There were some sheep at the entrance of Baaar pot which we found comical. Some members of Hades were just going down, which was a bit inconvenient as it was supposed to be a quick trip while waiting for John to finish his Planking shift. The first pitch is a bit tight, and very slippery, I was very glad we could get the winch back up. Ran into Pete Sykes and Andy? Something at the bottom of the pitches who were just coming out and had come down Stream.
Made our way to Main chamber, ran into some NPC members (Lumens, Findles, her bf and Toby Buxton) who had just come out of Henslers which was nice to catch up. They were going out of stream but went to the main chamber first. We followed them to start with and then they left us to crawl faster. My knees were already hurting a bit at this point, from all the cobbles. We then ran into Dave Ryall’s photography trip group, including Carol Lawrence and Jean Brooksbank, and a few others. Brian the craven mascot was also down there. After some epic photos, we hurried to main chamber as it was only supposed to be a quick trip, poor John was waiting at the top for us.
We had to wait a while in the winch crew but I had a nice chat to some of the Hades lot who had never heard of the Petzl death harness slippage issue, and seemed rather amused by it. Had a nice conversation with a member of the public while waiting in the queue, about caving and mountaineering, high altitude stuff, cold water shock. The winch is super fast to start with, a bit scary. Scarier than doing SRT as you don’t feel in control.
I emerged to find John waiting at the top, “finally!”. The others decided not to come down stream with us as it was later than planned and they wanted to start drinking beer and cider, so the next trip was just John and I.
