Pete’s first caving trip outside the USA!

Ease Gill a raging torrent. Gracie dropped the Wretched Rabbit entrance cover into the stream which was very close to the pipe. Pete dropped his bag in the stream right after! I dropped nothing.

It’s quite curious how the human brain perceives time without an outside reference. How long had I been crawling for? It was impossible to know. Could you call it crawling? Not hands and knees, but rather supporting myself with a single arm outstretched in the water and pushing myself sideways along the narrow passage. My helmet scrapes noisily on the rock ceiling and my waist is constricted by each opposite wall. Any sense of progress is impossible – the next bit of passage is completely indistinguishable from the last and all other parts. Had it been twenty minutes? Forty? An hour?

Internally, I mull over whether there is a name for this eccentric method of sideways movement – generally, when people name a technique, it is because it is efficient, effective, or desirable – I’m not sure this is any of those. Everything is relative though, and it did seem to be the better option compared to crawling in the muddy brown water.

My bag is stuck. I attempt to free it blindly with my foot. This inevitably fails, and I must turn around, go backward and release it from whatever unhelpful protrusion has captured one of its straps. I crawl – no, sideways hop, for another few metres. My bag is stuck again. As I unhook it, I start to question what I am doing here at 1 am. Maybe this was a bad idea?

Following the jagged rock tunnel through a relentless series of 90-degree bends, I am often forced to my knees by a lowered roof or occasionally made to crawl on all fours. Constantly changing position seems to be taking just as much time as making forward progress. My internal debate as to how long I have been here is beginning to lose relevance, and I resolve that I should simply keep going until such time the going comes to an end.

A particularly nasty bit of cave soon demands me to be completely flat out in the stream, struggling to push my bag in front of me. Progress is very slow – why did I want to carry lights and cameras for photography? I’d learn for next time – or not. Eventually, a T-junction is salvation from my internal monologue. The torturous entrance series of Oddmire Pot – Strid Passage – has been passed, and the downstream continuation into Hammerdale Dub allows me to stand up properly for the first time since I left Slaughter Aven.

Langcliffe Pot has fascinated me ever since I first heard about it. “What about Langcliffe?”, a more experienced caver had said to me as I sat in the YSS musing about enjoying trips with a sense of journey. “That one has got miles of passages. It’ll take you hours to get to the end”. Later, reading Simon Beck’s trip reports and other discussions on UK Caving only piqued my interest more.

On Monday evening, I’d finished work and still felt full of energy when Langcliffe entered my thoughts once again. I promptly decided to cook myself a hearty meal and then drive over to Kettlewell, where I arrived just after 11 pm. Laminated route description in hand, I intended to go as far as possible in the system, despite being quite nervous about the two notorious boulder chokes protecting the far reaches.

I walked through the thick darkness, with clouds obscuring the moonlight, and found myself atop the fell using my GPS to make my way slowly and deliberately towards the cave. Suddenly, a shotgun blast went off – it sounded quite close. I froze and turned my light off. Not what you want at midnight in the countryside, is it? I stood still for some time, and when nothing was seen or heard, carried on using only a small red light. Ten minutes later, a second shotgun blast was heard – thankfully, this seemed further away and gave me the confidence to turn my light back on to speed progress.

Reaching the entrance, I discovered that the boulder pile just inside Oddmire Pot – Slaughter Aven – is uniformly coated with a disgusting brown excretion that seems to be most attracted to ropes, gloves, and oversuits. As someone who quite likes to keep clean, I often think that perhaps caving isn’t the right hobby for me. Navigating my way down the exceptionally loose boulders, I soon found myself at the start of Strid Passage (as described above). Despite the unpleasant nature of it, I felt quite safe and secure relative to being exposed on a dark fell with gunshots around.

Back to where we left off, Hammerdale Dub marks the start of around 45 minutes of easy and enjoyable caving – a welcome change. Most of this time is spent in the spacious streamway of Langstrothdale Chase, which is separated from Hammerdale Dub by the Kilnsey Boulder Crawl, an enjoyable dry bypass. Contrary to the name, it did not involve too much crawling and was a pleasant 10 minutes away from the water.

