Report by Jules Barrett
Cavers: Jules Barrett
(EPC), Chris Schofield (EPC)
I'd heard lots about the Swinsto and Simpsons pull-through trips but
never done
either of them so thought that we ought to see what the fuss was about.
We chose
Swinsto over Simpsons purely because we didn't have a guidebook that
had any
information on Simpsons. In fact we didn't have a lot of information
about
Swinsto but we did have the CNCC rigging guide so at least we'd know if
we were
in the right hole. Neither of us had been in Valley Entrance or the
Kingsdale
Master Cave either so we were sort of getting two trips for the price
of one.
Walked
up onto the Turbary Road and had a quick hunt round for the cave
entrance; found
a likely contender and went in. The rigging guide recommends two 50m
ropes.
Unfortunately I'd cut up my 50m rope the day before to get us down
Gingling Hole
so we were using a 70m. There was a rope on the first pitch but it
didn't look
very clever so we rigged ours and abseiled down. Next we were into the
'long
crawl' which leads to another pitch which also had an in-situ rope. We
arrived
at the pitch-head and quickly rigged our 70m rope (or as quickly as you
can rig
a 70m rope for pull-through!). We then descended and found that the
pitch would
have been easily free-climbable and felt daft. Curtain Pitch and Pool
Pitch
followed and by this stage we'd got a system going with Chris pulling
the rope
down and me packing the bag. Arrived at the top of the Big Pitch and
descended
the first part. Tried to pull the rope down and it wouldn't pull. Hmmm!
Chris
prussiked back up to the pitch-head to see what was going on.
Everything looked
fine so he came down and we tried a bit harder. It started to move and
soon we
were on our way again. Sounds as though a few people have had the same
thing
happen here. Eventually found ourselves in Swinsto Great Aven and set
off towards Kingsdale Master Cave. This proved easy enough to find and
after a
great (but short) section of splashing along in the streamway we found
the rope
up towards Valley Entrance. From here we were very much following our
noses but
thankfully the route-finding was dead easy.
Exited Valley Entrance
after a very enjoyable
three-hour trip.
Top
|
