Cave : Nick Pot and Nick Cave
Dates : 17 / 18 February 2001
Speleologists : Martin Beale (HPCC), Roy Stone Sellman (HPCC)
Style : SRT (Thornber's), through trip (Nick Cave) and burliness (Vulcan entrance)
Grade : 4
Equipment : 50m rope, 120m rope, 12 maillons, 2 slings, 2 karabiners
Cave time : 9 hours (day 1), 4 hours (day 2)
Approach time : 50m + 50m
Quality : *** (Thornber's)
It seemed like the first day of spring as we walked up to The Allotment. Although there was some frost on the ground, there was some real warmth in the sun. Having got changed into our speleological clothing at the car near Crummack Farm, we were really hot and sweaty by the time we arrived at Nick Pot.
The Nick Pot area required some serious reconnoitring in order to make sense of the many holes in the ground. We positively identified Hangmans's Hole and the main entrance to Nick Pot. We thought we knew where Thornber's and Dawson's entrances were too. We had walked up with all the kit in a rucksack (oh yeah, Roy Stone carried a black 120m rope bag up too). The ropes needed to be sorted into the bags and we set about this task in the warming sun.
We were all ready to set off down Thornber's when three speleologists who had just escaped from the windypits of Scarborough appeared on the scene. They wanted to go down Thornber's too. We thought it would be a real pain for us to be messing around in each other's ropes and thus elected to go down the Vulcan pitch instead. Vulcan is the largest underground pitch in the country and was an obvious objective for us. The normal way of approaching Vulcan is via Dawson's entrance.
For some reason, we gravitated towards Nick Cave. There was a little hole in the ground with an active streamway in it. I assumed this was Dawson's entrance and that Vulcan would be in a side passage from the streamway. We crawled flat out for about 100m in freezing sheep scented water. The side passage never materialised, though a couple of icy pools did. Roy Stone gained vital experience with pulling a 120m rope bag through unnecessary passages. We popped out into daylight by the main entrance to Nick Pot. We were 100m east of where we started and much, much colder.
Dawson's entrance is actually a small rabbit hole in the slightly depressed line that joins the main entrance and Thornber's entrance. Dawson's passage seems to head towards the main entrance. As you drop into this passage, there is a small passage that heads north immediately. This is the start of the crawl to Vulcan and is a truly nasty piece of work. I had a 70m rope bag, Roy Stone had a 120m black rope bag. We both had all our SRT kit on (in our own inimitable fashions). The crawl to Vulcan is a nightmare. It is pretty tight, there is an S bend in it and there are places where there are a couple of heights at which progress can be made - this serves to confuse matters greatly. There might be two places where it is possible to turn around. We grunted and squeezed for an hour and a half. We covered about 25m underground. Roy Stone was having a lot of difficulty dragging his rope bag behind him - it kept getting caught in the passage. He would inch forwards making strange animal noises as the rope bag chocked him backwards.
I came to a stop when I saw the little 4m pitch into the chamber at the start of Vulcan. There was an in situ rope down the pitch. I eyeballed the approach to the pitch for a quarter of an hour as Roy Stone oinked and grunted another desperate couple of feet forwards. To get to the rope, I would have to turn a right angle bend through a squeeze and then ascend gently. Once at the rope, it looked like a head first dive downwards would be required to reach the chamber. It wasn't clear how this could be done safely. The prospect of this 4m pitch was playing on my mind as I waited for Roy Stone to appear (in whatever state).
Roy Stone never appeared, but at last a vocal / bestial connection was established. We reappraised our situation. We were not happy that it had taken us one and a half hours of hard work to get to the head of this pitch. We would have to come back this way. It wouldn't be very nice to have to do this crawl again when we were tired and our lights were fading. We decided to head back out. The way out was slightly easier than the way in. I could help Roy Stone by thumping and joggling the black 120m rope bag he was pulling. It was still tortuous progress, but it only took us half and hour to get out.
It was now about 3pm and we had made exactly no progress. Not put off, we ferreted into Thornber's Entrance : the Scarborough speleologists must surely be on their way out by now.
The rig for the first pitch was straightforward. There were a few traverse bolts that led to a Y hang across a shaft. The take off is a little constricted, but after Dawson's entrance, it feels positively spacious. This first pitch is really good. It is actually really long (a good 35m). There are a couple of deviations on the way down. The lower deviation is not necessary from a rope rub perspective but it allows the ascent to be in free space.
I was somewhat loathe to crawl through the stream at the bottom of the pitch under a low arch. It was the Nick Cave stream and I had had more than enough experience of this little stretch of water. My will to bottom the cave forced me into the stream. There is a very little section of water washed stream at the other side of the arch before the water falls down into the main shaft. We sat around on the rocks at the edge of the shaft. We could see the lights of the Scarborough speleologists. We assumed that when they shouted to us that they were still going down that they were mistaken. Fantastically, they were actually correct. They were still going down 4 hours after having entered the cave. I switched the lights on (the carbide) and we waited around for progress.
A young chap from the Scarborough speleologists squirmed through the Traverse In the Gods towards us. We met a very muddy speleologist. He told us that he had been down the main shaft, but had been unable to find the rebelay by the Trouser Flake. We got the same story from the second seaside speleologist. By the time that the third windypitter had reached us, I was in no mood to hear once more about the difficulties of Nick Pot and cut the conversation decidedly short. I started out along The Traverse In The Gods.