Langstrothdale Chase has it all. It is an impressively tall vadose passage, which is generously wide, and not too much trouble underfoot. One section involves waist-deep wading in a canal, whilst others involve dry and sandy bypasses next to – or sometimes entirely separate from – the stream. Strolling along here, making very quick progress, was the highlight of the trip. The stark contrast of this fantastic bit of cave to the dismal entrance series gave way to a sense of euphoria and accomplishment – it had all been worth it. It feels quite remote down here, and you innately understand the privilege it is to be in such a rarely visited, yet beautiful, place.

The streamway eventually degenerates into a mess of boulders, and a dry continuation gets progressively smaller until two flat-out squeezes are met. These are tight in all dimensions, and sufficiently irritating when solo with a bag. I stare at each squeeze hesitantly before making my way through. I don’t think they’d be a problem in any other cave, however, being alone in such a remote place causes you to think twice before introducing another obstacle to an already lengthy exit route. Nonetheless, the squeezes were passed without too much trouble, only requiring me to remove my SRT kit first.

The water in Boireau Falls Chamber can now be heard, and despite the description stating that the way on is a crawl immediately on the left after the second squeeze, I am drawn to an appealing passage straight ahead – which soon hits a dead end. Retracing my steps, I soon pop out into the spacious, flat-roofed chamber above the large boulder choke. The water emerges from under the left wall and cascades over and between boulders, leaving a section clean washed, whilst those rocks above the flow are coated in a thick layer of mud and topped with the ancient carbide deposits of past explorers.

It is interesting to think of what has happened in this chamber. Almost every visitor to the cave will have stopped here to rest, and it was the gathering point for rescue teams searching for the Brook brothers and their companions when they got trapped by flooding in the late 60s. Being alone, I felt strangely comforted by the many footsteps. How old are they, I wonder? Before the advent of LED lights, technical clothing, and up-to-the-minute weather radar, those original explorers faced much more challenging conditions than I do today. Regardless, they sat here and pondered their next move, just as I was doing now.

Apprehensively studying the infamous squeeze in the floor of the chamber made me question just how far I wanted to progress today. The way on – a 1.5 metre vertical drop between tightly packed boulders – looked incredibly intimidating and I wasn’t sure if I fancied my chances of getting back out without someone to pull me. Sat on the edge of the hole, I poked my legs through and felt around for any footholds which might assist my ascent. I couldn’t feel any – surely there must be a way! Lowering myself carefully into the void, I searched for a ledge or boulder to support my weight. Suddenly, my arms slipped on the muddy boulders, and my body fell downwards. My hips became wedged in the hole, my legs were hanging freely below me, and my chest was emerging from the top.

I’d inadvertently inserted myself, assisted by gravity, at entirely the wrong angle to pass the obstacle. Committing to the squeeze and finding a way back up from beneath was an option, but it was psychologically easier to try and get out from this position. Slow and arduous progress upwards was made, lifting myself methodically with my upper body and then resting on my elbows to prevent me from slipping back down. My legs were an entirely useless burden without footholds beneath and it took quite some time and effort to release myself. Eventually, relief came, and it was clearly time to turn around and head out. I knew now that I could escape the squeeze, but I didn’t fancy doing it again today. The unwelcome slog outwards began.

Caves often seem to pass more quickly on the return journey. This certainly wasn’t the case with Strid Passage. It seemed endless on the way in, and yet it had somehow doubled in size on the way out. The relief of reaching the bottom of Slaughter Aven was immense and now only a few minutes of ropework separated me from the surface. Soon after, the daylight was a welcome sight, having last seen it when I was in the car the evening before.

Langcliffe Pot is an incredibly intriguing place and my unpleasant encounter with the squeeze in Boireau Falls Chamber has only renewed my enthusiasm to see what is on the other side. As soon as the weather is suitable, I’ll be back for round two.

This report was posted on UKCaving, if you’d like to comment.

