Post date: Mar 12, 2019 9:59:47 PM
Al Kennedy, Claire Dunphy, Stephen Macnamara, ~4 hours
Atrocious weather from the week before had left rivers swollen and fields flooded. A good day then for looking at waterfalls.
And so we thought Teampall Shetric would make an interesting excursion. We had a plan to rebolt the wet weather route, whose anchors we knew were dubious. Al met us in Clancy's. After finishing off every last slice of toast we drove up to the parking spot in a near Gorteenagunnell. Said hello to the woman in the house (anyone know her name?) and ventured across the fields to the entrance.
The surface waterfall was tanking - no free-climbing of the wet entrance today! Al went for the eastern entrance (on the right hand side when you walk into the surface depression), while Claire and I climbed down the more commonly used western entrance (on the left).
Claire soon made her way through an awkward squeeze towards Al's voice, and found herself in passage leading to the main pitch. I went back out, joined Al, and we both climbed down to meet Claire. I hadn't personally been in this passage before - but in my opinion it gave a much nicer approach to the pitch than the "wet weather route" I knew. It opens onto the pitch immediately to the right of that route, and about 2 metres lower - just opposite the two waterfalls.
The waterfalls were fantastic - we had not ever seen them that high before. Two old Spits were present at the window where the passage joined the pitch. These would have given a reasonable hang, although very drippy in today's conditions. With a bit of persuasion I managed to get some hangers into the threads, and leant out over the pitch.
From this vantage, we could see that proceeding along a narrow ledge to the right would allow access to a drier spot to make a descent. Claire and Al prepared the drill and bolting stuff, and we soon had the first rock screw in, following a narrow band of limestone at eye level. Shimmying out another metre, I placed another traverse anchor. Here I spotted a perfect location for a Y-hang: a flat patch of clean limestone a couple of metres away, just above a ceiling overhang. After putting in one more intermediate anchor on the traverse, I could lean back to reach up to above the overhang. 2 bolts later, I was ready to descend a lovely free-hang between the two waterfalls.
Towards the bottom, the intense spray meant that I did get fairly soaked - not helped by the fact that my glasses steamed up and I couldn't see which way to go to get away from the water. I clambered up onto the rock slope and held the rope to the side to divert the other two away from the foot of the waterfall. They were soon down. We made a quick decision that this would be a short trip given the conditions, so we dashed off for a tourist trip downstream as far as the climb above the sump. The climb would have been inadvisable on this occasion, with water spouting off the lip almost horizontally.
We made a quick exit, derigging all except the hangers and rock screws. It turned out to be a mere 4-hour trip in the end - but a very sporting and amusing way to spend a Saturday afternoon. We do intend to return in the next few weeks to replace the screws with resin bolts, as this is the best wet-weather route on offer in Teampall.
Stephen.
By the way, the passage to the pitch head, although obviously explored before, is not on the survey. Also, we weren't sure where the water for the second waterfall came from - is it the same stream split in two? More investigation needed, unless someone knows the answer...