Cave 2005-04 - and Cave 2005-05
Dave
After a magisterial faff I led S+S to the new holes, via 204D (which is a terrible route, utterly hopeless). I showed Sarah how to put in a bolt for the 2005-05 tag while Stuart descended. Being more adventurous, or less sensible, than I, he got further than I, descending the right-hand passage at the bottom to reach another pitch with conservation tape at the bottom!
Before surveying this, S+S went to survey the other hole (2005-04), while I walked back to the bivvy for my caving gear. On returning I went down to meet them on the ledge by the horizontal side series, and I left them to survey that while I went down to the pitch I had seen on the previous trip to bolt it properly. And at the bottom was more tape!
I prusiked back up to meet S+S warming up on the surface, and I went back to bolt 05 while the finished the survey of 04. Ran out of rope at a rebelay bolt form which I could have descended to the floor. Waited for S+S before walking back via 2004-18. View of sunset across plateau from by the entrances is absolutely gorgeous.
It was pretty wet, so we decided the 1970s route + Keg Series might well be really wet + nasty so headed for BNW instead. On the last 1970s route trip we had taken half a dozen of our hangers back out for such an eventuality. Unfortunately Dave had carried them up to 204 by mistake. We found we had a clown, a twist with no bolt and a home-made 1970s hanger with no bolt rescued from 99 earlier. Then we found a bag of bolts and things looked up. I derigged 4 "non-essential" hangers on the way in as well. We carried the drill + a 39m rope into BNW and I looked at QM 04-19B first. We had run out of decent slings so the rope was attached to a boulder by two retired cowstails. This concentrated my mind on not falling off. I traversed across the pitch (QM 04-18A) which actually looked quite pleasant and on, the roof tube QM 04-20C reconnects trivially here, and the passage continues, gets low, then reaches another pitch (~2s drop). I traversed back, whimpering a bit at the shit belay and the distance I was horizontally from it. I then bolted a Y-hang to descend 04-18 A. Olly took over setting the second bolt as I am crap at hammering. It was a lovely free hanging 20m pitch, landing in a pleasant rift passage, gradually descended for ~30m until it reached another pitch (~30m deep). This turned out to be halfway down the big pitch from the Four Ways junction; thus Olly named the passage Pleasant but Pointless. We surveyed back along the top, and Olly started to bolt across the Four Ways junction pitch to QM 04-23A until we got cold + tired + went out.