Ireby Fell Cavern is a classic Yorkshire caving trip that neither Gracie nor I had managed to do yet, so on 17th of June we set off to rectify that. We were enticed by the promise of spectacular sandy passage in Duke St, as well as what was reputed to be a fun bit of SRT to get there. The CNCC website housed a comprehensive route description, as us Dales cavers are privileged to be able to expect, and with a laminated copy in hand we set off for a trip down to Duke St II via the sump bypass.

Having been at work in the morning, we set off rather late, arriving at Inglesport around 3pm. We picked up some short lengths of rope that were missing from my collection, in order to prevent using a 30 metre rope on a 10 metre pitch. As it happened, we could’ve not taken any rope at all, as the entire cave was rigged with good quality (new looking) rope, with two separate pieces of rope on some of the pitches. Despite the good quality of the rope, the mallions it was attached to seemed to have seen better days. Having made the effort of bringing all the rope with us, we endeavoured to use it regardless, lest our efforts be in vain.

We arrived at the parking spot at around 4pm and set about steadily packing the rope - around 150 metres in total - into our two tackle sacks. It was steady away as we were both rather tired, and although it was only spitting a very fine mist of rain, we were both absolutely soaked by the time we started to walk up the gravel path towards the cave. It’s interesting how such a barely perceptible amount of rain - not enough to even register on the forecast as an event - can lead to being so sodden.

The nice chap in Inglesport told us that the only bad part about Ireby was the walk, and I could probably agree with that, although it passed quickly despite the thick fog. Visibility was only 10 to 20 metres but we found our way to the entrance without any difficulty, with the aid of a pre-loaded GPS track on the Ordnance Survey app on my phone. Initially passing a smaller depression on our right, not far from the road, Gracie asked if I thought that was the entrance. “No”, I said, “I’ve been led to believe that you can’t miss it - it’s truly huge”. This turned out to be absolutely correct, and when we arrived at the gigantic sinkhole sometime after crossing a stile, we knew we were in the right place.

After taking great care to avoid the numerous slugs, and loose paving stones, on the descent to the bottom of the sinkhole, we set off down the ladder and I began rigging the traverse across to the first pitch head. As mentioned, the entire cave was found to be rigged, Ding Dong Bell route in this case, however we continued past this and started rigging the Shadow route.

I found the rigging relatively exhausting - particularly the “leap of faith” from the last set of traverse anchors to the anchors for the first Y-hang downwards, and the pendulum swing required to get round the corner after the narrow rift beyond the first descent. I descended quite too far in the narrow rift before realising I should’ve stayed high up, and this meant a mid-rope changeover and a climb back up. Half of the battle was simply locating the anchors, it seemed like none of the next rebelays were visible from the last until you got very close to them, and this meant a large amount of trial-and-error searching was required. Someone who knew the way would’ve been useful here! Overall, all this added to the fun and we both really enjoyed the Shadow route, particularly the fantastic final shaft, which made it all worth it.

There was a piece of in-situ tat, with lots of knots in it, hanging down from the roof with its tail end floating around just above the anchors for the final Y-hang. I wonder if anyone knows why this is here, what its use is, or if it is meant to aid the rigging in any way? I spent a good while pondering its utility, but in the end struggled to come up with anything.

Pussy Pitch was quickly reached, with some in-situ worn completely to the core on it, in contrast to the fantastic quality rope on the rest of the pitches. This is apparently free-climbable, but we did not spot the route, nor spend too much time looking for it, and quickly made our way into the Upper Main Streamway. The water levels, it seemed to us inexperienced lot, were exceptionally low. There was barely any flow at all, the “duck” was merely a case of getting our knees a bit wet, and several parts of the upper streamway were completely dry. The Shadow route didn’t even have a dribble of water on it, despite being reputed to be fairly wet, and Well Pitch and Rope Pitch had just a trickle. Later, we would find the sump in Duke St to be completely static (or at least it seemed to be). I wonder if this is normal, or if we had visited when the cave was particularly dry?

