Mossdale caverns via High level mud caverns

It had been over a decade since I had been to high-level mud-caverns, the slippery slope above a 5m drop and the thought of a protracted rescue from this point really putting me off going back up there, but Pete really wanted to do it and get to the far end which is Anniversery chamber.

With just the two of us we set of on a very cold walk for May, single figure temps and a strong wind dropping the air temperature to less than 5C. We arrived at the cave and did not hang around in getting changed. Squirming through the entrance choke, we both felt our previous days activities. Pete had done massive scramble and I had done Hagg gill with Out on Rock and pushed a new cave near where we parked whilst topless - a story for another time.

We arrived in Fossil chambers and I realised how annoying my bag is going to be for this cave, it contained 4 pepperamis, 1 litre of water and 10m of rope to help with the climb and a small 2 man survival bag. I think for this cave it might be better to go a bit underequipped, it is how I got to steam end cave and back in about 3 hours once, I was younger too!

Despite this bag we were still flying along and were soon at Blackpool sands, the water here was clear, cold and full of fish. White 6-9 inch long with red spots. After admiring the fish for a short while we pressed on and were soon in drown or glorys. The water levels were that low, I did not even have to remove my helmet to get through. Boulder hall was awe inspiring as always and we were hop skipping and jumping down Easy street, passing in Ouroboros (Simon's dig) on the way.

Once at rough chamber we knew from here on until the climb up to High-level mud caverns some half a km away, it's essentially all crawling, There was lots of fish, here too and in the smaller puddles Pete even managed to catch one, perhaps he was hungry? This let us get a good look at one, before we gently put it down in a larger pool.

We quickly made it through the crawls leading to Knee wrecker junction, already our knees a little sore. Into marathon crawl and that passage certainly lives up to it's name, it's unrelenting! The squeezes on route were easy enough and the final crawl was tiring, it certainly seemed to outlive it's welcome. We finally emerged into larger passage beyond and dug the cobble slope, which almost always seems to need digging. We noticed throughout the cave there had been no sign of foot prints of other disturbances and with the cobble slope being impassible until we dug it, it means we were almost certainly the first people to come here this year.

The climb up into mud caverns was not too bad, except for the climb up the mud at the top, which was tackled by slithering up backwards on your bum, digging your fingers into the mud and kicking in steps, until you got onto flatter sandy ground at the top. You don't want to mess up here though as it's a long way down. The rope I had turned out to pointless as there was bugger all to rig from.

So, I decided to leave my bag here but fished out a pepperami, incase I got hungry and we made our way along High level mud caverns south. Even this passage is not easy, it starts off walking but you are soon slithering and climbing over slippery mud banks which when donned in neo-fleeces is hard work. Things got properly grade 5 at the chokes, first there was some awkward climbs bypassing the first choke and then there are 3 squeezes, which I found pretty darn tight. The first squeeze at the top a climb really dug into my chest, until I slightly rotated to get at the right angle.

The next down a hole was tighter still and a more technical one requiring you to twist your body as you get into it. The passage enlarged slightly here, and we found a battery just before lowering again, having read the RRCPC newsletter volume 32 from 1995, we believe it belongs to Beardy, one of the original explorers of this section. The other interesting thing here, is we noticed a pretty strong draft, the cave definitely continues somewhere around here.

The next and final was squeeze was in the bedding which was unfortunately was too much for me, I mean I was getting wedged in the bedding plane before I even got to it and if I pushed through that as there's a drop down over a nodule I did not want to get stuck between this and the actual squeeze, I find my chest is too deep for these kind of squeezes nowadays, perhaps I should give up bouldering? Anyway I did not want a repeat of the Ireby Fell connection issue from a few months ago with all that caving to do to get out from here, so I gave it a miss.

Pete went through saying it was bloody tight and went to visit Anniversery chamber and after only 5 minutes or so he was back, so I was bloody close, but there's no way I will fit through that thing. Pete really struggled coming back through too and he's a lot smaller than me.

On the out I struggled more with squeeze number 2 as I had nothing to get purchase on, but thankfully there's a way by an even narrower looking rift which I thankfully did fit through, with the help of gravity on the other side. I must had kicked the roof as spontaneously rocks started dropping out of the roof as Pete came through!

Coming back out, I was certainly starting to feel it as even the highlevel mud caverns are tiring due to all the scaling of mud banks. Going back down the 5m climb was not too scary and Pete was very helpful in spotting me.

Once we got into Marathon crawl, we knew we were going the right way as pepperami no. 2 made an appearance (It had escaped) which I promptly ate, we slogged our way through Marathon crawls, we were both feeling it by this point and pepperami 3 was welcome appearance just beyond the squeeze. We would not come across number 4 until the end of the swims which had floated out of my bag. We also both thought the wet sections were really cold, was it because we were tired? Maybe, but more likely it was because my over suit velcro stopped working and my neo-fleece zip was down to my waste, so was Pete's as he had forgot to do his back up again after all the dry(ish) crawling.

Nothing else of note happened on the way out and we exited at 10 to 5 (4:50), having entered at sometime just after 11, meaning our trip took about 5 and a half hours. I reckon without my bag we could have cut off 30 - 45 minutes from the trip and I would have been a lot less tired,

It took us most of the walk back to warm up, when the sun finally made an appearance.

Excellent trip - it's a shame I don't fit through the last bit, with a draft stonking through here, it's certainly worth another look.