Cussey Pot
During Lockdown 2020 a new hole was spotted to draught bigger and stronger than any cave in the Peak. We dug it open and this is what happened....
Full description of the trip can be viewed here.
The current survey can be downloaded from here.
- Details
- Written by: Chris Hibberts
- Hits: 1776
Date 22/06/2023
Team: Rob E, Dylan K, Hal D, John G, Allan B, Victoria K, Chris H.
Having been in and out of Cussey a few times now, tonight was going to be My first through trip and the plan was to go up to Rock Cottage and enter Moorwood Sough and exit via Cussey. How great would it be to have this entrance in your back garden. To negate the need to walk back from Cussey in a Loppy sweat-suit, Rob did a sterling job, planning to meet Dylan at the Cussey car park and leave his car there then meet the others in the Stoney Lay-by at 6:30. Post caving refreshments were also strategically placed inside the Cussey lid.
Kitting up in the layby was pleasant in the warm evening sun although Victoria did need a little help from Rob and Myself to don her wetsuit (I’ll leave the details to your imaginations…). Allan decided that he’d give his newly repaired dry-suit an outing only to find that there was a tear in the foot. Wetsuits on and SRT kits packed we head up through Rock Cottage Garden to the entrance. John gave us a quick brief on the entrance Ladders and his plan to place some datalogging salt detectors in the water at the bottom with strict instruction not to get tangled up with as it was very expensive.
Rock Cottage Entrance to Moorwood Sough - Photo by Vic K
We all made swift work of the entrance ladders and were all glad of the cooling water in the sough, especially Hal who was yet to fully zip up his wetsuit. It had been 9 years since I’d been in the sough but could still remember key features with the help of Rob’s running commentary. The first stop off was at Victory Level to change detectors and record conductivity.
Continuing up the sough we soon reached the bottom of the ladders. John dispersed salt into the water the aim being to calculate the transit time to the previously placed detectors downstream. Rob ascended the ladder to set up a lifeline. Dylan and I decided we’d follow and take our chances. Getting to the top of the first ladder flashbacks from years ago of the dodgy stretch to the second ladder made me regret my choice not to lifeline. With words of encouragement from Rob the second ladder was passed, and the rest of the team were belayed up into the start of the Glebe Mine section.
We made our way up to the detectors that had been place in Glebe to swap them out and take conductivity readings. It was now 8:30 and time to split up with Hal, Vic, Allan and John going back out of the sough and Rob, Dylan and Myself heading out of Cussey. It would be a race to see if either team could make the pub. But with detectors to swap in Elastic Passage, Static Passage & Upstream SMMC, I was glad we’d placed refreshments at the Cussey lid.
It wasn’t long before we were at the bottom of the Doom ladder where we left our SRT kits and set off to swap the detectors there, Rob also gave us a quick hydrology lesson and explained what the readings on the conductivity meter translated to. Back at the bottom of the ladder Dylan set off with tremendous haste and only stopped to take a quick breath before launching himself at Boil up sump 2. Rob and I a little slower arrived at the sump and realised we could hear an excited Dylan on the other side and there was in fact 1” of airspace all the way through. It was a quick job changing the detector upstream and Dylan again set off with the same haste as before however his attempt to tackle the sump at the same pace wasn’t as smooth as on the way through and he seemed to take on a little water.
Loper Lust was as usual like slop and I still think it warrants an eye wash station at the bottom of Inglorious to assist in seeing whilst getting your SRT kit back on. Dylan set off first up Inglorious and Rob now a little cold due to the diminishing condition of his wetsuit set off second. I made my way out at a steady pace and was elated when I reached the lid to find my Cussey Draft-Cooled Moretti waiting. Apparently, I was 8 mins ahead of Dylan and Rob’s projected exit time.
