Homecoming - Homecoming Round Trip
Adam
Colin and Aidan arrived in Garlic camp at around midnight, exhausted from their own day of caving prior. Upon all of us waking Fiona and I solidified our plans for the day, deciding to help the pair survey the rest of their new entrance series down into Homecoming. It'd get us into the swing of surveying again after a long break and it would also be a good introduction to the Homecoming cave, which I hadn't been in for a year and Fiona hadn't been in before.
In packing my stuff, I discovered the dark chocolate caving snack in the barrels and by god after a taste I knew it would be one of my go-to snacks this expo, on the side of gorp.
We walked down to Homecoming, Fiona and I this time not taking our walking poles with us, and started our descent. The coolness of the cave, even at the entrance, was a great change from the stifling heat of the surface, especially in all of our caving gear.
I went through the cave system following the others, so did not take as much notice of the names of the pitches as I should have done, which would have made future descriptions of the cave far easier when trying to figure out routes. I believe the route we took in was called the Welsh Engineering Route. In any case, after the first few entrance pitches, we deviated from the main route by taking the a white rope instead of a green rope (upon checking the description now, a few days later, this pitch appears to be Radagast). Instead of going straight down, we followed a rebelay into a traverse into a small phreatic chamber, where we waited for the rest of our group. Here, I put my buff fully on, covering my head as well as my neck, anticipating the further cold. From here, we found a junction where we went right. We came across another downhill junction where we took the left. At the end of this I believe there was a very downhill pitch head with a short traverse section and a deviation rigged off a natural very early on. We popped down and immediately went down a small dusty crawl, taking the next left. A traverse bolt on the left of the wall and a Y-hang on the right, we came into the pitch head for Saruman (with all the pitch head names aside from Eye of Sauron, I'm just taking from the description now). A few more pitches followed this one, which I can't recall too clearly, but at some point there was an upstream pool where Aidan advised us to dip our descenders into to cool them down. We all did so.
After a traverse to another pitch, we came to the Eye of Sauron. In hindsight, it feels a lot like Mount Doom. There is a traverse and then a rope leading straight from one side of the wall to the pitch Y-hang. This rope hangs over a small walkway, the cave itself almost leading you to the great drop below. I should have brought my One Ring prop so I could re-enact one of the many endings of Return of the King! Alas, I didn't. So we went down, having little trouble with the knot pass most of the way down the rope. Descending to the very bottom of the Eye of Sauron isn't the way to go, as there's a big climb following. The goal would be to descend to the top of the climb and use the rope to pull yourself over, as the rope is bolted there too.
This is where we started our surveying. Luckily, there was a nice platform where I could sit and put my bag as I put my coat and balaclava on, as well as have some of that amazing dark chocolate. Definitely buying some for myself! I acted as the instrument for the surveying, with Fiona acting as book, Aidan as dog. Colin forged on ahead for some bolting work, to meet us at the bottom.
The surveying was cold work, but all straightforward. Sometimes the vertical readings didn't function at all, the SAP refusing to work. So we just put them as question marks. In addition, the SAP had a scrolling option that worked by tilting. You could tilt either way, but it would only scroll one way. A bit annoying, Every now and then I found myself in settings, at which point I just had to turn the thing off and on again. We got to a false floor, so on surveying we always were clipped in to a traverse line. At the end of this section, I tried getting a vertical distance down the pitch but the SAP wouldn't have it! So we called it there and just went straight down.
The wall was a bit muddy and had a few rebelays. In addition, there was a rope protector attached as otherwise the rope would be sliced on a particularly sharp section of rock. We got down to a large rock where Colin was waiting. It was a large chamber with a few leads and a nice streamway ahead. We named the rock Urinal Rock. Not the nicest name, but nature called.
I liked the look of the rift going off to the left, hoping to visit it again.
We headed back up, eventually getting to a rebelay named Rivendell. This had a green rope traversing to the left that lead to the main route. This had many awkward, horizontal passages. I remember shuffling on my butt to the left for a good while, trying to keep my position good whilst also not getting my bag stuck. At one point, we had to go down again to go up again! I should really know the names of the pitches here. Eventually we came back up Radagast and, being very tired, I was very happy to hear that we could see the other rope for the Welsh Engineering Route. We came out and saw off Colin and Aidan, who were heading down the hill. We updated our callout with basecamp and set off, getting to Garlic camp safe and sound, but still tired from the cave and the plateau walk. Curries never taste better than after a caving trip.