Topic

A large turnout for the Croesor Rhosydd trip meant that we were searching for pulleys for the zip wires. Several people had their own and Oliver lent us three, leaving us only one short. There were discussions about returning pulleys and riding tandem. In the end we met another group outside the cave who lent us a spare pulley & gave us Jelly Babies.
We let the other group go ahead of us as they were a smaller group & we were expecting to be quite slow.
Having ascended the incline and looked at the lake, Ade discovered a cowstail karabina left on the traverse line by a member of the other group. Maybe they weren't more experienced & faster than us.
We arrived at the start of the traverse to find the other group having difficulty. They soon retreated to go the old (easier) way.
The initial traverse had been made reasonably difficult to deter casual cavers. The more able members of our group were soon across, leaving a sling on one of the bolts to help with the most difficult move. This was not very useful and was replaced by a belay using a rope & karabina to pull the caver up to the traverse line.
Having crossed the first traverse we were on to more traverses, abseils and zip wires. The only ones which stand out were the traverse down a hole which looked worse than it was; the zip wire which ended in a ladder climb (the belay got used again) and the fast zip wire across the lake. The last of these was after we had rejoined the old route.
It was then a fairly straight forward walk (with a couple of interesting bridges) to the canoe for the crossing into Rhosydd.
The canoe was in better condition than we had been lead to believe with minimal bailing required. We crossed in pairs (except Lukasz who went alone) some of us singing sea shanties. Fran was a little disappointed not to have to use her "flirty fiesta" to rescue the canoe.
It being a bit chilly, the first six to cross left as a group, leaving the rest of us to collect up the buoyancy aids and find our own way out.
Navigation in Rhosydd is always fun, there was a long notice at the canoe landing stage giving directions, but Paul was fairly confident of the way.
He lead us through a collapse and up a slope following some reflectors, then across to where we could see daylight. We were then looking for a way down to the lower level passing a Christmas tree. We tried one passage, but it didn't go. The second attempt after another daylight chamber worked, though we didn't find the tree.
We could then see a pin prick of day light at the end of a long adit. As we walked down the adit, the prick of light did not get any bigger for quite a while. Then it started to grow steadily until we were out in bright sunlight.
For some reason no one was keen to look into the other mines on the way back to the hut.

Team: James, Ade, Lukas, Lukasz, Grace, Matt, Barry, Paul, Fran, Ellie & Dave.
Time: A bit over 5 hours for the slower group.