Cherry Tree Hole - 22 January 2006

 

 

Cavers:

Sooty, Tim and Tony

 

Tim received a phone call at 6-50am from Paul saying that he was unable to attend so a change of venue from Flood Entrance to Cherry Tree was formulated by Tim and Sooty.

 

Sooty’s new GPS thing was used to navigate to the dales (as if I’d never been there before…)

 

A nice brekkie in the “Naked man Café” in Settle with Tony was done with very interesting conversations…

 

Then off to Cherry Tree, Tony laughed about us with Durham Uni taking 1 ½ hours in the field to find the hole 12 years ago.

Soon history was repeating itself (despite the GPS device), however it only took us ½ hour this time…

 

(The grid reference in Northern Caves (my edition published 1979, ie. pre GPS) was a bit out. For future reference it is 88167 70344. (OK  it’s only 87m out and well within the acceptable error of a 6 figure grid reference but it’s in a different field)) - Sooty

 

The new entrance was easy to abseil down and we had lots of fun trying to find the way on from the bottom. At one point both Sooty and Tim were stuck in 2 different bits of the cave and Tony didn’t know which guy to pull out first (oo-er!!!)

The way on through the figure of 8 passage was found {insert photo} and a pleasant trip ensued.  Tony really enjoyed the low wet sections..{INSERT PHOTO!} and somehow managed to stay dry (but we did refuse to do the really low section…and turned the trip)

We did both the upstream and downstream sections and, via getting lost!, the North passage.

 

A return is planned in dry weather.

 

The climb out was fine except for Tim getting the bottom of the rope stuck.

 

On the way back to the car (for a very cold change) we spoke to a guy with his Hawk and heard about him hunting for rabbits.

 

Tim and Sooty then went off to the pub in Settle for a pint and a few games of pool (Tim won 3-0!!!) (jammy B******)

 

A grand day out was had by all.

 

Tim

 

The sheep considered the possibility of hot wiring Tony’s 911