Report by Jules Barrett
Cavers: Jules Barrett
(EPC), Toni Murphy (non-EPC)
Fancied
a nice easy Yorkshire trip today with some traversing, straightforward
abseiling
and ladder climbing practice for Toni. Heron Pot looked like it would
fit the
bill. Arrived at the parking opposite Yordas wood early afternoon and
walked
over towards Kingsdale Beck. Met a party of four cavers on their way
back to the
car after a Heron trip and they said that there was still another party
in the
cave on ladders. We walked up the dry valley towards the entrance and
found it
pretty quickly. Dropped into the entrance and a bit of crawling and
slightly
awkward stuff leads to a junction with the water. From here we went
downstream
passing under some nice flowstone curtains in pleasant stream passage.
Eventually arrived at the top of the first pitch to find the other team
just on
their way up. That was handy cos after five minutes wait they were out
of the
way and I was rigging. Since my SRT kit was elsewhere I was
experimenting with a
set up which consisted of basically a climbing harness, gri-gri and
mini-traxion.
Toni abseiled down the first pitch with a figure-of-8 descender and I
followed.
Second pitch got rigged (using the world's biggest Y-hang) and then we
dropped
down there. The bottom of both pitches was pretty wet and you certainly
wouldn't
have wanted much more water in there. There is a single-bolt rebelay
that you
can put in on the second pitch but since Toni's never seen a rebelay we
left it
well alone and took our chances in the water at the botttom of the
pitch. After
a mooch downstream we headed back to the bottom of the second pitch. I
started
to ascend (generally slowly) with my minimalist prussiking set-up but
thankfully
it's not a big pitch and soon was at the top. Dropped a ladder down and
lifelined Toni up. Lots of screaming and giggling as she swung into the
water but she was
soon at the pitch head. Similar fun and games on the first pitch and
then headed
out.
A very pleasant
(though short) trip and excellent
abseiling and ladder practice for Toni. There is a through trip that
you can do
but was a bit wet today for that.
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