161 - France
Pete Lord
THE END !
Too much caving led to the pushing front from last year - Titfield Thunderbolt. We soon found that my impressions from last time were right and that the new bit of cave I'd found was too wet, too tight & too awful. Julian descended, ignored my shit spit, and found pitch "Attempted Penetration" - about 25m down to v. loose boulder slope "Disintegration". Character of cave now changed from huge chambers, big pitches etc. to classic (ie. awful) rift/water development. After boulder slope, another short pitch - Fat Knot Fruity, due to epic(ish) large knot led to a short pitch to what we thought was a sump - rigged off robust threads, hence "Natural Deception". Unfortunately this gave onto a short boulder slope into an absolutely typical Yorkshire streamway (in 161 ?) - cascades, pools, the works. This terminated in a ~20m pitch crapply rigged on 4 traverse bolts with much rubbing, into a small chamber which appeared to go underneath a fallen boulder. Thankfully the streamway quickly led to an awful tight sump at ~-450m. Much prussiking remained to exit; everyone was too fed up and had no gear to commence the survey.