Topic

On a late sunny afternoon (20/4/16) myself and Shezi revisited Aquamole this time armed with rope. Last time we came we had no rope and were disheartened to find the divers ropes had been removed. Someone must be taking the Michael because when we got there sweltering from our hot walk carrying 85m of rope the divers ropes had been put back in lol.
We decided to use our own rope so with Shezi rigging she lead the trip and I followed. Entry is via a man made shaft which is about 5/6 metres then you land on a ledge and that's the start of the first of many re-belays in a 50/60 metre pitch. There is re-belay after re-belay so this is a great cave to practise in. The re-belays are relatively straight forward with either a ledge to stand on or footholds that you can use. Each section of the cave felt quite cozy, a bit snug in places but it was pleasant enough. I was feeling positive and in good spirits until...(of course there is a but...it's me Bernard)...
I got to the top of the forth (?) re-belay and waited for Shezi to shout rope free. But instead of shouting rope free she kindly told me that rope had run a few metres short of the ground! Despite following the rigging guide and taking 5m extra of rope it was a few metres out. This meant after a bit of skilled action from Shezi me for the first time in a cave having a go at a knot pass. Well...all I can say is I now have experience of being hung up on a rope albeit a few metres from the floor with my circulation feeling like it was being cut off from my leg straps. I really wish I had a camera for this next bit because I'm not sure you will believe me. Put it this way...the positions I got myself in with Shezi...I ended up feeling like I had cheated on my partner Sam (shhhh hopefully he won't read this). Without going into too much detail about the experience I basically got hung up because I put my hand jammer too bloody high and I couldn't get it off no matter what I or we did. But my god we did try. The image I will never forget is Shezi building some rocks on top of each other so I could get a bit of height, when this didn't work we resorted to Shezi standing up as tall as she could with me raising my leg as high as I possibly could and resting my inner thigh on her shoulder (this was two thighs at one point). You know, it's amazing how flexible you can suddenly become in these situations. As for where my other bits were...all I can say is poor Shezi. Anyway to cut a longer story short I got out of it. Who says caves are cold? I was ruddy boiling after this lol.
We then made our way out and de briefed and laughed off our peculiar rude looking positions. A very valuable learning experience and a brilliant trip for practise.
Trip time: 4 hours. Michele and Shezi.

Best thing to do if your hand jammer is too high up, put your foot jammer on the rope and stand up to get it before lowering it down. Either that or forget it and simply put your chest jammer back on and go back up.

My advise is don't underestimate your foot jammer, as although its not safety gear it can get you out of tricky situations and prevents needless expenditure of your own strength.

Your other option is to unscrew it and leave it, if situation is desperate (so you should always have a backup like a mini-traxon and have your hand jammer on a screw gate - this also makes difficult traverses easier as you have a 3rd cows tail and something to stand in when ledges are lacking).

Cheers for this Alex much appreciated. Def going to.be purchasing some new gear.

My advice is to ignore all Alex's and avoid the problem every happening in the first place by making sure your safety cord (or whatever you call it) is the right length ... i.e. short enough that you can always get yourself back up when hanging from it. If you can't, you're potentially in a major mess (as you have proven). There's quite a lot to be said for carrying some string you can use as a prusik loop (and knowing how to use it) too.

Ignore all of mine? Really so you would not have your hand jammer on a crab then rather than tied in? You would not recommended wearing a pantin to make the awkward manoeuvres easier. Thanks Damian, nice to know my opinion is valued! I will keep my mouth shut in future then as I obviously don't know what I am talking about.

haha, Alex you make me chuckle, Damian is promoting prevention rather than cure, get your kit right so you don't get in a pickle and you don't need the advice you gave on how to get out of a pickle.

Generally I wouldn't be wearing a foot jammer when abseiling into a cave. If you've weighted your handjammer security link and can't disengage it, then the krab conecting to your handjammer might be loaded with your weight and undoing it wouldn't be the easiest manoeuvre. If you do have a krab as your connection to the hand jammer, with the intent to use on traverses then a screwgate is better than a snap gate and you should probably alter the length of the link if you are adding extra length into it.

UkC discussion on a fatal accident in Switzerland where a snapgate clipped into a snapgate resulted in a fatal fall when a slip loaded the snapgates against their gates and came unclipped. A similar way to a snapgate coming unclipped if used wrongly on a pbolt.

