161 - Yapate - Team technical assistants
Julian Todd
Shoogled down to squeeze, hunked through, shaked into Knossus and shouted at Tower Blocks. Damage got the drill and drilled a bit and a bolt and I went for a grovel into the tight shite canyon in the dirt floor of Yapate Inlet. There's a freeclimb down at a 3 way junction of trickles which travels a bit, then goes narrow as a trash compactor - one can just about get into it, sideways, horizontal, feet first ten metres, but it doesn't get any better. Meanwhile Damage had dogged the pitch and was mumbling around in it. I followed, egged him on and made him sag the next pitch. One freeclimb later - oh not another pitch, here, Julian, you rig it. No! I do not rig pitches whatsoever. Damage was having a crisis of confidence, what with no great pillar of caving prowess such as Wookey or Jeremy on hand as a trustable expert system. No offense, he said, but I wish I was with someone who could do the rigging or say if it's OK when I'm pissed off with it, I really don't know what I'm doing.
Damage discharged the drill, the clino jammed, so we left it all and went for a brew, then a poke up a man-sized phreatic tube off left side of Chicken Flied Nice which goes for miles, well 80m.
Guess what, It ends in a pitch. Damage had left his descender at the bottom of Staircase 36 and I had a sharp stone in the back of my shreddies. Both dealt with out we went for a lovely meal with Big Paul still mourning the litre bottle of schnapps exploded all over his tent for no apparent reason.
8 hrs U/G
Previous Yapate trip / Next trip to Burble (next year)