Cave : Ogof Pwll Swnd
Date : 20 October 2001
Speleologists : Martin Beale (HPCC), Tim Wilkinson (HPCC)
Style : orienteering
Grade : 1:40000
Equipment : map, compass, altimeter
Cave time : 10 minutes
Approach time : 3 hours + 3 hours
Quality : ?

Ogof Pwll Swnd is an exceptionally difficult cave to find. I have spent about 5 hours of my life wandering aimlessly across Foel Fraith in search of this cave. This page is dedicated to my fellow speleologists who have searched in vain for Ogof Pwll Swnd.

A useful checklist for finding the cave is :

• Ogof Pwll Swnd is at grid reference 7622 1839. This is the only published information about the approach to this cave that is correct.
• There is not a lake near the cave. The lake marked on the map does not exist.
• The cave is not near the Pwll Swnd marking on the map.
• The pothole marked on the map is not Ogof Pwll Swnd. Do not expect to see Gaping Ghyll.
• The cave is at a height of 555m, not 579m.
• The collapsed rift is about 1m deep and grassy. The cave entrance is a 1m triangular hole in the mountain.
• The cave is at a bearing of between 80 degrees and 84 degrees to magnetic north from the summit of Foel Fraith. As you walk off the summit, the cave is under a steepening where the limestone is met once more. You will be walking in a straight line from the summit towards the northernmost lake on the col between Foel Fraith and Carreg Las.
• The best way of navigating to the cave is to take a bearing from the summit of Foel Fraith and watch the altimeter.
• The cairn at the entrance to the cave has been restored to its former glory.

We were so excited when we found the cave that we couldn't help but have a little explore. We went in wearing our Walshes and headtorches. It was unmistakably Ogof Pwll Swnd. We walked straight into the Black Mountain. The passages were of a comfortable size. We turned a left hand bend and looked down the twisting first pitch. A couple of spits (in good condition) showed we were in the right place. It was hard to drag ourselves away from the alluring depths of the hole, but we knew that this cave deserved a proper exploration. We could not do this place justice without our SRT kit.

It was obvious that too many cavers have missed this place due to the lack of cairn (we had wandered aimlessly for an hour and a party from the Croydon Caving Club had turned back in despair). We had a flash of inspiration and built a beautiful cairn to mark this enchanted spot. We dedicated this cairn to the honour of our club president : just as he has shown us the way to the subterranean world, we hope that this cairn will show others the way to Ogof Pwll Swnd. It is named "The Grosvenor Cairn".

The HPCC will return...