Topic

Well.  This turned out to be a bit of a bogey and rather than get all wordy [I'll leave that to Matt when he gets down the hole] I'll just record some brief outline details.

The idea originally was to rig the cave on the spits and naturals for the CNCC anchoring team as it had been slated for IC resin anchors following a complaint from Alex who couldn't get down from the Balcony.....and Matt was keen to do the cave before it was IC'd
However we didn't managed to coordinate a date so I decided to come down from Scotland and rig it anyway: Matt could jump in whenever.
After a false start to a planned night trip I staggered up the hill from Horton [a lot longer way in] with 100m rope and lots of Spit hangers  and only one krab.  If you are canny with hangers you don't need krabs :}

However, you do need lots of krabs if you find the cave already IC hangered and find that many of the new hangers have replaced Spit sleeves!  This gave me a challenging morning!   I was able to get as far as Pitch 4 [and rigged this] but by then I was running low on options for incorporating IC hangers into the rigging.  There were still a fair few Spits to be had and these were made good use of, but I'd used up all my Dynema AS's by P4 so had to call it a [half] day.

I have left ropes in my tackle sack at the head of P4 and these should get Matt and team down the rest of the cave which I am assuming at this stage has been resin anchored all the way.  The team will have to take along a dozen krabs [estimation, generous] for the IC's if indeed they are in place.  Spanner for the de-rig is in the sack pocket, but take a second....

I have ignored the single resin hanger on P3.  I don't consider it good practise for a free drop from a horizontal traverse with a sharp edge to only have one anchor, especially from a roof/ceiling hang.  Both Spits were still in place here so I have rigged a Y hang from these.  The drop is only short, but even so.........
Because three surface resin anchors [not IC] have been removed [and the rock damaged as a result] the P1 rope is sub-optimally anchored.  I consider it safe given that until the natural re-belay it is in effect just a hand line.  However, the Team should take a big sling and krab and switch the anchor to the huge block.

I'm looking forward to hearing how it goesd, and Matt's proper trip report