Topic

The President was not waxing lyrical about the wonders of Scanty Lardos and Ann Summer's Passage, in fact he said it was a bit of a disappointment, so we switched our attention to Out Sleets Beck. A cave I had never done before, though there was a YSS trip down there a few months ago.
An advance party set off at about 7:00 to rig the cave. Stu, who was meant to be part of that group, went back to sleep and ended up in the derigging crew.
It started well with me parking at the wrong place, but Lukas led us to the correct parking place and then on to the cave, passing the rigging crew coming back.
The entrance is an uninspiring grovel in the right bank of the stream with a small dam protecting it from the water.
This lead to a couple of short climbs/pitches before a longer section to the two bigger pitches. The rigging crew had derigged the final pitch in case we did not want to continue into the depths of the cave.
We rerigged the final pitch & as we descended it Ray appeared. Apparently he had parked in the wrong place & gone to the wrong cave before finding the correct parking and met Dave from the rigging crew who had left his car key at the cave and had gone back for it.
Having descended the final pitch, we jettisoned our SRT kits and continued into the depths of the cave.
The most memorable sections were the crawling on gravel, swimming in cold water, forcing my way through a passage slightly smaller than my chest (while in cold water) and negotiating a boulder choke with some very large & loose boulders.
We eventually reached the sump and turned round to head out.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly as they say (except for the rising rift, which was quite hard work) & we were soon back on the surface basking in the sun.
All in all, a good trip but not one to attempt if there is any rain forecast! It only floods to the roof!

Rigging crew: Keith, Lukasz & Dave.
Derigging crew: Stu, Lukas, James, Ray, Ros & Dave
Derigging crew time: About 3h45m