The other team must have had a quick exit as we were greeted by a WhatsApp picture message from the Pub. With Dylan’s car rammed full of dirty caving gear we set off back to the Stoney Lay-by. In all it was a great trip and the first Rock Cottage – Cussey through trip, this really is a great system to explore with plenty of options for trip variety.
- Details
- Written by: Jim Thompson
- Hits: 1489
Team: Jim, Rob, Jon, Chris, Colin
‘SMMC would have to wait for another day as the sump was still too full for a dive through, but it was no small consolation to have a wander up the massive loveliness of RAT.’
With dye tracing experiments ongoing, a return trip to the various sites accessible via Cussey was inevitable for someone this week, however that task doesn’t require a mob-handed team and there’s the as yet incomplete task of stapling Madame Guillotine to finish, so the plan was to send the fast lads into Cussey for the former, and for Chris and I to finish the latter.
However incoming reports from Ben signalled that a significant drop in sump levels had occurred during the preceding week enabling a team from TSG and SUSS to enter SMMC
A visit from a caving luminary in the form of Colinus boothroydii expressing a desire the MC sealed the deal, we’d all have a jaunt down there with Rob doing the detector business before and after.
The trip started out hard, hot and exhausting. It was glorious at the changing spot, which made for supreme prebeer and banter conditions, but the donning of wetsuits was a different matter. My particular one is gradually growing a shell of Sikaflex EBT+ which probably doesn’t help matters, but jeez it was hard work getting dressed. Soaked in sweat and panting, it was a blessed relief to open the lid and feel the howling, cool draught and get inside for respite.
Airspace was much bigger in LL than it has been a couple of weeks ago, which oddly made it look, at least, much worse. What looked like breathable air all the way through was a little deceptive at the point I forgot about my helmet as my nonchalantly-air-intaking breathing apparatus suddenly breathed in a massive gulp of water. The sudden shock of this suppressed, I stuck my face under and ploughed through.
Quick jump across the ladder and so into Vulgarious, still fantastic, still gloriously muddy and super slidy, once again the team assembled in RAT and took a look at the much lower sump. Jon offered to go first and briefed me on how to handle it. It really amounted to ‘dive in and pull on the rope till you’re through’. Chris and I waited for the 3 sharp pulls on the rope and it was time to go. It was lovely in the deep pool and I grabbed the rope at the point where roof met water surface, paused for a second and dived in. It was fantastic to feel the water around me, pull a few times on the rope and pop up into the master cave. Jon fist bumped me and I felt glad, having missed out last summer, to have made it through. Loaded with assumption that everything would be more of RAT, we headed downstream and it was quite good. Retracing our steps and heading back upstream was also quite good and frankly just kept getting better and better until I was utterly stunned by a place that is beautiful, massive and exceeds every expectation. Peak streamway is of course massive and stunning, no doubt about that, but this is Stoney Middleton! Not only is the streamway massive, it’s really high and it’s half filled with gigantic breakdown boulders that make for a really fun bit of caving, with the odd climb and squeeze through boulders thrown in for good measure. Not only that but they only serve to emphasise that this place is massive… it’s still massive when half full of limestone. Just epic in every way. For me one of the most striking features is the adornment on the walls of hundreds of little grey formations, they look like lichen or tiny seaweed on the side of a black rockpool. The stream is chugging away mostly hidden down a deep slot in the floor, but at places it reappeared, was unmistakably green with dye.
At the upstream end, progress was halted by some change in silt causing the way on to be sumped. Rob dived in and kicked around and emerged from underwater confirming that some digging would be required, so we began the return journey. He and Colin shot off to go and deal with dye detectors in Doom whilst Jon got the camera out. I was of course delighted to model for photos, and yet again I was awestruck by the size of the boulders in the streamway as I climbed up onto one and struck my best poses as the warmth gradually left my wetsuit and I wondered how cold I’d be by the time I dived back through the sump.