The Upper Main Streamway was annoyingly twisty and narrow, which left me rather dissatisfied. Gracie made shorter work of it with her smaller frame. Thankfully, Well Pitch and Rope Pitch were soon passed, and we emerged into the gigantic boulder chamber. We noticed there was a piece of new looking rope hanging down from the ceiling just after Rope Pitch - does anyone know where this leads? I was very impressed by the height of this chamber - it seemed to go upwards as far as the eye could see and it would be interesting to explore the upper reaches of it at some point.

We found our way easily into Duke St and we were not disappointed - it’s easy to see why this place has a good reputation - it is a truly stunning bit of passage with a lot of character. We felt elated to be stomping down it without any concern for hitting our head, legs, arms, or bags on any sort of wall or ceiling. The dig opposite the entrance to Duke St was quite intriguing - does anyone know if this is still active? It seemed like a lot of progress had been made, albeit with a lot of mud/clay still to be shifted.

With it being almost 10pm already, it was time to turn around, the trip to Duke St II would have to wait for another day. The journey out was swift and uneventful, and when we emerged from the sinkhole, we found the mist had cleared. We stopped for a few moments and enjoyed the nighttime skyscape of stars and distant lights from our vantage point high up on the fell. An excellent trip, and we can’t wait to go back.

Knock Fell Caverns is a unique trip for the caver who fancies something a bit different than the typical Yorkshire Dales stream cave. Located under the summit of Knock Fell, which is conveniently accessed from the A66 at Appleby-in-Westmorland, the cave presents a hugely varied series of interconnected passages running in a broadly north-south and east-west direction. Wikipedia states that the cave is the “most extensive maze cave system in Britain” and the navigational challenges within are not to be underestimated. The total length of the system is around 4.5 kilometres.

The publicly available survey (also available without annotations) highlights the complexity of the cave. What the survey does not show, however, is the huge variety of passage located within the system. This is a cave that has almost everything; most trips into the cave will encompass tight squeezes, as well as generously sized chambers, beautiful formations, unpleasant muddy crawls, impressively tall rifts, leisurely walking passage, boulder chokes, and (of course) testing navigation.

Gracie and I, when visiting on 19th February 2022, got the impression that the cave does not receive a lot of traffic. Perhaps this is due to the location outside the main Yorkshire Dales caving area, or the intimidating complexity - either way, it seems a shame! Many of the passages within looked as if they had barely visited (even on the main ‘trade route’ marked on the annotated survey). The impressive, orange-tinted formations located throughout the system were very well-preserved.

Access to the cave is by way of a private road which was built to facilitate the construction of the radar station which sits atop Great Dun Fell. The road is not on many navigation devices, although it is exceptionally well surfaced. Parking at a lay-by near the top gives immediate access to the Pennine Way which can be followed for around 600 metres to get to the cave in ten minutes or less. The lay-by provides space for just one vehicle (or maybe not even that, if you have a big car), but there are several of them along the distance of the road and space for a couple or three cars together right at the top near the radar station gate.

The views from this area (above) are spectacular and it is well worth a visit even if you are not intending to go underground. A northbound walk along the Pennine Way leads across to Cross Fell which is the highest point in England outside of the Lake District at 893 metres. The single-track road is very steep (and therefore popular with masochistic cyclists) and great care would need to be taken in wintry conditions.

Users on UKCaving have pointed out that the road may be in regular use by HGVs for access to the radar station and Silverband Mine. With this in mind, it would be prudent and polite to ensure that any parking gives due consideration to large vehicles that may be trying to traverse one of the sharp bends on the road. If you are in any doubt whether an HGV can clear your parked vehicle, it would be best to make your way to the top of the road where more space is available or avoid parking on the road at all. It would be unwise to cause issues that may inhibit access to this area in future; walking to the cave without the use of this road would take at least two hours (it is over 6 km and 600m elevation) and be prohibitive for most sporting trips.

The entrance to the cave is a gated vertical shaft located in a group of deep shakeholes. GPS is strongly recommended to help locate the entrance! The ‘lid’ required quite a lot of persuasion to open and initially we were concerned we might be unable to do so - thankfully brute force and ignorance eventually prevailed. No permit is required to descend the system, as it is on access land, however the CNCC website states that Natural England request cavers seek authority to attend via email. In our case, the trip was planned at the last minute, and we did not have time to do so.

