off with.  So he turned round and made his way out.  The entrance to Diccan did look very wet but I think it has to be done next time.

When everyone was changed we shared out Phil's half of the lunch and then made our way to the pub.  They didn't have draught cider so I had one Fosters.  Probably a good thing as we had kit to pack that evening and I couldn't possibly have handled a whole two pints!

Alum Pot was the perfect cave to do on the last day as it is quite spectacular and not a long or tiring trip.  Thanks to Daryl for choosing it.

Thanks also to Neil for driving us everywhere and special thanks to the riggers/de-riggers (mainly Chris and Rich) who made SRT fun rather than tedious for the rest of us.  You can't convince me that rigging is fun, and de-rigging certainly can't be.  Finally thanks to Chris who organised the trip, it was great fun and we did a lot of caving.     

Written by Toby Jefferies (I only asked for a couple of hundred words!) - Chris