Eyam Dale Shaft, then into Gimli's Dream (attempt)

We already spend a lot of time on Stoney Middleton Dale. I think this has more to do with the familiarity of the area and the fact that access is so easy. We've probably not been down Eyam Dale House Cave for that simple reason, you need to provide proof of third party liability cover. It's a shame really but I can understand why.

The plan for this trip was to head down the Eyam Dale Shaft (from now on referred to a EDS), on account that both Finney and I had SRT rigs to play with. From here we'd then make our way into Merlin Mine, which has been blocked in the past but now has been re-opened (earlier this year I think). 

The day started like most caving days heading to Hitch'n'Hike for the purchase of yet more gear. There is always one of us who needs something and today that was Finney, who required a Croll. For those who don't know, a croll is an chest-ascender that's mounted above your harness and held in place by a chest sling. A couple of weeks before Finney had purchased said harness and chest strap, and had been using my croll for some SRT practise out of the loft hatch. It was only the night before we planned to go caving that he realised I'd be using my croll, thus a trip was made. With purchases made, we soon found ourselves parked up, geared up and walking to the EDS in Stoney.

Descending wasn't a problem at all, even with the bag dangling off my lower cows-tail, and following the survey was easy. Once Finney was down we decided to ditch the SRT gear (all the harnesses and climbing equipment). It wasn't like we'd be using it again until we came out. It turned out to be a very good decision.

Gimli's Dream is named on account of the amazing speolotherms in the cave, however they've been damaged over the years and the entrance from Carlwark (and therefore the EDS) was cemented shut. I think it was another case of instructors taking outdoor groups through, which always seems to cause a problem. Earlier this year a new link was dug, and named connect 4 (as 4 people went through it) and it's supposed to be very tight. This is what we were aiming for. 

We soon found the first part of the original connection, which takes you out of the EDS area and into the next chamber. This was access by sitting down legs first and then shuffeling forward, feeling the passage with your feet and lay on your back. This was the first trip out with my caving suit it was great. I crawled through puddles with no problem. It stayed warm all the way through. This chamber opened up into what would have been a fairly large chamber, was it not for the massive boulders everywhere and there were several exits off.

Andy tried the first one, going in feet first again as he could orientate himself round to go head first and after getting covered in mud, it proved to be short and ended in a collapse. We then tried another one, which the survey had told me didn't go anywhere in particular but Finney wanted to follow it. It was reasonably grim as we crawled through puddles and thick clay adhered to every part of us. Finney soon found himself getting more and more wedged while he could see the tube went no where, we turned round and headed back.

Further searching around found another small tunnel, which I dived into. It was pretty tight and as I crawled forward navigating myself over boulders I found out there was a connection issue with my main beam. This put the wind up me, especially as my secondary beam was flat (and there's a lesson about making sure the batteries are full if I ever saw one). I panicked, reversed myself managing to pin my leg in between a couple of rocks and panicked some more. I was a while before I calmed down.

Finney however kept his cool, crawled in and ragged my leg out of the where it was stuck, and when I say ragged I mean it. He'd looked at it and said "you're leg won't fit" to which he received "it will if you pull it hard enough" in reply. He did, I was freed and he showed me what I'd done wrong on the way out. We sat there, we trying to breathe deep and calm down, Finney probably trying not to laugh from my undeserved panic and decided what to do...



We headed back in. I was sure this was the connection into Gimli's, so sure. This time I went through, thinking to myself "breathe deeply and take your time, you can always reverse yourself" and I managed to get through without utter panic. Finney was following too with the haul bag (with no apparently problems either!) and I rounded a corner as the tunnel widened... only to thin again. Another constriction was passed which brought us promptly to a collapse, far off in the distance. I was gutted, and we headed back a little dejected. After a short discussion we went back to the rope, cleaned ourselves off as best we could and headed up and out. 

I don't like failing at things and since I've been trawling the net to find out where exactly the connection is. I've a feeling I missed something in that passage and I'll have to go back and look in the new year.

 
 

A short day down Owl Hole.

 We've been to Owl Hole before (infact it was the first "real" caving we did) and as we only had a short day we headed back there. The plan this time was to take the DSLR with us and all the lights in an attempt to get some amazing photographs. Below are the results, in for of a photo essay than an actual post. The first set are fromheading down into the Cascade Chamber. This is a chambers that's been heavily scaffolded as it's still rather loose. We only really went half was down it and stopped to view the Cascade, a beautiful flowstone waterfall, which looks like it's been frozen in time. Sadly your lighting wasn't up to it and it's so delicate that moving around just to place the lights would have damaged some delicate features of this cave. I don't think our photo's do it justice, but you'll get the idea.

