Wednesday 21 November 2012

Burnley Caving Club Annual Dinner 17/10/2012


The 17th of November 2012 saw Burnley Caving Club travel to the Dales to spend an evening at Clapham Bunkhouse drinking beer, singing songs, and eating pies.

A good time was had by all, although there were a few bad heads in the morning as everyone shot off to nurse their hangovers at home.

Below are a few pictures and a couple of videos of everyone (trying) to sing.

We were treated to a couple of interesting slideshows by Fay, showing use pictures of her last couple of trips abroad


Simon doing his duties tending to the fire

Paul tucking into the wine he won in the raffle

BCC's very own Noel Gallagher strumming away, heroically learning the songs as he went along

I think this was a quieter moment after the meal while everyone was digesting their pies



The video above is what I consider to be one of the finest renditions of Wonderwall ever committed to film.



Garth leading a fine rendition of Rawtenstall Annual Fair!

Tuesday 13 November 2012

Coalpithole Shaft No.10 16.10.12

     On 16th October 2012, with the kind permission of the landowner, members of Burnley Caving Club descended Coalpithole shaft No.10 on Rushup Edge. This shaft was sunk in 1870 by the Peak Forest Mining Company and passed through about 440 feet of shale to limestone. Originally 610 feet deep, it reached the Coal Pit Hole Old vein, the founder meer of which was freed in 1760 when the partners of Coal Pit Hole gave one dish of lead ore. This major lead rake, 3 miles west of Castleton, trends for about 1 mile SE-NW commencing at Mine Cottage, Peak Forest, over the shoulder of Gautries Hill, crossing the B6061 Sparrowpit to Castleton road and the limestone-shale boundary to the shales of Rushup Edge. It is intersected by No.1 shaft, Rake shaft 320 feet deep, Veer Shaft 230 feet deep, Hilltop Shaft 100 feet deep, No. 3/8 shaft,  (100 yards North of B6061) 207 feet deep to water and No.10 shaft. (NGR 092 812). From 1865-1878 Coalpithole Mine was one of the richest lead mines in Derbyshire, comparable to Mill Close Mine, Darley Bridge. It was one of the first mines to have a horizontal steam winding and pumping engine, originally made by Bray and Co: Leeds in 1853 for Brightside Mine, Hassop. The mine was drained by the underground watercourse of Perryfoot  swallet. Dye inserted at No 3/8 shaft took 2 days to reach Rake shaft , 5-6 days to get to Speedwell main rising, emerging at Russet Well, 1.75 miles away, after 7 days .

    Bob Riley exiting Coalpithole Shart No. 10 Photo Fay Hartley
    With trepidation we removed the trapdoor in the large 12 foot by 9 foot metal grill capping and rigged a 120m rope plus 8m ladder for ease of access. The shaft looked huge, beautifully coloured with streaks of black, brown, white and orange, gradually tapering in diameter to what looked like infinity. From the surface to 50 feet, it is walled with large dressed blocks of limestone, below this the ginging is of red brick. We did not notice the small passage, 2 feet high by 1 foot wide, at a depth of 20 feet which is said to lead off SW. A few large orange “snottites”, probably colloidal haematite hung down the shaft. Bits fell off, landing with a frightening “boom” in the water below. A few narrow jets of water entered the shaft about 30 feet above the water surface but the ginging was in good condition overall. Unfortunately, the shaft was blocked and flooded with water at 230 feet and there was an oily smell. It would be interesting to use a “sniffer” to monitor radon levels and a MSA Altair 4X to measure carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulphide and combustible e.g. methane gases. Has anyone been down Hilltop, Rake or Veer shafts recently?
References:-
1.       Williams D. 2003 Bulletin PDMHS Vol. 15, No.3 An Attempt in 1935-37 to Rework Coalpithole Mine, Peak Forest, Derbyshire.
2.       Elliot D. 1975 Caves of Northern Derbyshire Part 3
3.       Ford T.D. 1966 B.S.A. Cave Science Vol.5 No. 39 p379
4.       Salmon L.B. and Boldock G. 1949 Cave Science Vol.2 No. 9 p 15-20 Perryfoot Caves.
5.       Salmon L.B. 1963 Cave Science Vol.5 No.33 p 36-52
6.       Crabtree P.W. 1967 Journal British Speleological Assoc. Vol6 No.42 p43-61 The Peak Forest Mines, Part 1, The Development of Coalpithole Mine.
7.       Ford T.D. and Rieuworts J.H. Lead Mining in the Peak District.

