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Long churns cave via Middle

Alex Ritchie · June 7, 2025, 10 a.m. 5 people · 5 hours and 30 minutes
Cavers Rick, John Helm, Many others, Tom Howard
Date/time entered Sat 7 Jun 25 — 10:00 2025-06-07 10:00
Date/time exited Sat 7 Jun 25 — 15:30 2025-06-07 15:30
Trip type Training
Region North Yorkshire
Country United Kingdom
Clubs UWFRA,CRO
Notes

RESCON - Many sessions in an out of the cave. Coms - Looking at the replacement for the Cavelink as it seems we can't get Cavelinks repaired anymore. Also we used surface digital sets which had a surprising long reach down the passages even around corners and with a re-bro even further. I found out the issue what might have scuppered us at UWFRA was people disrupt the signals, as several people were trying to repair the entrance to Gillifields at the time.

Stretcher handling - Rick, showed us simple techniques using body belays to drag stretches through passages when there's a minimum of people, this would be useful when you simply can't fit many people around the stretcher at a time.

Highline rigging - using a secondary line when the stretcher is on a tensioned line to control where the stretcher goes.

Damn building - The CRO have a specific damn setup to block a specific part of the passage which today was quite exciting as there was a lot of water. This damn that consists of 6 planks a few hessian bags, 4 scaffold poles and some clamps diverts water into lower longchurns making Diccan dry.

Medical - Based on a real surface scenario the CRO had where someone had a first time fit and a bleed on the brain where rapid evacuation would be needed as there's a good chance of deuteriation.