(Chink, attempting to photography some flowstone)

(What Chink was actually photographing. Evidence of flowstone in cross-section, as it's been damaged, showing the layering as its formed over a bed of sand)

(Flowstone ridges on the cave walls)

(Tiny pools, each filled with growing crystals in water. I have no idea how these have formed)

(Possibly the same surface as the photo above, but taken from another angle)

(Looking back towards the shaft from the Cascade Chamber, with the scaffolding visible and stalagtubes growing from the ceiling)

(The second scaffolded shaft that leads off from the cascade chamber)

(Finney for scale, half way up the shaft to get out of cascade chamber)

(The best of the cascade shots. It really was so hard to get some decent lighting in there and because my headtorch was so bright the light reflexed back loads)

 We next intended on heading into the Crystal Pallas Chamber so after aiding back up to it and getting the gear inside, we actually ended up staying in the small chamber taking photo's before actually carrying on. We then moved into the Crystal Pallas and climbed down into the Gour chamber and had a proper little explore down there. The Gour chamber was worth the down climb and crawl, even if it made me muddier than ever before.

(Columns (above and below), light from behind the camera)

(a small inlet in the wall, with various small columns in it. We thought that at one time I must have been filled with water, as there is a significant widening of the column and the "edge" of the pool)

(A small curtain that joins into a small column, lit from behind)

(Crystals formations on edge of a curtain)

(a small pool, with several beds of tiny crystals growing in it)

And from the Gour chamber and Crystal Pallas:

(Beautiful speolotherms taken with no flash and my headtorch as lighting)

(Same view, but with 8 seconds long exposure instead)

(The sump at the base on the gour chamber. I don't know if it dries up or leads anywhere but there's always the hope that it'll open up into a new system!)

Sadly the shots actually inside the gour chamber didn't come out very well at all, and thus haven't been included. There's no team pic from this trip because by the time we'd got out we were all literally covered in mud, and it was cold. Still wasn't a bad trip.
 

Lay-by Pot (a though trip)

With a week of bad weather behind us and the knowledge that when it rains, that rain eventually finds it's way under ground and into caves systems be decided on to mess around. We went straight to Hitch and Hike that morning to talk to Shaun behind the counter about caving and what would be a sensible idea for the day. He suggested a range of little places and caves but there was one that stood out a little more. It was Lay by Pot. It stood out because it would a journey through a cave, rather than in and out the same way like we'd done before. He did warn us that it would be a little wet but we'd been plenty wet already so it didn't bother us.

Lay by Pot is just off the road in Stoney Middleton Dale, where we seem to spend most of our caving time. It starts with a abseil down a 14 metre shaft before meandering through the surrounding rock to exit at somewhere called the oil drum entrance.

Our first challenge for the day was actually finding the entrance and between not reading the guide book properly (parked in the wrong place) and then having quite a few little caves to check on the way it took us a while to actually get there. I volunteered to go first down the rope and clipped myself in with my gri-gri (I'm yet to aquire a petzl stop) and shot off down the rope. Abseiling on a gri-gri in a tight space is something I don't recommend at all. It's a really really awkward piece of kit to use if you're all cramped up. It wasn't that bad really and I ended up in a chest height passage in which I made myself comfortable and waited for Finney to come down.

Finney took forever, or it seemed like he did at least! I just made myself comfortable and picked at the crumbly ceiling looking at the fossils I was finding. The passage has a lot of loose material in it, which looked like it had come from the roof. He told me when he'd got down that he'd had one of those moment when you look at your belay device and think “how in god's name does this thing work”. Abseiling into a tight passage is a pretty stressful thing to do and I'm not surprised his brain was running overtime. We sat there eating jelly babies and taking photos till Ronnie joined us.

There are two passages off which lead off once you get down. We'd already been warned about following the tight squeeze of old man's slabbed level, which doesn't go anywhere really. We set off crawling down the right passage with the cheese grate being our first check point. I don't know why the cheese grater is called what it is as it's not cheesey or gratery (if that's even a word). Instead its a 7 metre drop into a pool with a small stream running into it. I guess the pool must drain from somewhere, but we didn't exactly dive in and have a look. There's something about water in caves that really scares me. Just after here we came across our first obstacle... a low passage with a puddle of water about 6/8 inches deep. I'm sure hardy cavers would have laughed at us deliberating whether to carry on or not but being honest I didn't fancy a soaking so early on in the cave. We didn't really know how long we actually be down there and being cold and wet is a lot worse than just being cold.

