York University Cave & Pothole Club

Trip Reports

Described in NFTFH as an ‘evening trip’!!! This lead me to completely underestimate this cave in thinking that it would be similar to Jean pot, not so, turned out to be an epic in terms of strength and determination. This turned out to be horrendously difficult and extremely tight throughout. Carrying a tacklsack just made it even worse, right from the entrance, I think on the way out without Toby that tacklsack was not going to get through Bosch Rift. There were so many things that even I did not fancy, all of the right hand bends were quite difficult to negotiate, I spend most of the trip without my SRT kit on, and I even for the first time ever had to take my helmet off. In the end though I don’t think I was destroyed as much as my oversuit was in shreds, the cave rock is really sharp.

A nice thing about the cave is the complete lack of p-hanger and spits spoiling the walls (not that you would want to take any drill etc down here anyway) so it was all of natural using slings etc, which is always good fun trying to back up off whatever you can find. The second pitch is extremely tight at top, I had to attach my rack to my cows tails to get through, coming back out wasn’t much better.

University challenge at the bottom is a series of multilevel rifts that eventually gets you in the streamway, and I have to say that they are more sketchy and scary that those in Wales, due to some of the extremely exposed free climbs involved in addition to the roped. It was also very unnerving the amount of loose rocks that were easily dislodged.

It was a fine trip non-the-less though, the most difficult I’ve ever done so far and will probably seem better in a few days but I have to say that I never want to go back there ever again!!!

26th Apr 2010 Chad Bullivant

A physically and mentally demanding trip, containing mostly very tight, narrow rifts and large traverses. It required some creative rigging off natural formations (though most pitches were free climbable. Getting into the university challenge series was quite tiring and painful in places, once there the multiple layers of rifts above a streamway obscured the way on, and a large number of loose rocks made progress difficult, and no matter how carefully i moved while scouting for the way on there was the occasional disconcerting crash of rocks falling. After some rather sketchy traversing we managed to locate a chamber which resembled the description, however rigging a pitch and descending further towards the streamway we could not find the path to the sump, deciding instead to head back and take a look at the curtain formations described in the book we moved back up the university challenge rifts, I managed to find a route up to ceiling level but it was physically tiring and we were beginning to become concerned about the energy and time it would take to leave the cave, and so decided to head back.

The highlight of the return trip was the tacklesack becoming lodged in the bosch rifts, no amount of wriggling and pushing would free it, and I was unable to reach it to do more and so unclipped it from myself to allow toby to try, after about 45 minutes it was finally free (though partially unpacked) and we continued on to the exit. Having lost both my kneepads, nearly lost my knife and put the first rip in my oversuit we finally left the cave.

While at the time I couldn\'t imagine a situation I would ever want to return, I am already feeling guilty about not reaching the end, and the idea doesn\'t sound quite as bad as it did that evening.

26th Apr 2010 Marcus Roby