Homecoming - Swinging into the Tube
Aidan K
Following the walk across the plateau with everyone and Isaac (who watched us go in before heading off to Garlic), and a lot of faff, we went down the entrance series. Lara lead the way, followed by Rosa, Tom, and then I. Tom had a battle with the entrance pitch - unaided by the 5om of rope I had given him to take down - which required teamwork and feeding him chocolate role like it's an apple to free him.
I found the entrance series' rigging a bit needlessly hard but when it was explained to me about the usual state of the snow plug it made a lot more sense.
When we got down to the top of Radogast I got all my bolting kit together and abbed down on the fixed rope with the rope for the pitch in the bag on my hip. (You can probably guess what's coming up!) When about 7m down there was a lovely flat as anything wall of rock where I put a rebelay in, but not before using a wide range of climbing moves to pull myself in and get my skyhook on. Annoyingly, the skyhook popped as I was getting a bolt out the bag so I had to do that very physical part twice. It was about here that I discovered that alpine caves didn't feel as cold as I believed they would be - owing to quite how dry they are. I was positively cooking!
Once I got the bolts in I threw the end of my rope up to Lara to rig on the pitch-head so I could rig the rebelay and come back up - my legs were going a bit too tingly for my liking! At the top I learnt the others were quite cold but I needed a moment to regain use of my legs because they'd become quite painful. With renewed blood flow to my lower limbs I abbed back down, got embarrassingly stuck on my rebelay (small cowstail crab got pinned and wouldn't come out), abbed down, did some swinging back and forth and then left and right so I was swinging round in a circle so I could grab another bit of rock, hook it and pull myself in. Placed one bolt and then did a fairly scary traverse out on my cowstails trying not to whip into the void of Radogast as I clambered into the tube and placed my final bolt.
Once all that was finished being rigged Lara came down to see (the first bolt of the traverse line spun a bit (It was being pulled in every direction), she joined me, we left the rope and the bag behind and made our way out (Lara tightened the bolt to perfection - I think a forgot to clean all the clay off first time round). I have absolutely no idea how they got into here in 2018 except maybe running off the top of the pitchhead and doing a massive rope rub pendulum into it!
The others had already started their own way out, having got cold and bored - sorry! We followed out and there I caught up with Tom who had had a scary moment with his D-ring spinning and the harness trying to open the triact lock! We made our way out and by the end I was peeling off clothes like I was in Spain!
A very cool bit of SRT bolted for me & setup for the future, but unfortunately a very different trip experience for everyone else. (Tom's space blanket shelter is apparently quite amazing though!)