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!