Car Pot

Car Pot meet – 29 November 2008

Present: Mark Bradbury, Becka Lawson (RRCPC), Patrick Warren.

When Dennis Brindle and others opened up Baptistry pitch in Car Pot in 1948 and pushed through the squeezes and crawls beyond, they uncovered a fascinating piece of the underground jigsaw puzzle that is Gaping Gill, and bequeathed a classic test piece to future cavers. As Simon Ashby was unable to lead the meet, I'd volunteered to at least 'turn up' as I had been wanting to go down Car Pot to have a look at South Craven Passage which I had not previously been into. I'd already recruited Becka Lawson to the cause and we arrived at Horton about 11.30pm after calling into a climbing wall in Warrington for a couple of hours on the way up from Liverpool, to keep us out of the pub. On Saturday morning we gratefully accepted Mark Bradbury's offer to join us, making an ideal sized team.

In Clapham, the Woodyard is no longer an option for parking so we tucked in behind the church just as a select BPC digging crew were setting off for destinations unknown. Just as we were about to leave ourselves, a car pulled up and and I must admit my heart sank a little at the thought of having to wait for another 20 minutes for someone else to get changed, but as it happened this was not an addition to the team, but Andrew Hinde from Cave Conservation Natural England. He asked us to fill in a questionnaire about some of the sites in Car Pot and post it back to him, which we gladly agreed to do.

The walk up was in excellent clear crisp conditions, with a dusting of snow on the moor. I remembered the entrance hole contains a small tree, thus we did not have any difficulty finding it. The pitches start immediately, with a Y-hang down the entrance, to a pair of bolts guarding the crawl through to the top of Bapistry pitch, which has another bolt backed up to a sling round a jammed block. At the bottom we took our gear off, for the infamous letter-box squeeze. After a rather fraught previous trip I had figured out a good way through this was to go on your side facing the left hand wall, then stand up, at the start of the drop, before sliding down onto the stemple and dropping down to the floor. At the bottom of here one of the SRT ropes was unravelled to drag bags through Baptistry crawl. Once I had got through the crawl (smaller than I remember it!), the bags followed easily then the rest of the team, and we kitted up again for the remaining pitches. The take off from the 3rd pitch is awkward and I tried backing out onto it at first, before turning round to have a good look at where my lower body would be heading. I then remembered that there is just enough room to get out onto the pitch head first, making it much easier to navigate. At the bottom a long Y hang leads onto the fine 4th pitch. I tried a deviation off a small spike, but a good tug saw half of it fall off the wall and land in my lap, so the deviation went lower down off a much more robust pillar. The final pitch starts off quite well, with two bolts backed up to a thread in the bedding plane. Three ledges down, in the middle of the waterfall, is the rebelay. There are four bolts here but only one is serviceable. I'd remembered this from last time so was armed with a 5' wire belay which could be threaded double through a sharp-edged slot. Below here I used a bit of climbing gear to place a small deviation, with the partly successful idea of taking the line of descent out of the water.

At the bottom we first went along North Craven passage to admire the famous white stal and curtain – still in pristine condition. Back at the pitch we went up the handline climb into South Craven Passage. This starts off as a rather magnificent rift then climbs steeply as a large tunnel to bedding plane crawls. To the left is the way to Big End Chamber, whilst the main way on is to the right. Part way along the main way on I got distracted by the shape of the passage which had become very low and wide with many straws. It looked possibly as though another bedding plane was entering from the right. Investigating a little further revealed a slight inward draft. Back up the passage a few feet one could push the right hand side flat-out for a body length to a slight bank looking down into a 1m deep trench. At this point there was a definite draft into my face. I couldn't see an obvious way forward at the far side of the trench, though neither could it be ruled out! The bank would require a bit if clearing for access though.

Back at the top of the sloping tunnel passage, we put a little plan into action, which was to survey a level down to the base of the pitch. After the numbers were crunched back at home, the survey showed that there is 33.4m elevation from the low point at the foot of the pitch up to the bedding plane crawls, in good agreement with the published survey in Northern Caves, which is based on the 1948 CPC survey. This places the bedding plane crawls at a very high level relative to the usual horizontal development in in GG. In particular it means that the left-hand dig at the top of the iron ladder in GG must be heading underneath South Craven Passage. Similarly the drafting lead in South Craven Passage must be heading into blank space effectively, since it is some 20-30m above East Passage in GG.

We made our way out steadily, getting back to Clapham for about 5pm, just as the Bradford diggers were arriving back from their own adventures.

Carmen Smith admiring the celebrated formations in North Craven Passage on a previous trip.

Postscript

At GG in 2010, I revisited Car Pot with William Helm and dug out the mud bank to enter a small chamber where it was possible to sit up. The way on was more or less completely blocked with straws. On this occasion the draft was largely absent though. Edward Whitaker noted there is a choked aven near the end of Far East passage in GG which may be the source of the draft. As of 2018, Car Pot has got perrmanent anchors.

Adapted from CPC Record 93, 33-34 (Jan 2009).

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