Trip report
Marilyn – Gaping Gill Main chamber
07/10/2012
Present: Bob Riley, Fay Hartley, Paul
Whittaker (Author)
Well this was a hastily arranged last
minute trip and one I was looking forward to. I have not seen much of Gaping
Gill and this was to be my third proper caving trip down here.
Previously I have done the obligatory
Bar pot to the main chamber and back out the way we came in and the last time
was Stream passage pot to the main chamber then out through Flood Entrance pot.
This last trip was made easier as it was when the Bradford pothole club had the
winch meet on which meant that all the popular entrances and routes had been
rigged by BPC. This makes things a lot easier because there is no time lost rigging and de-rigging
and most importantly you don't have to make the three mile walk lugging bags
full of rope and iron mongery up the
hill and worse still back down after five or six hours caving. So this trip
would be a little harder as we had to bring our own ropes and rig and de-rig
and drag out the wet heavy ropes as well.
As usual we met at a Bernie's and fay
showed me the now familiar survey we were also lucky we had Bob
coming along who's knowledge of this big system clearly gave us a
massive advantage as we would find out. We drove to Clapham and parked up near
the church and started to get Kitted up. We had a new member Conrad whose
intention was to come along however it was decided between us that this trip
could be problematic and as he had not been on a trip with us before it would
be best to leave it until we get to know how proficient he is, Marilyn was not the place to find out because if he
gets into trouble it would be very difficult to assist also very dangerous as
the top of the second pitch is very loose with a real risk of flying rocks
raining down on the people below trying to assist or communicate. I got the
impression he was quite relieved and he offered to walk up and carry one of the
sacks of rope up the three mile trek which was a great help.
We took the familiar route through the
nature trail, past Ingleborough cave through the gate then follow the path up
the hill around the left hand bend up Trow Gill then over the double stile once
past bar pot turn right off the path and through the grass there is a
depression in the ground with a big concrete pipe with big galvanised steel
hinged grate.
I am told this pot hole was called
Marilyn due to the classic Marilyn Monroe pose where her dress get blown
upwards as this pot hole can emit a big upward draft through the grate however today there was very little draft
coming through the cave.
Fay rigged the first pitch from two
eyelets that were welded to the lid and she descended to the first ledge I
clipped on to the rope clipped on the second rope bag and soon followed I
dropped down to a ledge and then positioned my rope sack and myself into a vertical slot and slid down
this fissure until it lowered to a hands and knees crawl to the top of the
second pitch.
Fay was rigging this pitch while I
waited and soon Bob had joined me. Fay had rigged a Y hang that hung very close
to a large amount of loose boulders fay
descended OK and I waited for the rope free signal and made sure she was out of
the way. I threaded the rope through my
descender whilst attached to the P bolts with my cows tails and carefully as I
could lowered the rope bag to get ready for me to descend. As soon as I pulled
the lever and dropped down a few feet the rope bag touched the boulders and
rocks started sliding over the ledge and dropped seventy foot to the floor
below. I shouted to warn Fay but she was well out of the way I continued to
descend and emerged in the passage of Disappointment pot.
Fay and myself worked our way
downstream while Bob was coming down the pitch, we traversed the stream and
came to another short pitch that went into an impressive final chamber
of disappointment pot this pitch was negotiated easily and then we
followed the stream to the next pitch which required a short climb and rigging
a short traverse along the wall and then a Y hang and drop to another Y hang
and then straight down to the bottom of the chamber.
At this point we could ditch the SRT
kit and progressed through continuing stooping height passage that wound its
way along and emerged into kind of T junction one way a big impressive square section of passage with a
stream running along it Henslers master cave. The other was a smaller low
passage that led to Henslers High aven. Bob decided to have a look down
Henslers master cave we walked down the passage for a few minutes until the
passage bent to the right hand side and headed towards the Blow hole and the
Far country.
At this point Bob and Fay decided the
plan of action and as I hadn't got a clue of where I was supposed to be going I
just followed Bob. We re-traced our steps back towards the T junction near Disappointment pot and I
noticed someone had scratched a giant
arrow in the wall pointing the way out I made a mental note of this and we
turned right and made our way along a passage on hands and knees sections of
crawling. After a while we emerged
into an echo y chamber with what seemed passages heading off
in all directions,as I got to my feet as Fay told me “this is Henslers high
aven” and I stared upward into a black void with flat vertical walls my lights
would just make out roughly where the top is, then Bob just mentioned in the
most understated way “I've climbed up
that” I was absolutely gob smacked, incredible, it had to be 100ft of sheer wet
rock face with no obvious foot or hand holds I was awestruck!
Bob knew exactly what tunnel to pick
and we started on Henslers mud crawl this passage alternated between flat out
and hands and knees crawling, yes it was muddy and in some sections the water
filled the passages leaving just enough room to gulp some air.