Sunday 11 November 2012

Ingelborough Cave 10/11/2012

Ingelborough Cave 10/11/2012
Present: Dan, Paul W, Fay, Bob & Conrad

Saturday the 10th of November so me (Dan), Paul, Fay, Bob and Conrad making our way to Ingleborough show cave. I was eagerly anticipating the trip as due to commitments, I had not been able to go caving for the past few months. I thought Ingleborough would be a nice introduction back into active caving, “After all” I thought, “It’s only a show cave, it must be easy”. Turns out it was a bit tougher than I expected, quite strenuous, but ultimately enjoyable and worth doing.


We all met in Clapham on a fine, crisp autumnal morning at 9.30, to find the cafe shut. However, the New Inn saved our skins and made us a pot of coffee while we discussed the route and perused the survey. After our caffeine hit we all stripped off in the freezing cold, got our wetsuits on (while Conrad got his ‘sheepsuit’ on), and began the trek up to Ingleborough. Upone arriving at the cave we paid our dues and discussed the route with John Cordingley, one of the employees of the establishment and all round good guy. He recommended we didn’t go past ‘the wallows’, due to recent rainfall and the threat of showers. These are two sections of passage towards the end of the cave known as the near and far wallows. They are essentially grotty little flat out crawls full of water with a small amount of breathing space that flood rapidly and regularly. Before the trip I knew about these sections, but had also heard of a difficult but doable bypass around the wallows in an upper series. I mentioned this to John but he informed me that this bypass was actually in between the near and far wallows, and even if the far wallows flooded and you could bypass it, you would still be stuck. Definitely not an option. A shame as after the wallows you get to ‘Inauguration Passage’, which is supposed to be one of the finest sections of passage on Ingleborough. Before we headed into the cave we ran into the first problem of the day - Conrad's light packed in. Luckily we all had a spare torch and I gave him my hand torch, which is the same LED as my helmet lamp and is extremely powerful.


Conrad trying (and failing) to fix his lamp
So knowing we weren’t going to be able to do the full cave, we set off through the show cave, which is about 5 minutes (brisk walking) of beautiful passage, absolutely chock full of really nice formations, some pretty little waterfalls, and a lot of impressive looking flowstone. I’ve been in the show cave when I was a kid and I remember thinking it was great then, but I had forgot how spectacular it was, and the guys who run it have done well keeping the alteration of the cave to a minimum. When we got to the end of the show cave, I realised I had left my gloves back in the hut, probably due to my frustration at trying to get my wetsuit off whilst going to the toilet before entering the cave. I didn’t want to hold everyone up by running back so I decided to brave it bare handed - like a real man (my bruised and cut hands that are typing this trip report seriously regret that decision).

Anyway we hurried on into the first unlit section of the cave, which is essentially a walkable series of passage punctuated with a couple of wadeable puddles. In the first one was a rubber dinghy, when I saw it I thought ‘rude not to’ and jumped in, paddling myself across the freezing water, much to the chagrin of Conrad, who I imagine was silently cursing my wetsuit-wearing self while I stayed dry and he got his sheepskin undersuit wet and heavy. After about 5 minutes of sandy passage you get to the ‘second gothic arch’. Emerging into this passage from a sandy tunnel is quite a sight. It’s an amazing bit of passage which from beginning to end has formations running down the walls from a pointed ceiling, creating a gothic arch effect. We admired this for a while while Paul took some photo’s and video, then we sat down and had a look at the survey. There was a couple of ways on at the end of the passage, one to the left and one straight on. “I’m sure it’s straight on!” proclaimed I - then proceeded to dive headfirst into a very wet, small passage in front of me. I carried on for a minute but it got narrower and narrower until I realised that it wasn’t actually this way. I shouted back to Bob then wriggled backwards out the hole, to find everyone had found the right route and were making their way onwards and downwards. I decided I didn’t need my belt, as I had forgotten to fill my water bottle (2nd thing I forgot), so I undid it and left it in the passage before following the others.