No SRT is required to enter the cave and the entrance climb down (8 metres) is quite straightforward even for the vertically challenged. We rigged a handline however this was not used for anything other than hauling the bag in and out.

A compass is absolutely essential on this trip and is required as soon as you reach the bottom of the entrance shaft. Two ways on are presented, with one being a tight connection towards the north end of the system and the more popular southern route leading to a relatively unpleasant, but short, rocky crawl towards the impressive Scotch Corner Chamber. Scotch Corner marks the beginning of a round trip which is suggested as a ‘typical route’ on the survey, which we followed in an anticlockwise direction.

We found the survey to be extremely accurate in the sections of cave that we visited, and our laminated copy never left our hands. The compass and survey allowed us to always be quite sure of our location, with one exception - detailed later. I cannot empathise enough how easy it would be to get dangerously lost within this system. A lot of the passages can look very similar and a constant awareness of your position, both generally and within the current passage, is required. We found ourselves backtracking occasionally to count the junctions we had passed, to ensure we took the correct turn. When we visit again, we will take a permanent marker to mark off our progress on the survey as we travel, as it was quite some effort to try and concentrate on maintaining our location in our heads without becoming distracted by chatting or crawling.

I have seen tales online of an old tape marker system which once existed within this cave. We did see some remnants of this - the odd bit of tape was laid on a rock at a junction, or perhaps one was seen to have fallen between some rocks on the floor, but it did not seem to produce any coherent navigation system and should not be relied upon. Some arrows had also been drawn on walls in certain locations, but it was not always clear what they were pointing to (one would assume out, but it didn’t always make sense that this would be the case).

No route description exists that I am aware of (although I welcome corrections). If it did, it would be extremely hard to follow (turn right, then pass three lefts, then turn left, then take the second right…), and likely not in the ‘spirit’ of this sort of cave. We managed quite well with just the survey and a compass, even though it was the first time we had attempted this type of navigation underground.

Whilst a good portion of the cave is pleasant walking passage, there are regular crawling sections and some parts that could reasonably be described as a squeeze. This seemed more prevalent in the southern and eastern sections of the cave, with the passage back to the entrance via the central area of the cave and the Trans-Pennine Passage being quite large chambers indeed. The benefit of having a route description is that one can expect that the next turn may be unpleasant - with just a survey and compass, we found ourselves staring at some junctions and wondering “Can the way on really be down there? Surely it’s not that?”. Often it was.

Knock Fell Caverns is a hypogenic maze cave, which means that it was not formed by way of an active stream, as with most British caves. Caves and Karst of the Yorkshire Dales (BCRA, 2013) states that Knock Fell was likely formed by way of slow moving water from adjacent aquifers, at a time when the water table was raised. This water was forced along the north-south and east-west aligned faults over many years to produce the layout that is present today.

Some of the larger chambers in the cave may have been formed by way of rock collapse at the intersections of these fault-aligned passages. The CNCC website displays a warning (published in 2015) of recent collapse within the system. Several of the boulders we encountered looked remarkably fresh and had a large amount of undisturbed dust and rock around them, even on well trafficked routes. While it would be impossible for me to say whether this was fresh collapse or not, it certainly seemed likely.

The most notable implication of the way this system was formed is that there is very little water within the cave and no streamway to speak of. The passages within the system do not exhibit the typical remnants of active streamway development, such as scalloped walls. There are a few drippy avens, including one which has formed an impressively deep hole near Scotch Corner Chamber. We visited at the tail-end of Storm Eunice and the cave was remarkably dry.

The only stressful navigational moment during our visit was in the central section of the cave. We were progressing northwards and expecting to find a left turn at the end of the passage, as per the survey, but instead found a completely choked route when we arrived there. I thought that I had been very carefully monitoring our progress and position, but clearly something had gone wrong. Realising that I did not know where we were, I totally lost faith in my navigation at this point and decided that a complete re-evaluation was required.

