I had a marshalling shift from 3-4 in the Main Chamber, putting members of the public in and out the winch chair. John and I planned a short trip afterwards, as neither of us had caved with each other for a few days! I got changed in the main chamber out of my marshalling clothes (basically as many thermal layers as I owned and my waterproofs, as otherwise I'd get really cold down there in the spray).
John came down on the winch after his shift and we started making our way to Bar Pot. I was a bit hesitant as I'd not prussiked out of Bar Pot yet, I'd only descended it. I'd heard stories of people getting a bit stuck and didn't want to be one of them.
On the way to Bar we ran into another BPC group, and after chatting for a few minutes we heard another group approaching (Will and Jess). We turned all our lights off and ducked under the sides of the passage, hoping to scare them. Unfortunately our giggling and shuffling was rather loud and our hiding places were terrible so it wasn't much of a surprise.
This was my first trip using my extra thick knee pads, and they were fantastic for the crawls back from main chamber. They were a bit annoying while prussiking, kept falling down my knees, and managed to get in the way of the rope during every prussik.
We explored far south east passage to the end before going out of Bar, it was all rather loose and quite muddy in parts, but featured some nice passages. The ascent out of Bar went completely smoothly and I'm not sure what I was worried about, as long as you don't go too high up the pitch head you can easily step up and off with the help of a perfectly placed ledge. Someone had done a wee at the top of the 2nd pitch of Bar and it really stank.
