KH - East Anglia
Becka Lawson
The three of us were still keen for our third KH assault in three days, then Martin piped up that he wanted to come along too since Ian had bailed out to help on the Tunnocks derig. Under Ian's expert tuition we'd pretty much sussed the route finding by now (the walk to the entrance is at least as tricky). Martin mashed his fingers struggling with the 2m pitch before the Bridge - I know its all of 2 prusiks but pretty please can it get a proper rig if/when people return there? Martin wavered about heading straight back but there was a definite lack of enthusiastic volunteers to shperd him out so he was cajoled onwards. "Are we nearly there yet?" An onwards. We finally got to the down pitch (C1993-161-03) then up pitch that Wookey + Andrew had dropped then climbed yesterday. Wookey set off to descend the pitch beyond and dangled on rope for several hours squealing exitedly that drills were excellent gear. He ran out of rope 50m down then he and Martin derigged and surveyed out. Meanwhile Andrew and I started our survey from yesterday's down pitch and up to the head of Wookey's pitch and down a small horizontal passage which eventually mud-filled. The place is stuffed with pitches - the initial down pitch at C1993-161-03 continues large and deep below two huge wedged boulders where we got off to climb up. There's also a pitch to the right of Wookey's over a rok spur, though this might connect to Wookey's. However, spurning these obvious downs Andrew spied a traverse/climb up the rock spur "The Natural Ways", made significantly trickier because he could only use the right side of the arrete as the others were directly below him. After quite some time he shouted he'd got to the top and then I was left babysitting the rope whilst he had a swift scoop to check it was worth me coming up! It was...
The traverse is well-rigged on naturals though a couple of spits at the top would be good. It tops out at a ledge with a pitch beyond that, again, likely connects to Wookey's pitch. However, far more interesting a final step led into wide walking/stooping phreatic passage. We whizzzed a survey up until it was 7pm and time to go home. Back to chivvy MArtin and Wookey out and tyo pack up the mounds of gear and derig what we could. Hard work until Repton where we dumped much of the gear ready for the 11/08/09 trip then poor Martin was flaging so a slow exit in the early hours and finally back to camp at 3am. Fortunately we'd already planned on taking the next day off.
T/U 15hrs.
Wook: pitch notes: "6 Mile Bottom". Initial clean pitch of 11m to sundy shelf. Window into big rift - 10x5m. Bolt in centre of rift. About 12m down shaft on West, wall has a couple of passages. Can take survey onto here before lower rebelay put in - needs bolt to retain rope! Reelay 10m off the floor. Continues in fine form at the bottom - next bit is 14m, then more. Very reminiscent of Gaffered series - QMA.