Homecoming - 'Twas a simple pleasure
Adam
Today we were finally going to survey Brandywine Overpass!... right?
Well, when Fiona and I woke up at Garlic camp we saw the clouds low in the sky. This, as well as the rain that had accompanied the past week, did not give us hope for our little section of cave. Welsh Engineering, at the time of typing, having a wet reputation. Liam was down at basecamp and was hoping to join us, though the night prior we told him that midday may be best to join us on account of how not pleasant the weather was looking for this morning. Not god-awful, just not pleasant.
Fiona and I arrived at Homecoming at noon, the walk to the cave entrance being quite damn on account of the low hanging clouds covering the flora in dew, meeting Dickon, Harry and Liam. Dickon tried to convince us that Simple Pleasures was both a more practical push for the day and a better push in general, commenting that our Brandywine Overpass was probably already surveyed at a different level. The latter was something I was indeed worried about whilst first bolting the route, but I saw zero indication of prior surveying. I was quite stubborn about our push, especially since we hadn't even surveyed it yet and we wanted to avoid a scoop.
We put on our gear, after many a cave covered in muck and not exactly the driest. With the general wetness of the area, putting on gear was not a neat affair. Indeed, bags got muddy and things were untidy inside and outside the bags, despite our attempts to control the messiness.
We got underground at 1pm, going down the regular entrance series route in order to collect rope from the junction, as well as just pick up and take out tackle sacks to aid with the eventual derig of Homecoming. I did not like the regular route. Well, scratch the past tense. Even at time of righting, I do not like it. The awkwardness of the horizontal sections annoyed me, with the bum-shuffling across a traverse and the uncomfortable manoeuvring of tackle sacks. I much preferred Welsh Engineering, with its straightforward downs and then ups. We eventually reached the junction, pointed out to us by Liam, who'd been there before. The lead up to it was such a breezy section of cave! Even as Liam was explaining the different passages to us, I could feel my temperature dropping. Fortunately, we moved on quickly to get to the actual junction. There, we found two things: a collection of food and a single tackle sack of rope. It had previously been told to us that there would be two tackle sacks, so we were a tad confused on that, but what could we do? I noticed that the bag of flapjacks had the word "vegan" on them and I started eating with glee. Though to call them singular flapjacks would be a stretch, more like if you took flapjacks, dried them out a bit and crushed them to the texture of granola. Tasty nonetheless and very welcome!
We continued on our way to Rivendell; using the survey it was an easy find. Near the end all I needed to do anyway was to follow the sound of the water! We got to the traverse and the noise was far greater than I'd ever heard, though the actual wetness of the area below Rivendell was pretty much the same as it had been when it was dry. I persisted, but the others were understandably hesitant, given the roar of the water. I continued on my way down from Rivendell, Liam following. With each descent, I grew more and more anxious. The water was simply too loud to be comfortable. When I reached the bottom, I looked around. Our section of cave was the same at it'd ever been, but opposite the waterfall was more full, the streamway far below us flowing with greater power. None of this at the time was enough to make things any worse for a push. But if there were the situation that the weather changed above, would we hear it? Would we be given that small warning beforehand? With the water making communication difficult, I didn't think so. It was simply too risky and I cursed myself for descending down to this point. When Liam was low enough, I yelled as loudly as I could for us to go back up and pursue Simple Pleasures, as had been suggested to us outside Homecoming.
When we came up to the breezy passage near the junction, we headed up a pitch to the left, which Liam had previously said led to Propane Nightmares. We eventually reached a traverse over a rift that led to a Y-hang on the ceiling which led directly to the Simple Pleasures push. We were about to head down, but Fiona noticed that one of the bolts on the Y-hang moved when we put weight on it. That wasn't a fun sight. So, we took our time to bolt a new one! I did the drilling for this, which certainly was an interesting experience. I leaned back on my cowstails and tried my best to keep the drill level with the ceiling. Keeping the rock-dust (or cave-coke) out of my face was fun, but I managed. The most difficult part proved to be actually hammering a bolt into the damned thing! The awkward angle made it a challenging task, with each of us trying shifts at it, trying different hammering techniques too! Eventually we got there too, but it was an exhausting affair, by far the longest single bolting I'd ever accomplished. We switched the arm of the Y-hang onto our bolt and I descended down. We got to a chamber named, I believe, Cubid Chamber, for the love-heart patterns seen on the path. As the prophecy foretold, they were there. We left some of our bags by the pitch and moved forwards to see what we could find. We'd eventually turn back and return for surveying. My favourite part of this lead was a section where the rift was partially covered in flaky rock with a pattern to it reminding me of crocodile skin, or at least something crocodilian. There was a flake that seemed to have the sides of it broken away but persisted by some rocky stubbornness. In keeping with its reptilian pattern, it was long and looked like a crocodile, wading with only the top of its head out of the water. We took care to not tread on it or any of the flake near it. There was an oxbow that went over a false floor, which we took extra care not to tread on so we wouldn't, well, fall through and die. To my regret I accidentally knocked the tip off a stalactite, knocking it just as Liam's warnings reached my ears. I kept extra low for the rest of the day. Eventually we came to a narrow rift and headed back for our survey gear. Liam would act as dog, I as instrument, Fiona as book.
After we reached our initial stopping point, we continued further to find a climb down into a new rift. At first I was sceptical if after climbing down we could climb back out, but with three of us plus a sling, we would make it. Life... uh... finds a way. The rift after the climb down did not side well with Liam, with few nice footholds to support oneself upon. A lot of leaning and counter pressure was require, though this was something I quite liked, friction willing. The walls were covered in a brown layer, easily scraped away, revealing a white layer underneath. Reminds me of an oreo, actually. Anyway, we got to a point where even leaning and counter pressure wasn't a sure thing. We saw that it clearly required bolting or would just be way too risky. We finished our surveying and started to leave. We derigged the Simple Pleasures pitches, as they wouldn't be needed any more on this expedition. We returned via the regular route, rather than Welsh Engineering, with the bags we'd promised to take. However, we left some rope for the next day. We'd survey and push Brandywine if it killed us (not really, of course, we're all safe here).
It was a long journey back, with me just being the most tired I'd been in a cave for a very long time. I'm not sure if it was mental or physical, but to get myself up and running again I had some Kendal Mintcake for the first time in the expo. Another thing that helped was taking mini-naps whilst waiting for people to prussik out of the longer pitches. I'd never be full asleep, but even lying with eyes shut does wonders.
We got out of the cave at half past midnight, getting back to camp at 1:30am. A very tiring day, ending with curry and noodles. I grew worried about potential derigs of Welsh Engineering that would thwart (or at least slow) our attempts at Brandywine, but that was a worry for another day. Or at least, the same day but after some much needed sleep.