The answer is that it didn’t even cross my mind once I got there as there’s only one way out. Thankfully Jon did remember our abandoned wetsuit hoods so I pulled mine on and did the business. This time however I went underwater and pulled and pulled for some time before I made forward progress.. oh yeah the slack had all been pulled the other way on the way in. Nevertheless it’s a short dive so not a problem. It seemed to go on forever though, and I wondered what on earth was happening as I bounced off the ceiling and tried to take a breath at a point I just knew was ‘the other side’ and got more rehydration that I wanted at that moment. And then air…. Phew. I could see immediately that, in bouncing off the roof, I’d turned a little on my right side turning my direction left as a result. I was in massive airspace in fact, but feeling the small lip of cherty something or other at the edge of the pool…
And off we went. It’s yet another trip out of Cussey at this point, nothing to report, not knackered, not starving or hallucinating. However… I mentioned that at a certain point sticking one’s face in and ploughing through was a preferred option in LL, and this definitely seemed to be the case on the return as the open space above the top makes it look really long and minging. It’s a terrible option if in so doing you get an eyeful of grit. I reached Inglorious and the agony was enough that I was struggling to keep my good eye open, let alone the now probably scratched one. Not a clean surface to attempt any wiping with either. I found that looking a lot further up into the back of my head than would otherwise be sensible provided a little respite, so with a process of looking for a second, prusiking with my eyes closed and repeating, I got up the various pitches without incident and by the time I reach Coconut Airways the pain has subsided enough to be able to semi-see what I was doing.
Chris suggested installing an eye wash station in the cave and we went and got washed off in the car park and waited for the others. Hearing voices and a glow of light over at the lid, I had a walk over to greet who I assumed to be Rob and Colin, and found myself escorting a number of rather inebriated elderly ladies through the undergrowth, rocks and barbed wire to have a look down the hole… always time for a bit of caving PR. With that we enjoyed some life-giving beer and snackage and headed our separate ways into the night, in my case thankfully using two eyes to drive as every light formed a rainbow halo as it passed….
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- Written by: Rob Eavis
- Hits: 1090
Joe B, Rob E (Dream Team)
Back in November myself and Joe had an amble down the master cave an realised than an aven seemed to be taking a draught. Joe stood on my head and could just about get in but it wasn’t ideal so we set to return. Many months on, today was the day.
First we ran around the place changing all the dye detectors. The Boil-Up Sump 2 was longer than we had hoped, but nothing like our last time (!) so perfectly doable for us, even with us armed with drill and bolting gear this time.
The aven is a narrow rift, but it’s located in the roof of a roughly 3m diameter passage. I put in a quick bolt as high as I could (see next trip report!!) and attached an etrier which then allowed me relatively easy access into the rift above. Once in it was a pretty easy freeclimb, although quite slippery in places. I attached an electron ladder to my belt which allowed me to climb without the weight of a drill. Plan being once at the top Joe would clip the drill on to the bottom of the ladder and I pull it up. Nice plan, but…
I normally do this sort of freeclimbing with a rope, but getting SRT kits to/from this place is a ball ache and we were keen to keep gear light. Turns out ladders don’t trail behind a freeclimber well at all. It managed to get stuck below me in exactly the slippery manoeuvres, very not ideal. Secondly, ladders are quite short, maybe 30ft. turns out this aven was nearly double that, so Joe clipped on the bolting gear and drill way before I reached the top, therefore making the ladder get stuck even more. Bad plan Rob.
Thankfully I got to the top OK and managed to put in a good bolt and hang the way too short ladder to assist with my route down. At the top the rift is simply blocked with boulders in the roof, some which as bigger than the rift (hence being there) which suggests above that the cave only gets bigger. Good news I reckon, although it’s still a boulder choke, directly above you head, at the top of a 20m pitch, beyond a sump, beyond Cussey, so not ideal really. There is also a small horizontal opening which is too small to fit into but you can see up and may avoid some of the hanging death if it could be made passable. So a few different options to think about.
