Post date: Apr 6, 2016 8:28:06 PM
Claire Dunphy, Aileen Connor, Stephen Macnamara. 4 hours.
A trip to the end of Cascades to look at some of the avens at Creature's End.
The avens are really very impressive - in particular, a massive vertical pure limestone wall which is begging for knee hooks. This is the aven on the western side of the chamber - directly opposite the one bolted by Al and me in 2010. It is higher than the other (initially anyway), and has drips coming from the top, some 25m overhead. A 10m head start could be gained by free-climbing a boulder slope, but it may be as easy to bolt from the bottom of the wall to avoid having to do a long traverse from the top of the boulder slope. Definitely a worthwhile project for the coming year.
When facing up the slope at the bottom of the aven, there is a rift in the left hand wall. This can be free-climbed for about 15 m past some looseness, and then enters a pretty, but tight, rift continuation in a horizontal direction. It would need widening but appears just to go in the direction of the main stream passage.
Finally, in the smaller chamber between Creature's End and the end of the Witheywindle passage, there is another smaller aven in the east wall. There is a black hole above a 4m climb. The 4m is probably free-climbable - the only thing stopping us was the prevalence of loose rock. I tried standing on Aileen's head, but she still wouldn't climb it. It is also worth a push if visiting with a drill for the main aven: one bolt would be enough.
On the way out, we pushed *all* of the side rifts, passages and oxbows in the Witheywindle passage, and reconvinced ourselves that they definitely don't go anywhere.
Steve.