I squeezed out the other side with wet hands, arms, elbows, knees and one wellington full of water... but it wasn't that bad. I'd managed to get the kit bag through as well without it getting too wet either. The passage ahead we up slightly and we piled into it to check out the stalactites. It's a shame that we didn't just carry on into the Calcite passage and instead just plough on ahead with our journey. I think we'd all decided that this was caving trip, so a bumble underground to take pretty pictures. Still the passage we were in had some beautiful stalagtubes hanging down from the ceiling and after a bit of backing up and me sending Ronnie in the wrong direction we got moving again.

Ronnie was pretty much leading this cave, with me behind him checking the map every so often. Finney had acquired the camera and we found out later that he'd been recording little personal documentaries while Ronnie and I had been off ahead. He's fast becoming the team camera man! With Ronnie up ahead all I generally got every time he entered a tunnel a mix of laugher and groaning. The first puddle we suffered was not the last, and not the worst either. I followed each one, fighting with the bloody kit bag each time to try and keep it dry as I'd not stuffed everything in waterproof bags. It was something that I'll remember for next time.

I wasn't until we reached the first of the larger chambers that me and Finney could get off our hands and knees. Ronnie on the other day had been able to get a couch on in some of the passages and chambers, which made me very jealous. The chamber although quite large in plan, wasn't actually that big apart for a aven that had formed in the centre. Normally people sit down to take a break, but we all had a good stand up and stretch in that aven. The kit bag, which has been names “oink” due to it being a pig to carry around (stolen from the term used for haul bags when big walling). Oink had suffered an internal injury because he'd been thrown around by his rather stressed carrier (me). Instead of forking out a little cash for a smash proof caving box, it decided that I knew better and had packed a lot of our emergency gear in a plastic container brought at tesco. For future reference plastic tesco sandwich boxes do not survive underground, especially when placed next to hard plastic nalgene bottles! I really couldn't get the bag wet now!

We pushed off from here, me knowing the way but letting Ronnie crawl around in looking for the tunnel to the next chamber. I could have told him where to go, but chose not to as there was only two tunnels leaving this chamber and we'd come in by one of them. Soon he found the right tunnel and the mix of groaning and laughter echoed down the passage. This was going to be a wet one...

(time passes as we crawl, squeeze and swear at oink)

…then there was woop of elation echoing back down the tunnel. Ronnie'd broken into the big chamber (literally called the big chamber) and we could all stand up. Ronnie gave me a hand exiting the squeeze into and took oink off me. Finney joined us and sat around eating jelly babies and taking on some much needed water. A quick scope of the guidebook revealed that we'd now be heading down into Phil's dome pit. This started with a tight (for me) squeeze through a small boulder ruckle and onto an beautiful flowstone floor. This passage/chamber was pretty amazing with the flowstone floor and plenty of stalagtubes and stalagtites & mites all over the place. I got some pretty good video of stalagtite running with water so I can pass this onto a friend who teaches geography. We followed Ronnie into Phil's Dome Pit proper and were struck by our next obstacle... 5 metres of climbing upwards.

Being climber's by nature (for the moment at least) 5 metres of climb shouldn't have bothered us, but if there hadn't been a couple of old ropes hanging down made into a couple of rope ladders wed have been in for a long crawl back and some SRT get us out. Instead we'd planned for this and I tied onto the end of a short section of rope we brought with us and clumsly climbed up the ropes. It wasn't elegant, but then again climbing in wellington boots never is. At the top I looked for something to belay off, but found nothing other than the thread the ropes were tied onto so belaying off this I brought up the others up.

Ronnie immediately set off down the passage to make space for Finney and when we were all up he scouted ahead while we [Finney and I] stowed the gear. Ronnie pointed out a hole in the floor which we should avoid falling down and then off into the squeeze ahead. Soon his feet disappeared, followed by grunting and then the sound of some rocks falling. We yelled tom see if he was ok and he replied telling us not to follow him yet as the chamber was cramped and loose. We just had to sit and wait while the sounds of a human body scraping and bumping off things echoed down to us. After what seemed like forever (again!) Ronnie yelled down to ask me if there was a lid on the exit. This was something that had never occurred to me but I was sure I'd read about it. There wasn't any access issues and it wasn't mentioned that it was locked or anything in the guidebook. I yelled that it should be ok and Ronnie carried on looking, but for me panic had set in. I sat/lay there in the tunnel breathing too fast and trying not to let on I was panicing. It was pretty stupid really because there are no hero's in our little group and no need to put on a brave face.