Thankfully, there is a fixed rope along the Traverse In the Gods. You can progress along here by glooping along in the mud with cowstails clipped into the line. It would be a gruesome little struggle to rig this otherwise. The Traverse In the Gods would no doubt be quite exposed were it possible to see where you were. I pushed the black bag forwards and plopped out in a little alcove before the start of the main pitch.
The alcove is a friendly little place to sort out the ropes and the first Y hang. It was a little daunting setting off over the edge, but I felt more in the swing of things when I'd started off down. 5m below the Y hang, there is a further little Y hang in a bulge. This is altogether more difficult to rig as there are no footholds hereabouts. You just switch off and rig clipped into the cowstails. At last, I was back off and rappelling down forever.
The Trouser Flake appeared out of the gloom. I landed on the nearside of the flake and turned the lights on. I was looking for a Y hang in the smooth left wall. This "smooth left wall" business was completely misleading and downright incorrect. I looked high and low, left and right for the hang, but I couldn't find it. I traversed some flakes towards a corner on the right, but this seemed to be going nowhere near to a smooth left wall. I must have been down there for about half an hour. I was starting to get cold and knew that Roy Stone would be getting much colder than I up there. It looked like we weren't going to bottom Nick Pot after all - the gods were not looking kindly upon us. I ascended back to Roy Stone and we made our way out. Roy Stone learned some of the finer points of SRT on the entrance pitch such as where to rig the leg loops - it wasn't a pretty sight!
It was a bit of a shame to get back to the car without the tick in the bag (Roy Stone fired up some excellent navigation by the stars to even get us to the car). The consolation was that we would have time for food in Settle and beers at the Old Hill Inn. I scoffed down a Chinese take away in Settle which gave me indigestion that somewhat spoilt my appreciation of the excellent beer at the pub. After a mere two pints, we skulked off to a frost covered tent and slept the sleep of the burly.
As is traditional in those parts, we had breakfast at Inglesport. I over egged the pudding somewhat by ordering a Belly Buster. It was good, but very, very big. I asked the people at Inglesport what they knew about Nick Pot and they introduced me to a group of three people who had adopted the cave! We got excellent beta off these chaps and had a really good talk to them about the hole. It was clear that with beta of this quality, there was only one thing to do : return to Nick Pot.
The circus returned to a foggy Nick Pot on Sunday. The descent of the shafts went like a dream to the top of the Trouser Flake. The Inglesport beta was exemplary. As I touched down onto the Trouser Flake, there was a small shaft to the left of me with a waterfall entering at the far end. The Trouser Flake separates this small shaft from a larger shaft on the right. The next Y hang is in the corner of this shaft on the right. The Y hang straddles the two walls of the shaft in the corner. I got to the Y hang by traversing some flakes rightwards. When I saw the bolts, it was a great feeling! This Y hang requires a wide bridge across the shaft. I couldn't clip my cowstails into separate bolts and thus used a knotted sling clipped to one of the bolts to clip into. This knotted sling is really useful on the way up - it makes passing the Y hang much more straightforward. It seemed like there was another 30m of drop to the base of the shaft.
The bottom of the shaft is a cold and draughty place. There is a lot of water in the air - spray from the waterfall. I didn't want to hang around down there too long. I paced up and down as I waited for Roy Stone. I think Roy Stone had the same idea about the base of the shaft : it was an inhospitable place and we were best out of there.
As Roy Stone was starting to ascend the rope, we spotted that his main maillon was not correctly done up. This would have made the ascent somewhat nervy. Roy Stone returned to the spray lashed and draughty deck and we set about trying to tighten his maillon. This was well nigh impossible with cold, wet spray lashed hands. We couldn't get any leverage on the thread. Just as Roy Stone was resigning himself to a heartstopping ascent, I had a flash of inspiration. By tightening a small maillon around the thread of the larger one, we were able to tighten the larger maillon. We were well relieved about this! Onwards and upwards!
The ascent seemed big and the traverse seemed muddy, but everything was pretty straightforward. We got out of the cave pretty quickly and surprisingly made it out of the cave in the sunlight. It was pretty funky seeing the first shafts of light from main entrance as we ascended the final pitch.
There were great views across the dales to Penyghent and Fountains Fell as we packed up our kit. Although it had been a two day siege, we had enjoyed Nick Pot [this is not quite correct - we enjoyed Nick Pot in retrospect. We hadn't had a nice word to say about Nick Cave or Dawson's Entrance on the first day].
- Vulcan : do the crawl with your SRT kit off. Put the SRT kit on after the 4m pitch into the small chamber (ingenuity would be required to see you safely down the 4m pitch).
- Vulcan : pull the ropes through the entrance crawl. Don't try to pull a 120m rope bag (especially a black one).
- Vulcan : as of Feb 2001 there are no eco-hangers at the ledge 20m down Vulcan. These are going to be replaced some time. The current 8mm spits are in a poor state of repair.
- Vulcan : Dawson's entrance is a small hole. There is not a stream running down it (the stream is in Nick Cave).
- Thornber's : when you land on the Trouser Flake you will see the Trouser Flake head off in front of you for about 5m. The Trouser Flake splits the shaft into a little shaft on the left and a larger one on the right. The waterfall falls into the little shaft on the left. The Y hang is in the right hand corner of the right hand shaft as you look along the Trouser Flake. It is about 1m below where you land and 4m to the right. The Y-hang straddles the shaft.
Thornber's : try to find both deviations on the first pitch. The lower deviation will allow you to ascend in free space.