Meet time was 8am in Castleton due to the size of the group and the time we had to be out of Peak due to an event. On the morning of the trip the size of the group had shrunk to just 5 of us, Mike, Richard, Tom, Olly and I. So off to TSG to get changed and to sign the forms for Peak. The two teams would be Mike and Olly de-rigging and Richard Tom and i rigging. Rigging team head up to Rowter farm to head to James Hall over engine shaft to start the rigging, which didn't start off great. Tom started heading down the shaft with what he thought was a 60m rope to get 5m from the bottom to find it was to short, so he prusiked back up to get a extra bit of rope to tie to the end, this meant a simple knot pass close to the bottom of this pitch, so we thought (More on that later). Once the 3 of us were down it was along cartgate this was a tough one for me as it was a narrow rift and I'm not the smallest of cavers along with two rope bags this was a pain and should be re named to Bitch rift as this takes us to the next pitch to Bitch pitch. This pitch wasn't as bad as i imagined it was tight but manageable that was until i squealed like a bitch when my harness dug into me. Bottom of Bitch pitch we entered The Workshop, here there's remains of an old cart and some other bis and pieces, a few photos and a quick re fuel and it was off to the last pitch, Leviathan. Here we didn't take the direct route we traverse and ab'd a couple of in-situ ropes to get to the head of the first pitch of Leviathan dropped down here to get to the tea rooms. As Tom rigged the last pitch we hear a shout from the bottom it was Mike and Olly just getting to the bottom of the pitch to meet us for the exchange. Quick chat and another re fuel and then we headed our separate ways.
We had 3 hours to get out of the Peak/Speedwell system so we got a bit of a move on. It started with wading through waist deep water in the Speedwell streamway, down the ladder at the bung, through the short by pass to Colostomy crawl, this is a long crawl with some tight bits not great when you my size but this gave Tom and Rich plenty of time to have a couple of short breaks while waiting for me. Through colostomy and the trenches we entered the Peak stream way here it was plane sailing with only mucky ducks to negotiate and to scrub each other down before entering the show cave. Off to the TSG to get changed and off to the pub we thought but not hearing of Olly and Mike we headed back up to the farm to see where they were. Once at the farm we headed over to the lid to see where they were, Mike was on his way up and was out in no time, time for Olly to head out, Tom and i waited for Olly while mike and rich took the bags back to the car. After 15min or so we were wondering why Olly wasn't making any progress, we could hear a bit of huffing and puffing and a lot swearing, so we shouted down to try and find what was going on, It was the Knot pass, it's quite difficult to find out whats going on when we're shouting down a 50m shaft, we eventually figured out that he'd never done a knot pass, but a bit of explaining he manged to get passed the Knot. Another half hour or so later he finally made it out. I was freezing cold as i was the one who stood at the lid for a hour while the others kept warm in the cars.
Spot on gaz.
Report from our side.
With a 5am start to get to tsg early so the jh team can get out of peak in time to then find out most of the team bailed out “grrrrâ€.
So it turned out we (oli and I) couldn’t enter peak until 10am anyway, which wasn’t really a problem as we had no time constraints against us. So of we go through peak cavern, forgot to turn right for the trenches etc etc and went down the ladder before we decided we had a blonde moment. Back up the ladder turned left and work our way through trenches colostomy speedwell canal . We also decided to go and look at the “tearoom “ were there’s some old miner’s signatures dating back to the 17 hundreds and even though they is a conservation sigh saying please don’t add to them we found people had 2002,2004 writing.
So on we went to meet the lads who were just rigging the last pitch,so perfect timing really.
I Must also add that oli’s reputation for being the slowest caver on the blooooody planet was evident throughout the trip.
Off we went up and up and up. Route finding on the way out was pretty straight forward.I think I lost oli a couple of times and he is definitely having some knot passing practice (sorry ol).
The rest is in gaz’s great report
Ps
Photos to follow
Cheers for the report Mike.
It was a great day all round.
[quote="Stones" post=43645]Cheers for the report Mike.
It was a great day all round.[/quote]
Yeah really enjoy it.
Just need Richard to add some photos
Nice bunch of photos rich