 |
Report by Jules Barrett
I'd heard bits about
recent extensions to Waterways
Swallet over the last year but never been in it. I had a vague idea
that a lot
of new cave had been found by the Keyhole Caving Club and that there
was a lot
of scaffolding involved. As an Eldon member it's obligatory to get
excited and
rub your thighs about scaffolding. It was typical that when I asked
around at an
Eldon meeting nobody remarked on the size of the chambers or anything
like that.
Apparently the 'scaff work' was excellent though.
There's a sump at the bottom of Waterways and A Diver (this is
CDG-speak I'm
using) had taken two diving cylinders to the bottom of the cave about
twelve
months ago with the intention of diving the sump at the lowest point of
the
system. Since I owed The Diver a favour and quite fancied an easy jaunt
into a
new cave I offered to retrieve them. Col hadn't been down (or heard of)
Waterways but since we now had a good reason to make the effort we
planned a
trip. Prior to the trip Andy Foster of the Keyhole Caving Club kindly
fielded a
few questions. I had a (typically vague) description from The Diver
which talked
about the cylinders being hidden under a pile of rocks in a choke near
the
bottom of a ladder. Armed with this limited information, a grid
reference, an OS
map and a copy of the survey we ventured south of Castleton.
The first thing I noticed on arriving at the parking was that the
beautiful
survey that I had downloaded from the Keyhole Caving Club's website
only covered
the extensions. We hoped that the route to the extensions was
straightforward.
We found the entrance with very little trouble and looked into a hole
that had
something of Stoney Middleton about it; being small, tight and hot. We
climbed
in and followed the obvious route steeply down dip to the small first
chamber. A
couple more climbs down and a scramble across a sloping bedding leads
to more
small climbs into the large Main Chamber. This is very impressive with
a boulder
floor and a few passages going off. An easy climb down leads to the
Rift Passage
(we learnt later) which leads to The Gallery where the Keyhole
extensions begin.
From here the route is down through a boulder choke of impressive
proportions.
The route is tight, pretty tortuous and mainly straight down. No
connoiseur of
underground scaffolding could fail to be impressed by the extent of the
work
that has gone in here but I did wonder how we were going to get the
cylinders
through. We followed the route down past The Doghouse and emerged at
the top of
a fixed ladder. After some discussion we decided that this must be
Floodgate Pot
and carried on down into larger passage which led to another choke.
This section
is fairly strenuous and leads to the top of another short pitch with a
handline
on it. By this stage I didn't fancy finding the cylinders but we
continued
hoping that we were in the wrong cave. All of a sudden, things started
to look
worryingly like The Diver's description. I looked down the first
obvious hole
and was dismayed to find a line reel. Below the line reel I could see
the
cylinders. Col tried to hide the anguish on his face as I passed them
up to him.
I spent a while carefully tying on some cord to use as a carrying
handle and
gave him a quick pep talk about carrying cylinders which majored on
flying metal
dust caps, embolisms and the results of dropping a cylinder of high
pressure air
down a pitch. I'd not had any experience of any of this but didn't
think it
would enhance our afternoon.
We set off up the handline carefully mauling the cylinders between us.
They're
not light and man-handling them vertically up through the choke was
hard work.
Whenever I'm carrying cylinders I'm haunted by the fact that each one
contains
roughly the same energy as 400g of high explosive. I pointed this out
to Col
whilst he had two of them between his legs and clambered over them. He
said he'd
bear that in mind and clambered carefully. We emerged struggling at the
bottom
of the metal ladder and climbed up that and into the next choke.
Generally
things went, Col climbs up - Jules passes up the bottles - Col places
them above
him in the boulder choke - Col realises that he now can't move anywhere
so
passes them back to Jules - Jules holds them whilst Col finds somewhere
else for
them - continue.... A fair bit of swearing got us up to the Main
Chamber and we
had a rest there and contemplated how much effort the diggers must have
put in.
We were happy with the progress that we were making but weren't exactly
moving
fast. The cave goes a bit more horizontal here and we slowly made our
way out.
We exited about three and a half hours after we entered and went for a
cup of
tea in Ashbourne.
Waterways Swallet is a very interesting cave. The steeply dipping beds
remind me
of Mendip and there aren't many caves in Derbyshire that gain depth so
quickly.
I didn't see much Stal but we weren't really looking for it; the
chambers and
boulder chokes are impressive. There are flooding issues to be aware of
and I'd
suggest that the boulder chokes need ALOT of care. Remember that it's
an
on-going dig. The Keyhole Caving Club know lots more about the place
than I do.
For information about the Keyhole Caving Club extensions to Waterways
Swallet
see: http://www.keyhole.org.uk/
where you can find photographs and an up-to-date survey.
Top
|
|
