Topic

Knowing I had to be in Ripon for 3pm on Sunday, I was eager for an early start on Sunday morning. Assuming everyone would be hung-over after the previous evening's post-AGM festivities, I had planned on a quick solo trip somewhere, but in the pub the night before Dave suggested a 7am start and a trip to Mayday Hole. As that was a new one to me and had been on my previous day's list, I jumped at it. Little did I know that he was then going to disappear to pack the ropes, recruit another willing back carrier, and find a whole derigging party for later in the day ... what a star!

And so it was that at 6:50 am on a Sunday morning, three people were heading out of the YSS and defrosting car windows. As we were changing, the sun was rising with a beautiful red sky and some time before 8am we were at the entrance. I think I spent much of the trip moaning about a few of the bolt placements and sometimes a lack of bolts too - I'm still not impressed, but would like to offer my apologies to the other two for my incessant moaning! It's not an unmissable Dales cave, but it's definitely going to quite high on the list of wet-weather caves of middling difficulty and therefore likely to be quite well used, I suspect. The bottom pitch is on a slight slant and I can't for the life of me think of another like it in the Dales. Maybe someone else can ?

We were all back on the surface by 10am and met the derigging team walking up as we were about half-way back to the car. Thank you to them for derigging and, I assume, washing all the rope. Thank you to Dave for coming to Mayday for the second time in a few weeks, and to Andy for bag carrying and generally putting up with my moans about bolts!

Rigging Team: Dave C, Andy W and Damian W
Time: 2 hrs ?

Great to have another wet weather trip.

I would know if I'd turned up but where do you park? SD 71955 71526?

The key to good rigging may well be to carry some hangers for the spits ( which are still very new). Mix and match.

iball wrote:

I would know if I'd turned up but where do you park? SD 71955 71526?
 

Yes

A couple of photos for the records:

The sunrise on the walk up to the cave.


Andy at the head of one of the pitches.

As Damian said we passed the derigging crew on the way down, they were:
Martin, Stu, Claire, James, Alex & Paul
 

Having been recruited in the Pub to join the derig team after turning down the opportunity of a 7am start.We headed over to Newby Moss and timed the walk up perfectly to meet the riggers on their walk down.Rigging seemed fine despite Damians warnings. The biggest danger is from the loose rock debris especially if dislodged by bags, a great deal of care is needed since the "below" call and sound of stones thundering down is a bit scary when you are indeed 'below'.We were down to the bottom fairly quick, Martin left first due to his long drive ahead, Paul had popped down part way as intended and turned round when he met Martin.James B left to warm up in his van having turned nesh from apparantly extravagantly having his heating on at 20 degrees constantly. Claire derigged efficiently passing bags forward to me and Alex B. We were back on the surface in around 2 hours. The views for the walk down - stunning.We had a pleasant change for February and were back at the hut so early that a couple of us had a 5 mile walk round Norber erratics in the afternoon, after a brew while washing ropes obviously.The sunset viewed from the hut car park was stunning.

You're not wrong Stuart, that is a fabulous photograph.