Pushing leads in the north of Tunnocks
Wed 15 Aug 2012
Anthony
I tagged onto Holly and Rob's trip to Tunnocks - the first time I've been in this cave. The shallow levels are certainly most civilized. Followed Holly and Rob's heels to the pushing front at the Inner Flap (or whichever part of the vulva it is named after). Rob went on ahead and declared that the rift was passable for sufficiently far to warrant a survey. Since this was clearly a two-man job, I was dispatched to a pitch level in 39 steps. Navigated there without much difficulty, apart from one moderately tricky climb that I had to do twice after kicking the tacklesack down on the first attempt. I spent a while convincing myself that I was in the right place, and thought I had been sold a dud since the pitch didn't look all that promising from the top. There are two holes here that go to the same place, so I dropped the first one on a couple of naturals to find a black space ~4m down that was quite breezy, at which point I felt much happier. It looked like the continuing pitch would be hard to rig from here, so I put in a couple of handbolts to descend the other hole. By this point I had pretty much run out of gear, so Holly and Rob's reappearance was timely. Apparently they had surveyed ~40m of rift passage leading to a pitch. With that, I followed Holly and Rob's heels out again.
Anthony
T/U: 10hrs
I tagged onto Holly and Rob's trip to Tunnocks - the first time I've been in this cave. The shallow levels are certainly most civilized. Followed Holly and Rob's heels to the pushing front at the Inner Flap (or whichever part of the vulva it is named after). Rob went on ahead and declared that the rift was passable for sufficiently far to warrant a survey. Since this was clearly a two-man job, I was dispatched to a pitch level in 39 steps. Navigated there without much difficulty, apart from one moderately tricky climb that I had to do twice after kicking the tacklesack down on the first attempt. I spent a while convincing myself that I was in the right place, and thought I had been sold a dud since the pitch didn't look all that promising from the top. There are two holes here that go to the same place, so I dropped the first one on a couple of naturals to find a black space ~4m down that was quite breezy, at which point I felt much happier. It looked like the continuing pitch would be hard to rig from here, so I put in a couple of handbolts to descend the other hole. By this point I had pretty much run out of gear, so Holly and Rob's reappearance was timely. Apparently they had surveyed ~40m of rift passage leading to a pitch. With that, I followed Holly and Rob's heels out again.