Topic

After a bit of discussion, mainly about the weather and which caves would be possible, we decided to visit Lost Johns' Cave.
Dome route was packed in one bag. Centipede was in another bag. A third bag contained the rope for Candle & Shistol and Final pitch. A fourth contained rope for Battle-axe & Valhalla.
Damian, Lukasz & I set off to start the rigging while Matt headed into Dome route to rig that.
We swiftly got down to the beginning of Battle-axe where we had to wait for the last bag of rope.
After a while Klaudia, Stuart, Lukas & Martin arrived, still without the final bag of rope.
I decided to head back up Centipede and down Dome in case there was an issue with route finding. Klaudia decided to come with me.
I found that the rigging on Vestry and Cathedral was very tight, but not really a problem and quickly got back down to Dome Junction where I met Martin, Stuart & Lukas coming up.
They had just started de-rigging, but had only taken out the last drop of Dome Junction. It was not a problem abseiling from the previous hang, but would not have been ideal for ascending.
I met Matt just before Valhalla. The delay had been caused by me failing to pack the rope for Vestry! Matt had rigged that with the Cathedral rope and then had run out on Cathedral. So he had to de-rig and re-rig it tighter.
I decided that I would head back up Centipede again, rather than going down Valhalla.
Only Damian, Lukasz & Matt bottomed the cave.
Damian was amazed by the new bolting on the final pitch. So much so that he was talking about it for hours afterwards.
I think we all had fun, in spite of a number of cock ups. Maybe we will do better next time.

Team: Bernice, Damian, Dave, James, Klaudia, Lukas, Lukasz, Martin, Matt, Paul & Stuart.
Time: About 3.5 hours.