plateau - Attempt to go caving
Anthony Day
After two day's festering with 11 belching farting cavers in the potato hut, team keen decided to earn some super hero points by going caving in the snow. It had stopped raining for a full hour and a half when we left base camp, but the suspiciously white hills suggested we were in for some Wintery fun. The 4" of snow which greeted us at the top of the toll road confirmed this, but the intrepid (stupid?) four slithered onwards to top camp, Phil having a particularly fun time in his denim jeans. The weather at top camp made that elsewhere on our journey look tropical - mist, a biting wind with occasional hail showers and more snow. This had contrived to make Steve's and Brian's tents a bit of a funny shape, but an hour's excavation of them and the other tents amazingly revealed no damage to them or their contents. The food bags were similarly unscathed. Then spent an hour and a half sitting around supping tea, eating Tunnocks bars and being glum. Since we managed to get cold in this time, despite there being four people and their cheesy feet sitting in one tent in coats and hats, we decided that staying the night at Top Camp would be crap and cold, especially as the weather forecast on Hurdy Gurdy FM was unpromising. So we went back to base camp and sulked. It was rubbish. Why have I driven 900 miles for weather like Leck Fell in December? trip (I hope)]