The crawling soon relented and we came
to a gap on our left hand side that went upwards through muddy boulders and
onto a slippery mud covered climb we carried on and emerged into the East
passage and made the left turn and made our way into the vast Mud Hall. This
chamber is impressive and quite easy to negotiate using the fixed traverse
lines but if you slip you can drop instantly 30meters into a deep hole. The
drop wont kill you but the deceleration when you hit the bottom will!So I held
on to the lines with both hands tightly and concentrated on where I placed my
feet as the floor is sheet mud with indentations where people and trod over the
years. Ideally cows tails would be advisable but we didn't have any, our SRT
kits had been left at the bottom of Disappointment pot so we just had to be
careful! At the top of the slope of mud hall the
passage narrows, the way on heads towards
Gaping gill main chamber, along this section of passage there are taped
areas to protect the fine formations, sadly it is quite apparent that a lot of
these formations are just a shadow of what they used to be.
In no time at all the rumbling from
Britain highest waterfall could be heard and the passage opened up into a big
mass of blackness. We went down the iron ladder at the top of the east slope
and clambered down the boulders on to the floor of awesome Gaping Gill Main
chamber. This really is a special place and when you have the whole system to
yourself you look up and can see a tiny patch of blue sky at the opening of the
main shaft, you can see the water flowing over the edge and watch it take an
age to drop from top to bottom. You can see jets of water coming out of the
other tunnels in the roof of the chamber and you can look at the water
seemingly instantly vanish through the
floor. All of a sudden you realise its a long way back to the surface and you
have to summon enough energy to propel your body weight plus the accumulated
water held in your clothing back up the 340 foot back to planet normal so after
a quick look around the chamber we immediately set off on the familiar route
along the south east passage.
We climb up the boulders on the south
side of the chamber and take the stooping and hands and knees trade route .We
get to the T junction and turn left and after a while we go into the circular
shaft of flood entrance pot,after climbing over the opposite nick we work our
way along the rift and emerge into the
chamber at big pitch at Bar pot. We continued up the rocky slope away from Bar
Pot and in the next chamber I saw Bobs feet disappearing through a hole in the
floor on the left hand side of the chamber. I followed Bob head first and the
passage headed towards the left along a low flat out crawl ,as we made our way
along the passage we I noticed other small passages on both sides Bob obviously
knew the way so I just kept following
bob.
We finally came back into the start of
Henslers master cave and I recognised the arrow someone had scratched on the
wall pointing the way into Disappointment pot .We followed this stooping height
passage and climbed up some boulders into the big chamber at the bottom of
Disappointment pot where we left the SRT
kits. We had a sit down for a couple of minutes and then it was time to get the
SRT kits back on.
I went first up the pitch then followed
the stream up to the next pitch that leads out of the chamber along a traverse
twenty feet over a narrow stream this is negotiated quite easily and soon the
rope from the second pitch of Marilyn
comes into view. This is the biggest pitch of the trip and it had the added
attraction of falling rocks so fay and Bob stayed out of the way whilst I
prussiked up. I made my way up the rope and got passed the deviations and the
loose rock slope at the pitch head came into view. The next task was to clip
the cows tails on to the horizontal rope,detach my self from the vertical rope
and feed myself into the horizontal tunnel.
 |
| The start of the third pitch at Marilyn |
I crawled up this tunnel until the roof
went upwards in a narrow slot and it was back on the ropes and prussiked
upwards into it. Soon the slot opened up into the entrance shaft and one more
rope to go and I dragged my body over the lip of the entrance shaft and sat
down on the grass for a few seconds and got my breath back. I
got back to my feet and had a look at roughly where we had been while Bob and
Fay were doing sterling work de-rigging and dragging the ropes back out. We had
done quite a big trip and I had learnt quite a lot about the system and in time
I will get to know where all the passages lead to and get used to the different
sections of the system.
At present there is about 11.6km of
known passage and the journey from
Gaping Gill to Ingleborough cave has only been completed once in 1983 by
two divers doing it as an exchange trip. An underwater section of the route
has now collapsed and it is unlikely it will be ever be done again.
There are a number of ongoing digs going in Ingleborough cave and there are
always possibilities of finding new passage
in Gaping Gill. There is a beautiful chamber that I have been down that
is full of thousands of straw stalactites and this was found relatively
recently by just displacing a few rocks and crawling down a muddy tunnel. So
these places are still there to be found and discoveries are bound to be made
but the holy grail would be to find a dry connection from Gaping Gill to
Ingleborough cave. Now that would be a good trip! However we did OK today.
This cave system was one of the main
reasons I took up caving. I had stood along with other walkers peering over the
side of Gaping Gill and wondered what it would be like to stand at the bottom
and stare up and I had also been up there on bank holidays when the winch has
been on and went down on the winch on three separate occasions but this trip
has shown me lots of the system. We have only scratched the surface and there
is a lot more to see but I have been in some fantastic places such as Henlers
master cave , Mud Hall, Henslers High aven and the obligatory Main chamber all
in one trip ! Brilliant day brilliant cave.
Till the next time!
Paul
