Topic

The night before we had a potential team of 13 for Ireby fell. By the time we had packed and were heading for the cave we had been reduced to seven (a much more reasonable number for the cave). 
Parking in Mason Gill Lane, Janis discovered that he had forgotten his helmet and so headed back to the hut to get it. Paul waited by the cars for his return, while the remaining five headed for the cave. 
Dave headed down Shadow route followed by Neil & Rob, while Ade went down Bubbles followed by Phil. 
Paul arrived back at the traverse at the beginning of Shadow route and announced that Janis was not feeling up to caving today, we were now down to six! 
Having completed Shadow route there was a good waterfall coming down Bell, which was the main reason for selecting the route. I was joined at the bottom of the pitch, first by Ade & Phil, who had come up Pussy (which was already rigged) to find us, and later by Neil, Rob and Paul. 
We then headed down Pussy and on to Well, at some point during this Rob and Neil decided to turn back (they did tell Paul), so we were then down to four. 
Well was also rigged, so we left our bag of rope there and used the in-situ rope to complete the trip to Duke Street. We all felt that we had done enough caving for the weekend and headed back out. 
Ade had some trouble finding his kit, which had been removed from Janis car before he left and was by another groups van. We then had the fun of getting four people, four bags of rope and all their kit in a small car to go back to the hut. 
Where I was unable to find my phone and had to go back to Mason Gill to find it. 

Trip time: about 4 hours. 

 

That definitely qualifies as a General Haig caving day: where attrition / casualties are significantly more than decimation (10%)!

It was a good start though: I didn't think we had 13 cavers in the YSS