After a quick lamb rescue (with Dunc assisting said lamb back under gate and in to field) three men set off across the fell towards the steep hill in the distance. The hill was of a killer walk, steeper than Kingsdale and probably the hardest part of the day, I need more aerobic exercise.
Down the entrance pitch (rigged from fence posts, tackle bag rope protector and two 8mm anchors for deviations on the way down) we set off deeper into the cave. I was on my backup light as my main light refused to turn on. It seems like it was not the batteries that caused me problems in Rowten afterall.
We headed down a slope and dropped the second pitch only to find no way on. We went back up, searched around and found a different small pitch that led to a sump. Where was this third pitch?
We dropped down the second again after re-rigging it and I was sent through a very scrotty vertical passage to find that it was chocked with no way on. Defeated we exited, I took an alternative route to the main chamber up a precarious 5m climb and met the others in the entrance chamber. We exited slowly being careful of the rope-rub.
Upon returning to the van and reading the description it turned out that what we thought was the second was the third and we had bypassed the second altogether as the second pitch was that 5m climb I climbed up. So we had bottomed it, twice!
