As Lisa and Myself had a trip in mind for the Saturday, we decided to leave JH rigged from our Wednesday Evening trip to give us a shortcut on said Saturday.
After meeting at Rowter Farm around 9ish, we were soon joined by Tim, Jack and Phil who were doing there own trip of JH to Peak. Also Wayne, Phil, Ann, Alastair and Louise who were also taking advantage of JH being rigged do do a survey trip around FSE.
Being the first to get kitted up Lisa and Myself set of over to JH and after lifting the lid we were off, 25mins later we were sat at the bottom of Leviathan. From here we dropped down through the Boulder Piles and made our way along the Speedwell Canal, although the water level was quite low we could hear the roar of water in the distance and our first thoughts were the Bung but we were too far away for the noise to be coming from there. As we rounded the last corner before the Whirlpool the source of the noise became obvious as it was tanking out of Whirlpool Passage which happened to be our way on. After getting a bit wet crossing the Whirlpool we climbed into the passage and made our way forward against the flow of the water, as we got to the junction were we turned off we sat and watched a flood pulse come through were the water came up about 12" to 15" in less than 5 seconds.
From there we made our way to the start of our planned trip....The Assault Course, which as it turns out is very aptly named so with SRT kit in a bag we set off passing all the obstacles on our way and after what seemed like ages we finally emerged in the large chamber at the end of the crawl. Although there were 2 ropes going up into the darkness we knew that one of them went nowhere so we concentrated on the other, not being sure of the condition of the rigging we set off very steadily being very pleased to find the rigging in a rusty but reasonable condition. The rope on the last pitch was covered in Calcite so far up but we did overcome this on the way up it and after exploring all the chambers etc at the top we opted for an Italian Hitch to get back down it which meant we both got covered in flying Calcite as it shredded it off the rope. Once down the other 2 pitches we had a chocolate bar before setting off to retrace our steps back out the Assault Course. At this point we could have taken the easy option and gone back out JH but that would have been to easy so we turned left instead and headed through the muddy wallow to make our way to the start of Pilkingtons Series which involves prussiking up 5 pitches which have all been rigged with P bolts and Stainless so no worries there. This gets you into Mud Hall and then after climbing through some hanging death you then end up in Watricle Cavern which is a very interesting place with lots of remnants from the Lead Miners, we then made our way through to Axe Aven were we prussiked up to the the Calcited Axe head. It was at this point that we decided to retrace our steps back to the Speedwell Canal and then the long prussik out of JH.
Trip time 8hrs
Lisa Wootton, Myself