Ronnie's cheers echoed back down to us and he yelled the next one up. Finney took it as I wanted to force myself to stay in the tunnel on my own to get used to the darkness. Finney gave me a running commentary of what he was caving through so I knew what coming next and soon it was my turn. I'd clipped oink to a sling and my longest cowtail, intending to drag the little bugger behind me, instead od pushing it ahead and dislodging any rocks. It was a bit of a squeeze for me, and I entered a loose chamber with a circle of light coming in for an oil drum set in the ceiling. This was obviously the oil drum entrance, which had a cover over it to stop people, animals anything I guess falling. Soon I was our, grabbing Ronnie's hand to pull me up. Oink came out last.

So our first through cave! And it was fantastic! The whole thing was a real adventure all the way through and it was quite different to all the other caves we've been in so far. It'll be nice to go back next time, knowing what we're in for and go into the various other little chambers we missed and get some decent photographs. I also look forward to taking some of my friends down who've expressed a wish to go caving as it'll be a proper little experience for them!

Caving (day 2)

Carlswark (via the gin entrance into the dynamite series)

Flush with our success at Owl Hole that evening, as we cleaned the gear we came up with another plan... to head out again the day after. We'd only really planned on a day's caving but I guess we'd been bitten by the caving bug pretty hard. I've been caving at Stoney Middleton before but not really known much about what I was doing. This could have been solved if I actually read the guidebook before I went down but I never did. This time was different.

We spent the evening pouring over the guidebook and gathering as much information as we could on Carlswark and in the morning we just got up and set off. Carlwark has a few entrances, some like the Eyam Dale Shaft (thus forth EDS) require some form of SRT, some like the resurgence entrance require a sump to be dived (however this is a pretty long sump, unless it's been dry) and some like the Gin Entrance you can scramble into, with no ropework required.

Like I said I've been into Carlwark before (a couple of times actually) and I'd worked out where I'd gotten to on the survey we had to work off. Because of this Ronnie asked if he could take the lead as it would be new to him, but I could stop him before he got lost. Caving has shown me a new side to Ronnie. He's a good frient who've known for a few years now. He's a strong boulderer, seems to always know someone, regardless of the social situation and all round good guy. Caving though seems to have opened up this massively responsible side to him. He's constantly checked things undergound, making sure he's in the right. He takes time over his decisions and makes them sensibly. I think he's going to make an excellent caver... plus I've seen taller dwarfs so his height benefits him well underground.

So, down the Gin Entrance we squeezed, with our new kit bag that we'd purchased avoiding the spiders. I'm not bad with spiders, in fact I really like them but there's something about a reasonably large spider, which can actually bite you can piece skin, very close to your face that unnerves me a little. They really freak Finney out though. As for the bag, we we'd borrowed one off the SUMC for the cavnig the day before, but it's trashed and full of holes and therefore not very useful. Instead we'd dropped into Hitch & Hike in the morning and brought a 40 litre warmbac caving sack. It doubles as the heavy duty 100litre rope bag for any of the other stupid adventures that I tend to go on so it felt like a sensible purchase. Finney brought some knee pads and hindsight proved this to be a very wise decision.

The first chamber is reasonably low with quite a few passages leading off it. Most of them end pretty quickly and there is only really one direction to actually head in. The passage is a large phreatic tube (passage that's been worn about by water, but by dissolving the rock into solution instead of attrition), that's suffered from it's ease of access. The floor is polished and there's no sediment left on the base. It was really interesting that as you got further and further into the cave the polish got less and less and human impact of the subterranean environment lessened (apart from the mining of course). Ronnie did a good job of navigating up to “noughts and crosses2 chamber. This chamber shows clear evidence of a collapse and we ended up scrambling around the boulders for a few minutes before we actually found the way ahead. From there are three choices...

The first (and left most choice) was apparently a very tight squeeze that lead the the area at the base of EDS. The second did the same but was supposed to be less of a squeeze and the third was the largest and easiest passage to get through. This would have taken us to the dynamite series, however we took the middle passage instead.

All the passages actually ended up in the same place, but the first two were a really squeeze and much more effort. I set off up the middle one. The roof very quickly got lower and lower until I was just lay flat on my chest. I pushed forward as best I could and tried to stay s dry as possible but the passage I was in started to wedge my helmet in place and I couldn't fully expand my chest. I panicked and bottled it.

And this is what I was on about before. Ronnie was right behind me talking to me the whole time I was panicking and talking me down. I know Finney would have done the same but he was further down the passage with the kit bag. I did try and find a way round the squeeze and next time I go I'll make it, but this time not so much. Instead I turned myself around and lay next to each other, me and Ronnie had a race out of the passage back to Finney. Needless to say there was no clear winner and much bruising involved.