Also, madly, there was an absolutely huge echo coming from above. Like, Titan sized echo! I holler and hoot in all directions and convince myself that this is indeed coming from above, beyond the choke. Joe below could also hear the echo, which at first was very confirming, but then made me question how. As I climbed down the ladder the echo got louder, and I realised that in fact there’s a weird acoustics phenomenon occurring (big words for a Friday night!) and the echo was in fact just from the passage below where Joe was. Sad, cos I nearly got reyt excited.
Unfortunately the hardest bit to downclimb was the bottom part of the aven, especially getting onto the etrier, but thankfully Joe (an actual climber) was very polite about my pathetic squirming about only 3-4m up. Once down, easy (stoopidly fast) trip out, made memorable by Joe politely asking if he could carry the bag, probably to speed me up a bit.
Joined up with Chris and Jim (who had been buggerin about somewhere above Bradwell) in the Anchor for a debrief and too many snacks.
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- Written by: Jim Thompson
- Hits: 1454
Team: Jon / Jim
With most of Team Awesome otherwise engaged recently, with various excuses ranging from ‘working away’ to 'assisting in the research of 300 degree active lava tubes in Iceland’, it was Jon and I only tonight on a task-focused job. The job in question, to swap/install a number of dye detectors in various locations within the Stoney catchment as part of a dye tracing project being undertaken by researchers at the University of Birmingham under the guidance of Professor John Gunn.
Our first port of call was a quick dash into Streaks lower entrance. It seems de rigeur in every trip report ever to describe the pre-activity – so obviously, we met at the correct parking area, got changed into appropriate gear and went from there to the cave, went into said cave and did some caving. None of this is really what we were up to though, merely a means to an end to do the job in hand, thus:
I’d received some dye detectors earlier in the week from John, consisting of a bit of hosiery tied into a ball containing activated charcoal, intended for the capture of Fluorescein and/or Rhodamine dye depending on the path of water at the location vs. the surface dye injection site. An additional detector consisted of a cotton wool pad inside a perforated ziplock bag intended for the capture of optical brightener. The purpose of this is to enable simultaneous injection of dye at different sites, and hence identification of the different sources at the detection site. I’d ensured all the detectors were prepped with a good length of electric fence string and bagged such that the retrieved detectors could be swapped out and isolated to prevent any cross-contamination. Subsequent identification of dyes would be carried out in the lab by fluorometry.
In addition, we had a conductivity meter; intended to give an indication of the level of carbonate etc in solution, as well as a temperature reading that would assist in indicating any thermal origin of the water.
At each location we would remove the in-situ detector, securely bag it and tie the fresh detector(s) to a suitable weighty anchor (rock) to keep it submerged, note the conductivity and temperature reading, and dash onto the next, given that we had to do this in Streaks before heading to Cussey, this time though driving clad in wetsuit socks and pants, repeating the parking and changing procedure (swapping under/oversuits for wetsuits) and descending Cussey to access Doom / SMMC / Glebe to do the same at another 5 sites… it felt like a long night was ahead…
Probably time for some human interest to progress the story. It had been quite a while since I’d last visited Cussey so I was excited to get back into the swing of it for the summer. Rapid and uneventful progress was made to the shattered dreams squeeze, and feeling blasé about it I squeezed myself in.. I’d rather think it was the fact I’d brought my ‘best’ SRT kit involving an MTDE arse strap harness rather than the slimmed down Derbyshire version far more suited to this sort of thing, than the fact that my post-winter physique was bigger in girth than last summer, but either way I didn’t just slip through as anticipated. I tried unsuccessfully to release the hung up arse strap so rather than mess about I managed to wriggle out of the kit and throw it down to Jon, slid though and rekitted whilst he descended the next pitch. Soon we were making the fun head first dive out of the big chamber into Loper Lust. I wasn’t sure what to expect as the only time I’d been through here before it was in the reverse direction and bone dry. By comparison a wet and muddy LL is delightful. Reaching the wet bit, which by now was not a full on freedive, having significant but somewhat unasable airspace, I waited for Jon to let me know the way out was clear and progressed into the water until my sideways-turned face wouldn’t stay breathing air anymore. Quick pause, deep breath and forward under water, I felt my way through and popped up on the other side. Shortly afterwards we popped out in Doom.
