204 - Vague Wanderings in 204
Phil
Having finally walked up the hill, I decided that an easy trip would be in order. So I gladly accepted Olly + Sarah's invitation to go & push some "C" leads in Swings + Roundabouts. A prompt set-off saw us underground at noon. After a brief argument with 204e, I found myself travelling down Crowning Glory passage. Here, Sarah + Olly played in the oxbows. And then we went on. Olly climbed up the crazy, crazy climb in the aven just west of Treeumphant south of the junction with Crowning Glory. Olly got a good 10-15m up before he declared it a bit airy and came down. And then we went on to Magic Roundabout. Went up Ermintrude, and by the survey notes we have, got a good 2m further up the passage. At this point, Sarah found a tight vertical squeeze, and forced herself into it. At this point, my memory becomes clouded by the mists of hypothermia. I seem to remember Sarah screaming & ranting 'cos she couldn't get any further. I explained that I was (a) cold and (b) definitely not going up the bit Sarah got stuck in.
And then we went on to South Circular, where we sent an Olly up the horrific boulder slope that is QM 01-94 B. This gets too tight after ~10m. QM killed! Hurrah! DOES NOT GO! And then we went on to QM 01-85 C. This appears to be an ox-bow on the west wall of Swings & Roundabouts. But it isn't. Leads to a funnel-shaped hole which leads via an easy climb/corkscrew into some phreas. This rapidly degenerates to a faintly tight 2s drop. Needs a rope.
Went to have a look at 01-84 C. Got distracted by the huge hole in the floor (01-92). Lots of hanging death here, so we kicked some of it down. It went BOOM. Quite a long way down then. Pitch now looks in a reasonable state to be dropped. Nice natural spike (big!) on south side of pitch.
And then we went back to 204e and prusiked out. Unfortunately, Sarah forgot to unclip her cowstails after passing the re-belay, and got severely strung-up at the following deviation (see diagram). Cue more screaming + ranting. And so I prusiked up to the rebelay and put my weight on that (rather than the rope) allowing Sarah another 4" of slack, allowing her to escape. What a hero, eh! Emerged to find Earl off on a solo mission to Cresta Run to get his gear.
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