Report by Sam Townsend
Cavers: Sam Townsend
(EPC), Rob Eavis (SUSS)
Having had a
quick bosch round Dr Jackson's the week
before, my appetite had been whetted for a return trip - with several
objectives. Primarily to have a go at the connection with Perryfoot as
recommended by TPot. If that went well - then a quick jaunt round
Perryfoot,
seemed fitting, taking in the Iron Maiden if possible. And finally -
given time
a quick look at the digs and leads in Dr Jackson's, again mentioned by
T pot.
Time was relatively
short for what seemed like
a fairly full itinerary. Young Rob Eavis of SUSS accompanied me having
survived
my driving on the way.
We set off at
9:30am - with a call out time of 2pm (as
that was the time I was meant to arrive at my desk for work!!). The
cave had
been bone dry the week before after a prolonged dry spell we've been
enjoying.
However, dark and menacing clouds were looming over Rushup Edge and it
began to
rain lightly as we walked to the entrance. I'd checked the weather
forecast just
on my way out, and this rain was indeed forecast - but only meant to be
very
light. Dr Jackson's is not a place to be caught out in wet weather.
The connection had
been described to me by
Tpot as....
"Go down the
entrance boulder choke & follow
anvil passage to a T junction. At the T junction hang a left towards
Yoga hole
& just before the kink in the passage there is a left turn, follow
this,
take a right & follow the draft & eventually you will come to
the bottom
of a mud filled 30 degree rift, now the trick is to thrutch, stand on
yer mates
head n grab wot u can to come out of it at the top (best of luck cos
its f****n
tight this is where you realise you're in Perryfoot Cave"
I'd worn a
wetsuit in the hope that the smooth profile was
going to aid progress. We found the obvious passage on the left, dumped
the bag,
helmet off and I headed in. It was small and restricted - but I made
steady
progress - passing a couple of places that I knew I could turn round.
Rob was
right behind me all the way. As T described - it went in - then right,
but I
arrived at a junction not described by Tpot. Straight on or left , left
was
bigger and there was evidence of where the protruding rocks had been
hammered to
enlarge so I wriggled on that way. Again - arrived at another junction,
3 ways
on. One way was up, a rift which looked mightily tight. then the other
was dead
ahead, but this required moving some rocks which looked like they'd
come down
from the rift above. Finally right, which looked like it would go but
was
committing as it required a wriggle around these fallen rocks. It also
draughted
like mad - which was the main deciding factor given that Tpots
description was
to follow the draught. In
I
went. I think it was here that I found a 5 foot length of wood - god
knows how
it got there, but it came in handy for digging out the whaleback of
gravel up
ahead which looked like it would hinder progress. Once I'd broken that
up, I
pushed on, pushing the now loose gravel in front of out of the way.
this was
possibly the tightest bit - but at least it was straight. I was glad of
my close
fitting wetsuit at this point. Things soon eased and I quickly arrived
at a
muddy rift where I could stand up. "By eck -
tha's cracked it yoof" I said as I started to climb (hoping that the
exit
wasn't some hideous squeeze). The climb was relatively straight
forward, if your
a fan of muddy greasy slippy squirmy "use 'owt on which you can gain
purchase on" type climbs (yummy - my favourite) . Before I knew it we
popped out in a nice sized passage that must have been perryfoot. It
wasn't that
bad Tpot !! - especially for midgets like me and Rob. ( Warning - do
not attempt
this if there is any sign that it might rain, it all looks like it
sumps, and
you're not going anywhere in a hurry.)
Right, stage one
completed and we'd not even been half an
hour. So which way to go. Left draughted strongly in towards us. From
my brief
read of the description, I'd got Perryfoot down as a circular route and
that
we'd be coming into it somewhere on the top route, so I reckoned right
would
take us along to Boulder Chamber. Right it was. and we soon arrived at
a
junction with a rusty car jack. Right again down a muddy crawl. (I
didn't
remember many side passages on the survey so it seemed sensible that if
we kept
going right we'd get there in the end). I should have known it was a
dead end
when we crawled over a kibble and soon enough it ended in a muddy dig.
Back to
the car jack. Our
wetsuits where
now covered in slimy clay which made downhill progress rather exciting
and
uphill progress somewhat tiring. We seemed to just keep hitting dead
ends -
either sumps - or muddy tubes filled to the roof. We arrived at one
chamber
which could have been Boulder Chamber (there was a large clean boulder
lay in
the middle of the passage, and an iron bar that pointed up to the way
we'd come.
This chamber is meant to contain a sump with concrete dams - and the
route back
out via the Iron Maiden). However, right lead to a sump - but no
concrete dams
and left lead also to a sump. This one looked like a rather mean duck,
It looked
tight - and when I felt forward, it got deeper and wider under the
water but a
large lump of rock sat on the bottom seemed like it would hinder any
attempt. It
looked more menacing than the Chamber of Horrors in Giants so it cant
have been
the way on. There was defiantly no other way so back the way we came
then. We
ended up in another area (can't remember quite where) but it had a
couple of
large bee hive slopes that had been under cut and washed out
underneath. I ended
up head first under them - but they too were blind. Once
back at the rusty car jack - we followed the strong draught - which
brought us
to the delicate climb down as described in the book. Here a large tyre
provides
a nice foothold. The way out was obvious, to the left. so the way on
and to the
Iron Maiden must have been to the right. Off we went. We
went though a low cobbled arch (The Rack) to a junction. Up the slope
to the
right and round a u turn was a sump pool and black plastic pipe. I
didn't look
too closely and we pushed on along the main passage. I remember
dropping over an
interesting castellated wall that looked like ginging - but was in fact
natural.
Eventually we got to a very tight turn to the right up though a slot,
then down.
at the bottom it turned under itself to the left again which rob rather
bravely
got down. He disappeared under me, and I followed. he announced that it
just go
too small to continue. We just managed to turn round and headed back up
the
squeeze. It was time to give up. We headed out. On the way, I had
another look
at the sump with the black plastic pipe. On closer inspection - it
looked like
it had air space and was just a pool. However - we still had a trip
down Dr
Jackson's to look forward to so we headed out into the daylight. At
least it had
stopped raining.
Dr Jackson's was
uneventful. It only took a couple of
attempts by Rob to figure out Yoga hole (well I wasn't going to let on)
. At the
inclined rift, I had a close look at the static sump that sits at the
end of the
crawl on the right. It looks very interesting. Nice and clean, unlike
most of
the sumps in the area which resemble mud baths as soon as they are
disturbed. It
could well be another candidate for a syphoning project. We rigged the
first
pitch, easy when you know how. and just took a belt and cowstails for
the
traverses over the rock bridge and the chasm. We
had a climb up the rift in the final chamber, it is draughty, but no
sign of the
rubble and miners shot holes that T Pot talked of. We could have
climbed higher
I guess. We raced out
and into
the glorious warm sunshine. Passing two very bemused looking Telecom
engineers
up a telegraph post, we produced the usual comments, "is this Buxton",
"what day is it".
I think Rob
enjoyed the trip. Its a nice and varied cave.
Not exactly full of pretties - but certainly 'sporting'.
Top
|