Me & Conrad in the second gothic arch passage

Giger-esque rib like formations

Me walking down the passage
After a few more minutes crawling around, we got to the first real wet section. You can see on the survey that about halfway through the trip there is a complicated looking section full of water. John had told us what to do when we got here, there is a ladder bolted to the floor which is covered in conveyer belt that leads through a wet section. This came in handy as my hands were really feeling the cold while fully submerged. After the ladder he had told us go downstream, then continue on 10 meters and there is an obvious passage. Paul was leading at the front, and he immediately found the passage, however me and Bob said we would go and have a look off to the right further downstream. I folowed Bob and just round the corner there was a passage on the left. I thought this must be what John was on about, so I shouted to everyone “FOUND IT!”. I was wrong.





After everyone had caught up I again jumped headfirst into the hole which I though was the way on, only to find that once again I had got the wrong hole as it began to close up shortly from the entrance. When I got back out everyone was disappearing further downstream following Bob. After splashing on hands and knees we then ended up spending 15 minutes flat out crawling over some really horrible, sharp rock covered in gritty sand. I think this was the place that caused the rip in my indestructible cordura suit! All the while during this little detour we were getting further away from the actual route, but eventually Bob found the way he was going simply looped back round to where we started, so we made our way back the way we came and went back to the passage Paul had originally found. You can see on the survey there is a section which looks flooded and has a couple of lakes, ‘Lake Avernus’ and ‘Lake Pluto’. We figured that our detour was around this area, so not a complete waste of time, at least we saw a bit more of the cave.

The next section is the final crawl before the Wallows, known as the ‘Far Eastern Bedding System’. This passage is a long, hard crawl on a bedding plane. Nothing much to say about it, other than I had horribly sore elbows due to not being able to use my hands properly, and I could hear a lot of huffing, puffing, and cursing coming from the guys near me (including myself). Again the rock was quite sharp stuff and it was nasty stuff to crawl on. After what I judged to be about 15 minutes flat out, we got to a downward slope which led to the near wallows. Paul knew it was the wallows from a description which mentioned some emergency telephone wire which we found. Me and Paul wiggled our way down to have a look. I couldn’t really get a brilliant look as it was so low that I couldn’t turn my head properly, but it just looked like what we had just been doing, except lower and filled with water. After we both reflected on how horrible it looked, and how glad we were we weren’t doing it, we promptly made our way back.

The return trip passed without incident, we made our way back to the second gothic arch in much quicker time due to the lack of detours, and when we got there we went and had a nosy round ‘giants cavern’, a sandy cavern with some nice formations. There was a steel ladder in the cavern and Bob untied it and tried to get up to some passages higher up the walls of the cavern, but after 10 minutes or so messing about, we decided to head back. Again the journey back the rest of the way to the end of the show cave passed without incident, and we made our way out the cave. On the way me and conrad had a shower in a waterfall to save the grit in our washing machines when we got home.

Just as I thought I was about to leave the cave, I realised mistake number 3 (or 5 if you count my navigational errors) - I had left my belt & water bottle in the second gothic arch passage!! By this point I was sore, tired, and very cold, and normally I wouldn’t have bothered just for a belt. But the belt in question is actually a bit of a family heirloom, as I was given it by my grandad who used it to cave himself when he was a young whippersnapper back in the 70’s. Too much history to leave it for sure! So I spent the next 15 minutes running all the way back, on my own, through the cave to find it. When I finally exited into the cool morning sun, I was given my keys by Paul & Conrad who had kindly waited for me, and made the trek back to the car / pub.



Emerging into the light
All in all a good trip, a shame we couldn’t do the whole thing, but nice for me in particular to get out caving again after a few months hibernating!

Friday 2 November 2012

Marilyn – Gaping Gill Main chamber 07/10/2012


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