Topic

Having done some SRT practice with Klaudia & Fran on Saturday, we felt ready to tackle a simple trip in Magnetometer.
The trip started well with a friendly farmer telling us where to park (in the yard at Neil Ings farm) & offering to be our call out.
We then wandered up the valley to the cave, which we had no trouble finding as the entrance is a concrete tube rising about 4 feet above the ground.
We put a deviation in the entrance pitch to prevent it from rubbing where it leaves the tube and enters the cave proper.
There were then a couple of easy climbs down to a couple of small passages and an awkward climb down. I put a rope down the larger hole, to make it easier to get back up.
There was then a thrutchy phreatic tube with tight right angle bends. This is where selective amnesia had set in... I had forgotten the flat out phreatic tube, the length of the wet crawl & the dry crawl and the entire river Styx!
The river Styx is particularly impressive where the water come to within a foot of the roof and makes glooping noises as it slops when you move.
We negotiated all of the above without a problem and progressed to the rift passage, at some points of which you were traversing high above a constricting passage which would have been difficult to climb back from, but fortunately the rock was grippy and there were plenty of hand holds where they were required.
We eventually reached and descended Caton Hall, which was the target of the trip. The descent was done on an in-situ rope which only just fed into the descender and made for a slow descent. We did not venture into the masochistic passages at the bottom of Caton Hall.
We made good time getting out of the cave and were soon back on the surface being eaten by the midges.
A good trip with mainly type 1 fun, possibly not a good introduction to underground SRT.

Team: Fran, Klaudia, Ros, Ade, Lukas & Dave.
Time: About 5h30