Fatal accident with snapgates

P Bolt and cowstail warning

I find that a lot of situations in srt are made far simpler if you consider/refresh in your mind what you are going to before you arrive at an obstacle.

Also practice helps, being a cheapskate and tying all my short ropes together rather than buy a longer one means I've done a large amount of knot passes recently!

No one really likes to admit to making a mistake and so I applaud Michelle for posting and asking for a little advice

No one really likes to admit to making a mistake

....because we never do any mistakes!

Sorry, Alex. I wasn't trying to rubbish what you were saying. As Ian says, I was trying to suggest that the problem shouldn't actually happen in the first place and can be completely avoided.

Since you asked ...

Really so you would not have your hand jammer on a crab then rather than tied in?

Assuming this refers to the safety cord connection to the central maillons, as it happens, no ... I don't.

You would not recommended wearing a pantin to make the awkward manoeuvres easier.

As it happens, again, no. If you happen to have a pantin, great, but I wouldn't recommend buying one just incase ... you can actually stand up in a loop of rope with no gear at all, for example. Alternatively a prussik loop will do the same job, is more versatile, takes up less space and is cheaper.

I will keep my mouth shut in future then as I obviously don't know what I am talking about.

Please don't ... genuinely. As most people know, there is nothing that makes me happier than people talking about "what if" scenarios and general technical stuff. Keep going. It's me who needs to be more careful of my tone, I reckon!

Sorry I over-reacted a little it was just you said ignore all my advice, but i thought my advice would still be useful if it did happen. You are correct avoiding it in the first place is the best course of action, but we are human and mistakes do happen, especially at the end of a long hard trip.

I personally thought everyone had a pantin nowadays, I find it ever-so-useful. Although I normally don't have it on my foot on the way down a pitch, it's on a gear loop ready for action should I need/want it. I know how to tie prussic loops and I have even used them once or twice (outside of caving), I just don't trust them because I am not a climber and its not something I am used to. A prussic loop would not be my go to thing if I have other gear that will do.

May I ask why you don't recommend it being on a crab? I was told from a very early time its best to be on a crab so you can be easier rescued should things go pair shaped as well as the advantage I listed above? One obvious draw back is you may not have screwed it up, but that's why my crabs have red paint on them so I can see if I have been a numpty.

By the way Ian I was referring to a screw-gate sorry if I did not make that clear, I have only use it on traverses as a loop to stand in, not as safety equipment anyway. It was something I learnt in UWFRA as traversed across the ceiling at lion equipment. I always still got my cows tails for safety on a separate rope to my hand jammer (so effectively on those odd occasions I have 3 cows tails).

A lot of this is most useful energy saving, for those big trips abroad. I am especially keen for any other tips as I am going down Berger in a few months, with Shezi and others.

alexr wrote:

May I ask why you don't recommend it being on a crab? I was told from a very early time its best to be on a crab so you can be easier rescued should things go pair shaped as well as the advantage I listed above?

Basically I don't believe the benefits outweigh the potential drawbacks. If the safety cord is loaded, then you can't get the krab off the central maillon anyway, so that's not a benefit. If it isn't loaded, it's almost as easy to untie the knot. As far as rescue is concerned, personally I don't use any techniques which involve removing either my or my casualty's safety cord from their central maillon, so that's no benefit. So the only real benefit is slightly reducing the time taken to remove the safety cord ... which I generally only do when not on the rope anyway.
As far as the drawbacks are concerned, there is a concern over cross-gate loading, just at the moment when you find yourself falling onto a jammer (although the badly-loaded krab and the jammer will probably fail at similarly low loads anyway). There is also the danger of the gate coming undone and the safety cord not being connected. Finally - my greatest concern - is the fact that the krab has the potential to slowly undo my Central Maillon.

A lot of this is most useful energy saving, for those big trips abroad. I am especially keen for any other tips as I am going down Berger in a few months, with Shezi and others.

The best way to save energy on ropes is definitely to be technically efficient, so that, for example, a rebelay on ascent is completed in one swift manoeuvre with very little time spent using arms to keep stable while moving the croll.

