First trip I did with Scaife, I remember this being one scary place at the time. Shadow route especially so being 30m. I was still very new to SRT at this point, and I did not like heights!
I wrote: So there I was again, heart in my mouth and my nerves all over my place. I came up to the first pitch
(God I hate the waiting) but came quite close to bottling it twice to tell the truth. Then out of the blue (well black) I slowly made my way to the first pitch head which required a little traverse to get to it.
I atatched my descender on with out much of a problem and started to descend. Shortly all those
nerves I felt began to drift away quite quickly as I reached the first re-belay which was perched
above a ^ shaped rock. I sat on that like a horse’s saddle while I attached myself to the next section
of the rope once Pete gave me the “rope free” signal that is.
The next section was a little more difficult; after descending another 15ft down I had to use the rope
to swing/scrabble my way through a rift; all the time I was trying my descender was pulling me
back harder and harder like someone had attached a massive counter-weight to me - I felt like I was
lugging a car. Slowly I released my descender but the more I did, I knew the further I would have to
swing back. After a little bit more of a struggle, as the rift was also tight, I made it through to
another pull through swing to the next pitch, which I did not know was over 30 metres.
After another wait for the rope below me to be rigged it was my turn to attach my descender and
descend. A few minor problems occurred here; first I had managed to get entangled with the other
rope so the only way to fix this was to get back onto the pitch head; climbing back up was quite
awkward with attaching and detaching my ascenders. After sorting that out I got back on the
descender. Oh no!! too much tension on my remaining cow’s tail to unclip it. Back onto the pitch
head again. Finally after sorting that out I made my descent down and down against the smooth
rock (how far down is this thing?). Finally after descending for what seemed forever, I reached the
bottom.
A few more little pitches follow from here, none higher then 5 metres. One of which was being
descended by someone else causing another rather long wait. Finally we reached a long river
passage which, after following that for a while, we finally made it to the sump that marked the end
of trip where we would have to turn back.
The Ascent
I was beginning to get a little tired now most of the ascents were against a rock face which meant it
was difficult to use my legs, so I was tiring my arms out. After a few pitches I reached the
bottom of the main ascent. Looking up at the water coming down was like gazing into a meteor shower as
water dropped all around me. Once Rob had caught up (as he was de-rigging behind me) I latched on and
made my ascent. Again I was against the wall so it made it awkward to use my legs.
My progress was up the ascent was rather slow, as there was a worrying clicking sound coming
from my SRT kit. I had to keep stopping to check it as well as the robe was rubbing against certain
sensitive parts on my body which slowed down my prusiking some what. Getting onto the pitch
head/re-belay was nowhere near as difficult as going down so I was very pleased with my progress.
But this moment of triumph was short lived because when I attached my ascending gear to it, I
realised I had attached my ascender the wrong way round like a complete plonker, so I was trying to
go up to the re-belay again - what a plonker! After re-ascending to the re-belay and attaching it the
right way round, I carried on and squeezed through the rift with a little help from Rob behind on the
other rope pushing me through. I carried on up and after about 20 minutes later I reached the top
without any real hitch and was out into the cloudy sky outside.