It was not overly helpful, although unavoidable, that some of the passages sketched in the survey look almost identical those adjacent to them. After failing to locate our position again through referencing the drawings on the survey, I set off to explore the immediately adjacent passages to see if there were any clues. Once I found Myotis Chamber and the nearby ‘double-pronged’ passage two junctions to the east of it, I was once again totally confident in our position. This whole incident took around thirty minutes to sort out and I was very grateful when it was resolved. In the end, we were only about 10 metres from where we thought we were.

The journey out from this point was quite straightforward, barring a couple of ambiguous routes that were available just north of Trans-Pennine Passage. Luckily, we got the right route on the first attempt through this area, by pure chance.

The whole trip took around five hours, and we are both very keen to go back at some point and explore the countless passages that we did not manage to visit. I would be surprised if we traversed much more than 10% of the system on our initial trip. Knock Fell Caverns provided one of the most interesting sporting trips that I have done so far in my short caving career, and I would strongly recommend it to anyone who is yet to visit.

Update 25/02/2022: A paragraph was added advising caution regarding parking on the access road, following feedback from users on UKCaving.

On New Year’s Day, Gracie and I had the opportunity to take a trip down to the bottom of Titan, the largest natural cave shaft in the UK, which comes in at 141 metres from top to bottom. The total vertical distance covered in the trip is 174 metres (including the entrance shaft) — 16 metres taller than the Blackpool Tower. We had been looking forward to this trip for some time and the excitement was palpable when we picked up the keys at 10am. Originally, we had been a team of six, however due to the events of the night before (New Year’s Eve), only the two of us remained — we were not looking forward to carrying three backpacks and two drybags full of kit one and a half miles up Castleton Fell between us!

I have made a video of this trip and it is available on my YouTube channel. I’ve narrated the video with some information regarding the history of the cave and I really think it will help you get a better idea of what it is like to be down there. Text and images don’t quite do this natural wonder any justice — but then again, I’m not sure video can replace being there either.

The walk turned out to not be as bad as expected — the weather was dry and overcast, although quite windy, and we managed to reach the entrance in around an hour maintaining a slow and steady pace. The route through Cave Dale to the top of Hurd Low (where the entrance is situated) was beautiful, even if we did get some strange looks from the early morning holiday walkers.

After leaving the Limestone Way and making a short trek across a field we located the entrance — or at least we thought. I opened the rusty metal lid only to find grass underneath. It seemed like some kind of practical joke — we had walked all this way, with all this kit, only to find that someone had filled the entrance in and the cave was impassable. It was certainly the right location as it had a notice to cavers regarding specifics of the Peak-Speedwell system stuck to the underside of the hatch. Somewhat deflated, we picked up our kit again and made one final search which thankfully located the real entrance. Whether the rusty hatch was an old access point which had since been filled in, or an old lid that had been removed, I am not sure. I do know that we will not be the first, or last, cavers to make this mistake as the “false” entrance is much more prominent than the real one.

Gracie set to work kitting up whilst I started unlocking the entrance (a tricky manoeuvre trying not to drop the key) and rigging the first pitch. The man-made shaft which forms the entrance to the system is truly impressive and the amount of work that must’ve gone into creating it is evident. When Titan was re-discovered in 1999 by Dave Nixon, it was first entered from the bottom via Peak Cavern. It took Dave and his team three years to find a way into the shaft from the existing system, followed by a six day climb to get to the top, and then over four years of work to create 46 metre entrance shaft that exists today. Dave’s contribution to the caving community is exceptional and we wouldn’t be able to enjoy this incredible cave today without it.

The spacious entrance shaft is easy to rig (you can do it from the surface) and provided a pleasant descent down to a standing height chamber at the bottom. This looked rather wet from above but this was an illusion and only a small puddle was found once we arrived. There are two ways on here, described now as if you are facing the corrugated iron shoring which supports one wall. The stooping height passage to the left leads to the head of Titan’s main shaft, and the other passage (to the right) leads to a dig which we did not explore.

