Topic

This being the Saturday of the President's weekend, there were a good number of cavers around.
Some went to do Marilyn (James, James, Lukas, Alex & Chris)
Some went to look at Ireby Fell (Damian, Sophie, Sam, Grace & Matt)
While Lynn, Ros & myself went to do Sunset Hole & Great Douk.
I would normally have done Great Douk first, but it was suggested that it may be a bit went, so we popped into Sunset & quickly descended the four pitches.
An aid (sling & karabina)  was required by Ros & Lynn to cope with the high traverse at pitch 2, other than that there were no issues.
Lynn lead out followed by me with Ros derigging.

We then wandered over to Great Douk. We left the bags in the entrance shakehole and headed into the cave. We bypassed the waterfall climb by going up the steep path outside the cave and having a short crawl along a ledge to get into the streamway.
As was expected, this was a little damp but not worrying. 
We passed under the "new" roof collapse and were soo wading up the stream.
The roof gradually lowered until we had to crawl & eventually lie in water.
When the passage seemed to terminate, we went up into the roof. I had a bit of a navigational faff before Ros found the way out of the upper entrance.

We then headed back to the hut where we had to admire the President's vat of coleslaw.

Team: Lynn, Ros & Dave.
Time (Sunset): 2h15
Time (Great Douk): 0h45

 

The last time I was in Gt.D I gave up trying to find the exit and reversed the route.

I'm not sure what embarrassed me the most: having a novice caver with me ( Carol) or the fact that I had done the through trip at least six times before , and fairly recently....
But it was nice to see the cave from the other direction )