Post date: Feb 28, 2012 12:21:33 AM

Cavers: Aileen, Shauna, Al

Trip time: 7.5 hours

The aim was to climb a very promising looking aven in the Legnabrocky Way, on the upstream right of the walking streamway before Giant's Hall. Seen from below there was a good shadowy phreatic tube at the top of a muddy, fossil calcite cascade. It even looked like a pretty straightforward climb. By 11.30 we were in the cave and made good time to the Legnabrocky Way. We choose to sort out kit in the streamway and get geared up for climbing there to try to avoid muddying everything at the base of the aven, although the mud there is pretty dry and the climb proved pretty muddy anyway so it wasn't much use. I began the climb with Aileen belaying, an easy scramble to a good thread, and thereafter it all went downhill. Five minutes of attempting to lasso what turned out to be a not very bossy calcite boss would have been better spent on placing the eventual bolt needed. I'd initially selected the right hand wall as being better, but after two bolts was forced to the left, chasing the best rock or calcite from a pretty poor selection. My adjustable cowstail failed and i resorted to using my Croll on my long cowstails for positioning. About an hour and a half later i'd battled up about 6 or 7 metres, and reached an appalling area of smashed rock and calcite. Some impromptu gardening crashed onto my zigzagged rope and fortunately missed Aileen. Aileen swapped the belaying to Shauna and then removed the rope from the lower two bolts, reducing drag and the likelihood of more rockfall damaging the rope, and also allowing her to move to a position more out of the line of fire. I inched gingerly up to a promising looking thread, only to find it was cracked and fell apart to my touch. There was one tiny patch of good rock above a huge shield of fractured rock/calcite that i ended up bolting before attempting to garden the shield off. It was a bit stronger than it looked so i left it in the end as it might provide a foothold for the final upper section of calcite.

By this point i was a bit tired and sore from 2 hours in my harness, the next section looked a fairly sketchy free-climb but Aileen reckoned she'd have a go at it so i gladly swapped places and half an hour later she was at my top bolt which was to one side of a slimy rift. Free-climbing proved impossible so she continued bolting. The first battery ran out on her first bolt (number 8), so we passed up the second battery, which had gotten wet in transit and had been drying. An hour and half later Aileen had placed 3 bolts, gardened a lot of rock, and got to a position to see that the calcite had mostly blocked the phreatic tube at the top. We had a discussion and decided to leave the rope rigged at the top to allow us to come back and perhaps inspect the top again when fresher, with less gear hung on us, and maybe with a sledge hammer. Aileen lassoed a boss at the top and got nicely high onto what seemed like the best rock (fairly marginal and probably wouldn't have taken spits), and started work on a Y-hang. The second battery then ran out halfway into the first hole (hole 3 on this battery), and since the hammer action stops before the drill action the drill bit jammed in the hole. In the end the bit had to be abandoned and Aileen gingerly downclimbed to her highest bolt, replaced the krab with a maillon and was lowered off, removing the lowest two bolts en route. We were now rapidly approaching our callout time, so the gear was hastily packed and we hurried out. I was sent on down the showcave, got myself lost in the ICC choke, was discovered by Shauna and Aileen and hastily set back on the right route, and managed to get Les on the phone on the dot of 7pm...

Al

Aileen reaches the top...

Aileen's elbow after the trip...one of many bruises between the 3 of us...

even i who doesn't bruise easily gimped my elbow on the way into the Crab Walk on the way out.