Homecoming - Watershed Murder Camp
Todd Rye
I was so excited to go back into Homecoming after six years, and Harry promised caverns measureless down Watershed. A camp was needed to make it more pleasant, so off we went with sleeping bags and mats. Faff ensued, with Aila breaking her toe at Garlic, and us having picked the wrong sleeping bag up, We got underground at middayish in the end.
The entrance series flew by, and I was having a great time reminiscing. Soon we headed up the small pitch into Propane Nightmares, and pressed on through the crawling (I had been promised minimal crawling), down and up some pitches and climbs, until we got to a patch of mud (I had also been promised no mud.) Not long after this, we got to Strained by Gravity.
At the bottom of this epic pitch series, I saw Harry and Ailas lights disappear down a passage, so I headed to it, finding a traverse that Aila would not have done without loud complaining, so I turned back. Chi told me that the way on was down below, so I opted to climb down an alternate way. Suddenly, my head was below my feet, and I tumbled 3m down a climb, landing on a bouldery floor. A distinct amount of swearing occurred whilst I tried to figure out what was broken. Chi rounded a corner at speed, highly concerned about my wellbeing. Rescue from here would not be fun. Although I was in a not insignificant amount of pain, nothing seemed to be broken, Chi fed me some sweets, and we pressed on.
The traverses were alright for my long legs, but Ailas short legs didn't enjoy them at all. We soon got to Camp, and set up the tent and sleeping bags. It was less than ideal, but we could squeeze in four. Then it was back up the pitch to start down Flowstone Canyon (thrutchy and awkward), Alpine Showers (traversy and awkward) and down some pitches (with awkward pitchheads) to the pushing front.
Chi set about bolting a traverse whilst Harry, Aila and I got the surveying kit out, finding a numbered station. The disto was produced, and I started to get ready to shoot the first leg, but noticed that the Disto was in calibration mode. Shit. We tried to get it into the proper mode but nothing we did worked. Double shit.
We deliberated on what to do, and finally settled on scooping and then coming back to survey at a later date. Aila was trained in surveying, with Harry showing her how to take notes, and me making up numbers, leading to a very odd cave. Chi dropped a pitch, which I followed him down, but the bottom led to more pitch, so Aila and I decided to head to camp. It was a long slog back to camp, and we arrived at 2330. Some pasta was had, and we turned in. Harry and Chi came back at 0100, and told us they'd dropped some more pitches and killed the lead. Arse. All that for nothing.
The next morning, we slowly got ready, dismantling camp. It was going to be a long slog up, and starting on the traverses was a tiring way to start. Strained by Gravity went by vaguely quickly, and soon we stopped to fill up bottles and have noodles. We got up the entrance series relatively quickly and exited finally around 1730 on the 28th. Not the best trip, but no one died. I'm sure there will be other trip reports for this trip.