Back as a three we rested while Ronnie complained of a bruised knee and decided on a plan of action. Although we'd poured over the survey and information we had, we'd not really set an objective for the trip. A quick scan of the survey showed up “success chamber” on the dynamite series and that sounded like a fitting point to end our journey. Back at noughts and crosses we found the right passage (literally the right hand passage) and followed it down into “northwest passage”. Northwest passage terminates at a boulder ruckle, through which there's a squeeze. It's not too hard to find when you root around but once your through into the “cockle passage” the guidebook warns that many parties miss this on the way back. Well, we had a plan. A simple plan, but a none-the-less effective plan... we left a torch at the squeeze so we wouldn't miss it. Keep it simple, stupid.

Successfully through the boulder ruckle and with the torch deployed we consulted the map in a cramped chamber. We'd managed to get ourselves pretty turned around and didn't really want to get lost. We headed off, hand-railing the right hand wall and heading towards “big dig” (a place we weren't heading to on the trip, but passage to tick off on the way round). To actually really enter the dynamite series you have to pass another boulder choke. I suspect that this was a roof collapse at some point because it's been stabilised. By stabilised I mean you suddenly crawl through a man-made tunnel of plastic tubes and wooden scaffolding as you pass under the collapse. It looked pretty stable... ish.

Once through we were really into the dynamite series! Having spoken to people since and browsed around on Ukcaving.com I now know that the dynamite series is at the harder end of the grade spectrum of caving grades (which seems to be a rather loose adjectival system). This I didn't know at the time, but had always wondered where the grade 5 area of Carlwark and Merlin were (as they're both on the same survey) but it's probably a good thing we didn't push too far into it for our second caving trip.

Having now broken into the dynamite series, we headed for dynamite chamber. There was a noticeable change in the structure and feeling of the cave when we entered. I know that the caves in Stoney Middleton Dale are pretty interesting with regards to what they recorded. The caves have formed in response to the height of the valley dropping over time, and thus different caves have formed at different heights and rock types. Much of Carlswark like the “Eyam Passage” are phreatic tubes, which is to say the passages are water worn and oval or elliptical in shape. At some point this entire passage must have been filled with water, because the shape of a phreatic tube is create by the limestone being dissolved away overtime while it's been fully submerged, rather than the way rivers usually erode through attrition. The fact that some passages would be filled up with water and therefore the limestone would get eroded away as the water attacks the joints and bedding planes, had just never occurred to me before. It think it just highlights how little I really know about how caves form and how much I've got to learn. I'm looking forward to it.

Anyway, the Dynamite series is different. Maybe the rock is different? I mean it's all still limestone, but there must be some differences between different rock types, how they cooled and jointed. Either way it just felt different. There were very small passages connected by very thin tubes, mostly near floor level. The passage took us into dynamite chamber which was quite a high aven, with a boulder ruckle in the centre which one had to clamber over. The tube out of here had a little right angle bend in it, something I personally wasn't looking forward to. Ronnie volunteered to go first, and me and Finney happily let him. The last squeeze had been awkward and this one was even thinner! Ronnie however passed through with ease and when I saw how much space there was around him and the outside of the passage walls, I felt a little more confident. I dived in too.

Once Finney was through we'd done it! Made it to success chamber! The only thing we had to do was make it back safe and sound now (don't worry, nothing goes wrong on the exit mom). We congratulated ourselves and spent a short time looking around success chamber. It's a aven, which is something I've had to look up, but its where the chamber is formed bottom up when the water must be under pressure to push into the ceiling and exploit cracks and joint. Avens usually don't have an exit at their top. I guess if your an experienced caver then you'll be able to tell the difference between and chamber that's formed bottom up, and therefore unlucky to have at exit at its top, and the reverse.

We did have a look at the squeeze into the next chamber (Midnight Chamber) but it was one; wet and two; looked smaller than the last one. We'll go back and do it some day in the future, but this time we bugged out and headed back. This was easier said that done as wed come pretty far into the cave and most of that was crawling, made all the worse by trying to avoid getting wet, at all costs. Needless to say this didn't happen and we all got very wet. Feet slipped in the water and I leaned too far forward in my wellies and filled them. However we soon made it out of the cave, still in the dark as the sun had gone down. We took our customary team photo, headed back to the car and empties out the boots and wellies.

I couldn't wait to get out and go caving again.

Great lenghts just to avoid a puddle! Rule no.1: Wellies!