Report by Jules Barrett
Cavers: Jules Barrett
(EPC), Chris Schofield (EPC)
Chris and I set off from Sheffield early on Saturday morning and
spotted
Gingling Pot in Mike Cooper's book 'Not for the Faint Hearted' whilst
having breakfast at
McDonalds in Keighley. The
book describes Gingling Hole as "the indisputable caving gem on
Fountains
Fell offering a truly grand day out with something to please everyone."
Since neither of us had caved on Fountains Fell before this sounded
perfect. We had decided to do the Big Pitch route and
after stepping out of the car we looked closely at the pitches.
According to the
book we needed almost 190 metres of rope which was rather more than I
hoped we
would need to carry between the two of us. In fact we ended up with
about 210
metres of 10mm plus associated hardware (P-bolts haven't reached this
part of
Yorkshire). I had a few long ropes in the back of the car but Gingling
Hole
needs lots of short ones and one big one. Half an hour later I had one
less long
rope and more short ones. Unfortunately we didn't have anything handy
to melt
the ends so many of our ropes had frayed and rapidly fraying ends as
they went into the
bags which was nice! We trudged slowly over to the
cave entrance towing our two 'pigs' behind us.
Fortunately the walk
to Gingling Hole is 25
minutes on the flat and when we were in the right sort of area Chris
climbed
onto his tackle bag to get a better view. We found the entrance, rigged
the 9m
entrance pitch with a
bit of (frayed) rope and abseiled
down into a chamber with a sloping floor. From here a drop through a
slot in the
bottom (called the Letterbox) landed us in a small streamway with
sections of canal. This led to the
top of the second pitch which was already rigged with a rope of unknown
vintage.
There are some good footholds here so we handlined down the in-situ
rope to land
in a small chamber below. Since the pitch was rigged we ditched the
second pitch
rope that we had brought and carried on following the water down a
narrow
twisting rift which leads to the top of the third pitch. This was
similarly rigged and so we traversed out and abseiled down, dumping
another rope.
An awkward downwards squeeze in a narrow rift led
to the fourth pitch which overlooks Stalactite Chamber and a nice 10m
pitch
lands in the bottom of the chamber. We were having a great time having
rigged
precisely nothing and finding the caving very enjoyable. From here the
route on
is through a small slot in the bottom of the chamber and into a low
bedding
which leads to the well-decorated Fools Paradise. This is a lovely and
well-preserved section of walking and stooping passage with straws,
columns,
large stalactites and flowstone curtains. We found the fifth and sixth
pitches
rigged and eventually arrived at the 'Ammered Ole'. We had opted for
the 'Big
Pitch' route to the bottom which meant abseiling down the 'Ammered 'Ole
pitch'
which is very tight at the top. In fact our 'Big Pitch' bag wouldn't
fit through
here so the end of the rope had to be dropped down for Chris to pull it
down and
re-pack the bag...kept him warm anyway whilst I wrestled with the pitch
head. At the bottom there's the 5m 'Little Pitch' and before long we
were at the top of the 62m 'Big Pitch'. There was no rope on here so we
rigged our
own and I set off down. The pitch needs a couple of deviations and
despite a
very good look I couldn't find the lower one so came back up to the
pitch head
without having descended the full length of the pitch.
By now we had rope and
hardware liberally strewn
throughout the cave (and virtually none of it in use) and set off back
up to
collect it. This we did with much swearing but were soon on the surface
having enjoyed a
superb trip.
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