Link -
Sunday 28th October 2007
Present, Tony & Sooty
Sooty wanted to take advantage of Amy being away for a fortnight and get some caving in but everyone except Tony cried off with a feeble excuse. So it was just the ‘dream team’ that attempted the ‘classic’ through trip.
GPS in hand (remembering the last Link pot escapade) we trekked across the moor to find the Beck in full flood following a night of heavy rain. Worries about flooding in the wet crawl were quickly put aside as we rigged and descended the entrance shaft then ditched the unnecessary SRT gear.
The large entrance chamber quickly gave way to a muddy crawl as we headed towards the mistral connection with a quick consultation of the survey to check we were heading in the correct direction. Making quick progress we soon arrived at the wet wallows, a flat out crawl over cobbles, which thankfully did not contain too much water.
It was about this point that Sooty informed Tony that both times he’d done this trip previously he swore never to do it again. Tony swore a bit more.
The muddy wallows were the final possible stumbling block in our making the connection but they were also surprisingly empty given the volume of rain over the previous few days.
It was here that Sooty decided to unzip his wetsuit in order to facilitate Urination. Zipping it back up however, proved to be more of a problem. The Zip just wouldn’t budge. Tony joined in for the brute force approach but to no avail. The jacket was stripped off for closer examination, which revealed a stray frayed thread jamming the zip. Thread chewed off the wetsuit was once again in full working order and it was just a short crawl to dusty junction, which was reached in record time.
From Dusty Junction a quick side trip was made to look at red wall and White wall chambers but following the latter the crawl got a bit low and we turned back.
Following another branch from Dusty Junction we headed down to the Hall of The Ten where we climbed down through boulders to reach the excellent Pippikin streamway. This was followed until we were finally stopped by the last pitch of pippikin pot. On the way back a couple of side passages were explored, one of which contained some fine helictites.
From here all that was left was the quick exit through Mistral to haul our gear out of Link pot then back to Bull Pot farm for a nice warm shower.
A pint and a meal in the Marton Arms, where Tony bored Sooty with Baby talk, provided a fine conclusion to the day.
Sooty