A fantastic trip to Gaints was taken today, taking in most of the sights that the cave has. When we got there it was like a day at the circus, imagine Churns and then double it. Luckily they needed to faff alot so we ran into the cave before the crowds descended on us. We shot down Garlands Pot and got away, safe!
A brisk stroll down the Crab Walk and a fixed ladder saw us to the Eating House. We spotted the way on for the round trip instantly but we wanted to bottom the place. Looking at the survey we though we had to go that way partly. We popped up the climb in the Eating House and continued on up a boulder slope past the round trip turn off. It went up and up and up until it eventually terminated at a dig (recently blasted, we could tell due to the quite fresh smell of destroyed rock in the air). After a bit of ferreting around we guessed the way on for us was back down in Eating House so back down we went.
We found our way on and then proceeded to head to the bottom of the pot. Now it was getting quite sporting we had it all a duck, a few climbs a couple of pitches (one pretty nice) as well as a traverse all thrown in (all in-situ rigged). We reached the bottom sump canal and spotted pitches going up, perhaps a round trip? – looks like on the survey. We started heading up the correctly named Filthy Five pitches only for Rob to check the survey once again. He found our way is blocked by a sump darn! P.s. the anchors in Filthy Five have seen better days!
So down through the mud we went and back up the pitches, ducks and climbs to return to the Eating House. From there we took in the upper series with the damp Giants Windpipe, before heading down the rift to the start of the Crab Walk, completing that round trip.
Was a good trip despite the short wait, to get out of Garlands Pot.
Trip length, Approx 4 hours long.