The way on to Titan is not more than fifteen to twenty metres long and was filled with a pool of static water when we were there — this was calf to knee deep and was the first indication of just how wet we would get on this trip. Quickly the window in the top of the 141 metre shaft was located and we gained our first sense of the scale of the task ahead of us. Gracie set to work rigging whilst I took some video footage of the top — rather inconveniently there is nowhere near the pitch head to rest your bags without them getting soaking wet!

I was prepared for Titan to be extremely deep, but I had not quite grasped how horizontally large it is. The shaft (at the top) has three distinct sides of which two narrow off into the darkness across from the window. I could not locate the end of this narrowing section, even when using my 12,000 lumen torch on full power. Looking downward provided a similar sensation — the Event Horizon (the ledge halfway down the shaft) was only some 70 metres below us but I was not able to see it at all, at least not from the angle I had.

The top of the shaft is decorated with thick and intricate flowstone, shining a beautiful bright white after being untouched by anything but water for hundreds of thousands of years. The shapes formed by this continuous sheet which extended down some sixty metres were fine examples of nature’s geometry and I could’ve spent hours looking at them.

There is a prominent echo in Titan, not only of your own voice but also of the water crashing down over 100 metres below. This water sounds extremely ominous when in the cave, even in dry conditions such as which we had. As you descend the shaft this gets louder and can deceive you as to how much water is actually flowing. In our case, the waterfall wasn’t significant however it certainly sounded it and we did ponder whether the bottom would be too wet to pass before we were able to see it.

The descent of the first Titan pitch went off without a hitch and we soon found ourselves at the Event Horizon, which was rather more spacious than I was expecting. There is enough room for several people to sit down and provided a welcome break in the progress downwards. The environment changes at this point, with the waterfall joining at this level from Cascades Inlet. The flowstone lining the walls above disappears and clean washed rock is observed on all sides instead. The shaft is now significantly noisier, and a number of loose stones cling on to the 45 degree slope — great care must be taken not to dislodge them and send them hurtling down onto any cavers that may be below.

We are now just 58 metres above the floor beneath us, having covered 62 metres in the first pitch and 46 metres in the entrance shaft — almost there! Gracie was already rigging the rebelay when I arrived and soon proceeded down the remaining slope and disappeared over the side of the ledge. Having lost sight of her, I was rather impatient, shouting “Are you done yet? I’m cold!”. When the “rope free” call finally came I saw for myself the rather technical and completely free-hanging rebelay which she had been rigging, and any notion of her taking too long was forgiven.

I was probably a bit too hasty in making my way down there, as when I arrived Gracie had only descended some five metres and I had to sit at the very wet rebelay for some time before she was sighted on the bottom and I could start my descent proper. Nonetheless, this gave me a good opportunity to look around and the view of her head torch descending into the black was breath-taking.

As I made my way down the rope, I recall looking up and down to try and gauge my progress and seeing only darkness in both directions. Usually when hanging off a rope, you can at least gain some sense of progress from the visual cues around you, but I was struck by how surreal it was to be descending from the black above only to enter further into the unknown below. The final pitch gets progressively wetter as you get deeper, and ends with a thorough soaking in the last ten to fifteen metres as you enter the path of the waterfall proper. I got off the rope as quickly as I could (unceremoniously landing on my backside instead of my feet) and ran up the boulder choke to escape the water flow. It was too little too late, though, as I was completely soaked head to toe.

The bottom of the gigantic chamber was an awe-inspiring place to be and we sat on the bench (wooden plank across two boulders) to take in the view before us. I managed to light the bottom of the shaft up with my torch and this gave an excellent sense of scale and allowed for some nice photos of Gracie ascending (seen above). We were glad that we were only a team of two — the foot of the waterfall was a very draughty place and it became quite cold rather quickly. It seems to me that three to four people would be an absolute maximum for a Titan up-and-down trip, with two to three being ideal to avoid being frozen solid at the bottom.

After about fifteen minutes we started to make our way back out of the cave which was hard work but passed without issue. The final upwards slog through the entrance shaft was quite unwelcome but even the bitterly cold wind that met us outside could not dampen our spirits - the sense of achievement was huge, and this trip is a must for any enthusiastic vertical caver.

