A four man team descended on otter, getting in at about 9:15 am. We made it to the first sump within 30 minutes, where it was already half way to filling up any later and we may had missed it. A none eventful scramble followed, which led us between and up and over boulders before arriving at hall of the thirty, after about 2 hours from entry. It was at this point our guide warned us we were too quick, and would have to slow down a bit or we will get bored waiting for the sump to open again!
Anyway, we didn’t know how to do this and continued on at the same pace passing into the next passage from impressive hall of thirty – If only my camera weren’t in Hammer Pot! We entered the new stuff. The first bit of this new stuff known as the black stal stunk of tar, having a look at the survey puts us right under the A466 at this point. After this and a few calcite climbs we reached Gour Passage. We all thought while going along this decorative passage was actually on par if not more beautiful then hall of the thirty and I was certainly glad to visit this part as I missed it last time. We carried on to the bitter end, the terminal sump, all the time scrambling over blocks and small climbs.
After looking at the sump we poked our heads into terminal chamber which was surprisingly large. With still plenty of time to kill we had a look up tunnels right were the risk of damaging formations forced us to stop. We then began the long scramble out. We had a quick stop in the hall of thirty for some refuelling. We then popped a look at sump 2 had a chat for a while before heading to see if sump 1 was still a sump. Luckily the tide was little early heading out. We were not expecting it out until 5pm and it was only around 4:30pm. Chris and Jen got through the eye hole but by the time it was anyone else’s turn the water level was too low to make the climb up and we had to wait 10 minutes or so, before we could get though the duck without our whole head being under water.
We exited at around 5:30pm making the trip about eight hours and a quarter long. A quick hose down in the “bath” broke up the walk up the hill and made the walk seem no where near as bad as last time!
