Aquamole
Pete & Gordon
Approx. Trip time 3 hours
We decided to have a go at a mid-week trip. With our limited knowledge of what we could do and our limited collection of ropes/metalwork, we decided to do Aquamole.
We met at 5, the wind was freezing and it was starting to get dark as we changed.
I informed Pete that ‘the 45m rope we need for the 3rd pitch has now shrunk to 40m!’ … So as a safety measure I was going to tie on an 18m rope on the end of it (with the intention of starting this ‘extension rope’ on the last Y hang, 12m drop). We were unsure of the best knot to use to do this? as we might have to pass it? (Although hopefully knot) So I opted for a Fig 8 to provide a small loop on the 40m to clip into, then Fig 8 follow through on the extension rope - as tight as possible.
When we were ready to go Pete set off at speed up the hill with me following behind puffing and panting all the way. Miraculously (as it was now dark) we walked straight to the entrance manhole. I think there has been an improvement here as it now has a scaffold bar across it – which prevents the old potential rope rub on the metal edge of the manhole.
Pete rigged, the first ‘Entrance dig’ pitch (25m), whilst I froze at the entrance shouting encouragement down like ‘get a b’ y move on’.
I remembered Damian telling me that we needed to ‘leave slack in the re-belay loop’. Which we did n’t.. - So I could n’t get a hard lock on. I told Pete and we then added extra slack to it.
Then it was my turn I went ahead and rigged ‘Rabbits Graveyard pitch’ (45m) – which really just continues the vertical shaft down. We thought it best to tie the entrance rope to the next one?- as an 'extra precaution' at the P bolt..... (All the time I was remembering Damian’s teaching ‘now what would happen if that last bolt fails?’) we even mentioned fall factors!
Pete was following closely behind as there were so many re-belays very close together. He gave me some abuse about ‘not leaving enough slack in the first re-belay’ so I had to do that one again too.
It was all a little more complicated, as the entire cave had already been rigged by divers. And I was constantly wrapping ropes, cows tails etc. round the wrong bit of rope. (But all good fun /learning/experience).
As Pete descended there was a loud noise below, as he found out his old semi-retired, bag carrying, spring crab had finally failed and dropped half of our malls down the shaft. ‘No worries’ though, I thought, as we are going down there anyway!
Found the malls in the bottom. But then we decided it was getting a bit late and we could be too near our call out time, given the slow rate at which we were rigging. So we decided to save the rest for another day and make our way out.
Whilst de-rigging the entrance pitch, not having the bag, I was bunching up rope in my hand to avoid it getting caught up in the divers ropes below. In doing so I had forgotten to unclip a cows tail. So I had to ‘down prussik’ a bit to release it – so yet another bit of experience, all good stuff LOL.
Great medium cave /shaft for rigging practice? -as we could see what the other person was doing all the way down, as the re –belays were so close together. But at our speed, a party of 2 was big enough.
Luckily it was completely dry.
We still have a lot to learn and experience to gain, but hopefully this is another step/confidence builder to help us along the way.
Footnote
There was one minor injury though. Pete pulled a muscle taking his wellie off.
see you in Derbyshire!!!