With eleven of us doing Marble Steps, we split into two groups one going down Sidewinder route with enough rope to get to the bottom of the cave.
The remainder following me to the newly opened Marble Cake route.
After a bit of faff trying to fit into a hole through which I clearly did not fit, we found the scaffold shaft and we were soon looking for "drilled threads".
It was my first attempt at rigging on drilled threads. I had prepared ten short lengths of 10mm rope with a carabina tied at one end of each length. The plan was to pass the rope through the thread, tie a knot in the end and loop it back to the carabina.
I missed the drilled thread traverse line for the first pitch but after that it went well and we were soon at the end of the first rope.
There was a waterfall at the bottom of the final pitch of the new route and I guessed that was the way on to the main chamber. This got steeper and wetter until I got to a down climb in a waterfall with no sign of hand or foot holds. I headed back up to the end of the rope in time to see the end of our group heading across at the level of the bottom of that pitch.
This lead to an eye hole and an easy climb down to the bottom level of the main chamber. This did not need the 40m rope shown on the topo!
We met Paul at the eye hole, he was looking for a quick trip as he needed to get home. He asked for directions and quickly set off out of the cave.
We were now on the standard route and we quickly caught the rest of the team near Stink Pot.
After a bit of discussion Damian rigged The Ninety and Charlotte, Ellie, Josh and the pair of Andys went down with a bag of rope for the final pitch.
The remainder (Damian, Sophie, Gaz, Ian & Dave) decided that ten people coming up the ninety would slow things down too much and headed out via the Marble Cake route, with Damian derigging.
Our group headed back to the cars and Damian headed off with Sophie & Ian. Gaz's things were in Andy's van and I had to wait for Charlotte as I had her change of clothes in my car.
After an hour or so, Gaz and I headed back to the cave to find out what was keeping them. When we got there Ellie & Josh were at the surface and they were soon joined by the first Andy. Charlotte was a little further back with the other Andy derigging.
Apparently Andy and Charlotte had intended to come out of Marble Cake, but we had already de-rigged it.
Down Sidewinder team: Sophie, Charlotte, Damian, Ian, Andy, Paul & Gaz
Down Marble Cake team: Ellie, Josh, Andy & Dave
Time: Up to 6 hours.