Frantic messaging too and fro for once resulted in a plan. The date was set and the bell rung for Round 2.

In the red corner, M.Fawcett (Leeds)

In the blue corner, A-Mole Hole (Kingdsale)

I eagerly took the opportunity to be in Michelle's corner, the red team consisted of Michelle, Shezi and I. Meeting up in a rainy Leeds on the Uni campus I was stunned by the number of fit, young, brainy people, sticking dead leaves in their mouth and setting fire to them, I was stood out of the rain which unfortunately coupled me with the posse of puffers before Team Boss Michelle arrived to give me an excuse to dash down the steps of the rather special Parkinson Building into the team wagon.

We set off in the afternoon traffic of damp coatless school kids and speed demon bus drivers, and it felt like we were making slow progress as the minutes ticked away. I'd booked two singles on the train as it was £5 cheaper, always a risky action plan but it's only Aquamole.

A cheery drive of caving tales saw us to Settle and following the diversions for the Tour De Yorkshire we were at the school house to pack rope. My thinking it was a quick trip soon evaporated as the rope bags filled up, lots of rope was going in the bags! I'd brought as many krabs as I had to try and speed up proceedings and soon we were off to Kingsdale and trooping up the hill and making good time. The hills were covered with frozen snow, it made for cold toes yet boiling heads as wrapped up in balaclavas and many layers I was slowly cooking myself trying to keep up with the pace set by Shezi.

The top of the hill was a windy place, the trees of Jingling led us to Aquamole and Shezi started rigging down the man made entry tube which is rather ugly in such a beautiful place. Michelle set off into the Earth and I stayed huddled out of the wind nearby, I was wearing gloves which are far more fingerless than when I bought them and the tips of a few of my digits were a deepish red and complaining about the cold.

The entrance series of Aquamole; the no doubt aptly named Rabbits Graveyard, is a little snug in places with bolts everywhere you look. A certain famous cave diver is working down there and leaves a rope for most of the pitches but we were happy to rig our own, practice makes perfect. Shezi was down as far as the 4th or 5th rebelay, which should have seen us off the rope at the bottom, but in a moment of deja vu for my two team mates, the rope was short on the pitch. Rather than battle with the knot pass once again, we moved the first rope/second rope join from one bolt to the next which gave enough slack, once fed through the knots lower down, to just reach the floor, the information sticker on the end of the rope was brushing the floor once I was off on the bottom.

We were really pushing things now, 2 and a half hours till my train was setting off from Leeds, we might as well crack on, no way I'll make that but after making hard work of the crawl section between the first and 2nd pitch, I was trying hard not to touch the water, knowing we'd get a drenching on the bottom pitch and also probably a freezing on the way down the hill, soaking wet in an icy wind, my interest started to wane and I turned back. I travelled probably 20 metres before Michelle caught me up, fantastic at crawling I certainly am not.

Many rebelays on the way back made for slow progress, and I tried to make things harder for Michelle by inanely chattering at her each time she arrived at a rebelay, I was there for moral support and should a word of advice be needed, but it wasn't, Michelle made light work of the significant ropework and made me feel a little foolish for underestimating her caving standard.

I arrived back at the man made chute and set off instantly wishing that I hadn't. The whistling draught was icy indeed, I jammed my rope bag across the chute above me to try and deflect the wind around my neck. There was no point in getting out too soon, with 3 of us on the trip, there would be a fair while between me exiting the pitch head and Shezi derigging it, but being inherently lazy, I decided not to back pruissik a few metres to get out the draught and just be patient, Michelle was close behind me, so it wouldn't be too long. Although it was very cold above ground the wind had dropped and once out we said a brief hello to the cavers who were coming out of Jingling Pot; 2 groups down Jingling, one down Bull Pot and us down Aquamole! Thursday night is the new Saturday it would seem.

Despite not reaching the bottom of Aquamole Aven, no exhausting midrope shenanigans made for a successful trip, so it's:

Decider TBC

BOOM

Very enjoyable trip. Thank you guys huge smile on my face

Looking at number of visits, YSS should consider leaving this rigged permanently

If the weather is against you and that other trip isn't a goer at the weekend then fancy rigging it for us?

I've been there three times and I think that it's enough You should give it a rest, there is too much to do in the Dales and keep this for bad weather!