Tunnocks, looking for the Penguins
Tue 07 Aug 2012
Olaf Kähler
After the rather damp trip the day before, I rather wanted a slack, short one, and decided to visit Tunnocks for a change. Ian and Hannah set off ahead of us and took along some rope for Caramel Catharsis. We followed a while later. We met again after the traverse line down the sloped entrance passages, where we interchanged bags and Ian and Hannah went out again. I rigged the first little traverse before Caramel Catharsis, Rob did the rest of the rigging. Then the route-finding problems started. We got to the cobbly slope and Y-key-key Beach, after a quick detour decided to go left, then took the next passage steeply up to what Rob believed to remember being called Starfish junction. By elimination, we eventually concluded that the passage with the triangular bit of tape was not the one we were looking for, but rather turned rightish. After a while of traversing, we found a little hole, where we unnecessarily built a cairn to remind us of the way out, but as none of the lower level passages seemed to be present in Rob's recollection of a fairly hung-over trip a year ago, we finally decided we were a bit lost again. It took some more trial and error to traverse above the top of the hole, do a stupid climb after a big boulder bypassed by a no less stupid squeeze. Next was a sharp Z-shaped meander, a traverse over some big holes, and finally one more squeeze through a boulder choke. The big passage beyond finally looked like it could go somewhere more interesting, so we now started looking for the p18, that Emma had told us about. We finally found one, but were not quite sure (and it's probably another one). As it was getting late anyway, we decided to leave the 60m rope, hand-bolting and rigging gear behind and went back out of the cave.
Olaf Kähler
T/U: 7 h
After the rather damp trip the day before, I rather wanted a slack, short one, and decided to visit Tunnocks for a change. Ian and Hannah set off ahead of us and took along some rope for Caramel Catharsis. We followed a while later. We met again after the traverse line down the sloped entrance passages, where we interchanged bags and Ian and Hannah went out again. I rigged the first little traverse before Caramel Catharsis, Rob did the rest of the rigging. Then the route-finding problems started. We got to the cobbly slope and Y-key-key Beach, after a quick detour decided to go left, then took the next passage steeply up to what Rob believed to remember being called Starfish junction. By elimination, we eventually concluded that the passage with the triangular bit of tape was not the one we were looking for, but rather turned rightish. After a while of traversing, we found a little hole, where we unnecessarily built a cairn to remind us of the way out, but as none of the lower level passages seemed to be present in Rob's recollection of a fairly hung-over trip a year ago, we finally decided we were a bit lost again. It took some more trial and error to traverse above the top of the hole, do a stupid climb after a big boulder bypassed by a no less stupid squeeze. Next was a sharp Z-shaped meander, a traverse over some big holes, and finally one more squeeze through a boulder choke. The big passage beyond finally looked like it could go somewhere more interesting, so we now started looking for the p18, that Emma had told us about. We finally found one, but were not quite sure (and it's probably another one). As it was getting late anyway, we decided to leave the 60m rope, hand-bolting and rigging gear behind and went back out of the cave.