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