Topic

With Damian, Ruth, Kristian, Ales and me (alex)

It was cold with a capital C and O and for some reason we thought Black Shiver would be a good choice for such inclement weather.

I went in my own car got changed expecting the others to arrive shortly but was kept waiting in the cold due to some much needed shopping or so I was led to believe. We walked up the crisp fell and found the cave after not too much messing thankfully! We had neglected to bring a hand line for the entrance climb as it was in snow and ice. I braved it first and got called suicidal again for climbing it (notice a theme here?). Damian rigged a pull through for everyone else which promptly got stuck meaning Damian had to free climb it this time, at least we know we could get back out.

The entrance crawl went like a breeze (a cold one) and we were soon at the pitches with Damian (aka spider man) in front throwing the rope at the walls to rig the pitches. We were soon at the infamous pitch where Ruth decided to call it a day last time. This time I went first showing Ruth the ropes as it were. Ruth followed my every move and soon joined me at the bottom of the pitch. (blood pitch I think its called). The next two pitches went quickly and we caught up to spider man.

Down the big pitch we realised that time was short (due to initial messing about after call out was set) and as my time was even shorter I went back up again almost straight away, passing Ales at the re-belay and blowing "Stop" on my whistle to prevent the others following me up and let Ales go down.

I met Kristian at the top and we decided to exit. He decided to wait at the top to the first pitch as he realised Damian had the car keys so it would be better to wait in the relative warmth of the cave and do the "Ruth" dance while he waited for Damian and the others to return.

The climb up was dicey but I made it to an even colder and windier fell and half ran back to my car.

Didn't make it to the sump then

Aye it was arth-a-trip, time was too short with the amount of people we had. Not sure how far the others got but I reckon it was not much further as they exited about an hour after me, or so I hear.

we all got as far as the bottom of the 80m pitch. How far is the sump away from that??

+/- 15 min according to Damian

aw we didn't do too bad then, shame we didn't finish it really... all of us were so cold when getting back to the car, our gear was frozen solid. Poor Ales shoelaces were frozen shut and Damian had to poor tepid tea on them, he didn't want the other option... thoroughly enjoyable trip though, thanks to all for taking me and helping me get over my last visit to Black Shiver