The trip on the meets list for Sunday was Gatekirk Cave, a little visited cave at the foot of Whernside. The CNCC website says to contact the farmer, which I had done the day before but he was reluctant to give permission.
This being the case and the cave likely to be flooded by the torrential rain on Saturday, Val & I (the only people interested in caving) opted to visit Great Douk instead.
I was not expecting to be able to do the through trip to Middle Washfold.
When we got to the Great Douk shake hole, it contained a large lake.
I had never been in the left branch just inside the cave, so we started off by investigating that. The passage soon split with the left fork going to a window above the waterfall and the right branch going to a sump.
Resuming the normal trip, the water was noticeably higher than normal which made some of the cascades more interesting.
We soon got to an oxbow where the water emerges from a crawl to the left and the main route leaves the water for a few metres, this showed signs that the water had used it recently.
Going further upstream, the roof gradually lowered until we were crawling in the fast flowing water.
Just before we got to the lowest section, here is an inlet on our left which was producing most of the flowing water. Above that the water was only slightly deeper than normal and there was little flow.
We pushed under the calcite barrier and over the gravel bank before climbing up into the roof passage.
After a short crawl, we could stand up and the climb out of Middle Washfold.
Team: Val & Dave
Time: About 1 hour