On Christmas Day, 2021, I undertook a solo through trip of the Ease Gill cave system, from County Pot at the upstream end to Lancaster Hole at the downstream end. I’d previously explored the Ease Gill over a couple of trips — one into Lancaster Hole, and one from Lancaster Hole to Stop Pot and back — however this would be my first time going into County Pot and navigating the Manchester Bypass route back to the high level passages that form the “trade route” down towards Lancaster.

The entire trip was filmed using my helmet mounted GoPro, and the footage is available on my YouTube channel. The footage is quite good in places, especially the first half of the trip where the passages are smaller. Unfortunately, when I arrived into the gigantic dimensions of Monster Cavern where the passages enlarge significantly and remain so for the duration of the trip, the video quality degrades considerably.

I wouldn’t recommend that anyone watches the full three hours of footage, but all of the locations along the route are listed in YouTube chapters so you can easily skip between different points on the trip. The fine streamway between the County Pot entrance to Battle of Britain Chamber was a highlight of the trip, as well as the section starting at Spangle Passage and ending at Main Line Terminus — an excellent bit of caving with lots of narrow squeezes and crawling, and even includes me going mad and talking to myself for a short period.

The footage was lit using only my 1600 lumen headtorch (Fenix HM70R - highly recommended), and whilst it provided enough light for me to see, the camera could not quite keep up and you often could only see the floor immediately in front of me. While not ideal, I do think it gives a nice sense of the scale of the chambers to be able to see darkness around me. I’m waiting for the arrival of a Fenix LR40R search torch with a 12,000 lumen output — more than most car headlights — which I am hoping will improve the situation somewhat in large passages. The LR40R has received some very good reviews by other cavers, particularly Keith Edwards on YouTube.

After dipping into Lancaster Hole to pre-rig my exit, I ascended into the daylight again and made my way across the fell to the dry, rocky riverbed of Ease Gill before walking up it to the County Pot entrance. This was probably the hardest and most frustrating part of the trip — it was bitterly cold, extremely windy and did not make for a pleasant walk at all. The relief once I finally got into the relative warmth of the cave was palpable.

The Manchester Bypass route is somewhat notorious in the caving community for route finding problems although I think that this is perhaps unwarranted, I did not find it a struggle at all with the excellent CNCC route description and RRCPC survey to hand. There were a few locations where the way on was not so obvious, but quickly checking each way would reveal that one choked or was impassable, leaving only one reasonable choice.

The traverse took me around six hours in total, which was quite a bit less than I was estimating. The earlier trips to familiarise myself with the system really helped here — once I got to Main Line Terminus and into the high level passages I was able to make fantastic forward speed, taking only just over ten minutes to get from the bottom of Stake Pot to the bottom of Fall Pot. There are some nice climbs in this area of the cave which I had not previously attempted, and I was quite pleased when I managed to get myself up Stake Pot and Fall Pot unassisted — the climbs are nowhere near as sketchy as they first look.

There was only one route finding issue and funnily enough it was on the section of the cave that I already knew — I failed to recognise that I had arrived in Main Line Terminus from the southeasterly direction and charged straight past it into Monster Cavern, which led me to being very confused about five to ten minutes later when I was still expecting a stooping height chamber and was instead met with one with a ceiling some ten to fifteen metres high.

It was lovely to be alone in a cave again; I feel totally at home in the environment and even put some music on during the latter parts of the trip which lifted my mood even more. It’s quite meditative to be in such a magical place without distractions — trekking through cavernous chambers where darkness surrounds you on several sides and focusing only on putting one foot in front of another with enough care not to slip or fall. That isn’t to say I don’t like caving with other people; I think there is space for both types of trips if you feel happy and confident enough to go alone occasionally.

The rest of the trip was quite uneventful (just how I like it!) and it was a great feeling to sight my exit rope dangling down from the top of Lancaster Hole when I did eventually arrive there. Prussiking out with just enough daylight (and sunshine) remaining to make it back to the car without a torch was a lovely end to a very relaxing caving trip and a wonderful Christmas Day.