We arrived in Kingsdale just after 6pm only expecting an hour wait but got a text saying that I would be waiting much longer. The beck was flowing stongly and there was evidence of recent flooding, it should be fun then. I decided to kill time by walking to Yordas and back. I noticed once I got there that even before nightfall the cave was far warmer than the outside, winter is setting in early it seems.
Back at my car and after much more waiting, finally, the rest arrived. I put my SRT kit on and headed into Vally ent. Once in the cave, I saw water were I had never seen it before half the roof tunnel was under 2ft of water, I was expecting to reach the pitch and find it underwater but alas it seemed fine. I rigged the pitch not trusting the in-situ rope and abbed down to check how strong the water was. It was only a few inches deep. I returned to the ent before returning to the pitch again for me and Chriss to give Don a crash course in SRT.
Happy he knew what he was doing we headed up to Swinsto in the dark and strangely found it in with no real issue. The first pitch seemed no wetter than my last wet trip so I was happy to continue, lots of inlets joined the water before reaching the second pitch. This had a lot of water going down it glad I could rig away from the water. Third was just as wet but the water shoots over where I hung the rope. 4th the climb up bypassed the water. 5th was very wet but if your careful you can avoid most of it at least until you go under the water to get onto the ledge for the 6th.
I was most surprised to find a rope at the top of the 6th but had been chopped at the bottom so was far too short to abseil down. I chucked it down and waited for the bag to turn up for this pitch. The rest of the cave was a fun mixture of wet climbs a few more pitches before we reaching the last pitch into Swinsto main chamber which had a colossal amount of water under it. Abseiling into it, it was impossible to tell which was up or down, thankfully the pitch is short but you still had figure out how to get out of the hole you just abseiled into.
Master cave was fun and Don wearing a neo decided to not bother walking and let the water take him down stream.
Always a fun trip made funner with all the water about, I think I can safely say that Don loved the trip.
We exited just before 1am.