Another new-to-me adventure to come, due to timings and other poor excuses last summer was the delight of Vulgarious. I knew it was muddy, and that it led the way into RAT, so that was good enough to pique my excitement. It’s not big, not really little, but I suspect it’s likely to be a love or hate option, rather than a goldilocks one. Fortunately I fell straight into the Love Gang, big grin forming as I slid easily through the slop. At one point I was delighted, having tired of the not-quite-proper flat out crawling, not-quite-tall-enough for hands and knees, to find that flipping onto my back and pushing with my heels made for far more efficient and fun backwards progress.
The roar of running water amplified the excitement levels as it signalled the arrival at RAT, and even if Vulgarious had been a horror show, it would have been worth it. SMMC would have to wait for another day as the sump was still too full for a dive through, but it was no small consolation to have a wander up the massive loveliness of RAT.
Back through Vulgarious and into Doom again, this time using monocular vision due to an unfortunate raising of the hand during my back-pedalling manoeuvre that ended with a big blob of gritty mud falling into my eye, and we pressed on towards Static Passage with our now-available spare detector. Static had a mere trickle of water but enough to get the ball wet so we placed it and took readings, then repeated the process at the gushing Elastic Passage, before pressing on towards and up the Wet West crosscut, a long and undeviating trudge up a train track. I must have been tired by this point because I don’t even remember swapping a detector here, even though I remember having a bag for one before and afterwards. What I do remember though is a: being absolutely starving and hallucinating pork scratchings in the Anchor (probably dehydrated too in that case), feeling suddenly and inexplicably utterly knackered, and my lamp deciding to go into limp mode out of sympathy. I had also stopped talking. A definite contra-indicator.
Heading up the Glebe crosscut for the final detector placement of the night, Jon did comment that the air wasn’t very nice in spite of the wind blowing through the place. Whatever it was I momentarily felt like I had nothing left in the tank and wanted to be, well not at the furthest distance away from our point of egress from underground.
Detector placed in the flowing water, we turned round and headed for home. I was obliged to stay close to Jon for light as I wanted to minimise the use of my backup light. I’d regained some energy and started talking again so maybe the air was rank… the tank was at least slightly topped up.
After not too long I was glad to haul myself with plenty of groaning, back into Inglorious whereupon Jon produced a Pain au Chocolat from the tub. Taking a bite, it was like eating a dry bathroom sponge but at that moment the most delicious bathroom sponge anyone has ever eaten. It gave me the energy I needed to get on the rope, have a really quick power nap half way up the pitch, and possibly most importantly, climb up Coconut Airways with no difficulty at all.
Finally, right at the foot of the entrance pitch, I realised everything would be much easier were I able to see, so turned on my backup light. Climbing out of the lid into the night air I was struck with the sensation of ‘feeling OK’, which given my state in Glebe, is an acceptable result for a busy night.
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- Written by: Rob Eavis
- Hits: 1228
Dylan was supposed to join me but got caught out by torrential rain on his motorbike ride from York so he turned around. No bother for me as i'm happy caving solo, especially Cussey as i know it all so well and can move nice and efficiently. Loper Lust was open but only by a few inches. The wind roaring through made waves on the pool! Still easier and more pleasant to freedive than suck the roof so i went for that option. Vulgarious was the same as ever. Boil Up Sump 2 was totally full and flowing a little (more than what was just dropping in from the eyehole above). I got the syphon running fine and spent a while thinking about how to improve this setup, ideally so it stays syphoned. I have a plan now to try at least. After a little jog down RAT (rude not too) i turned around and set a good pace out. Whole trip was 56 minutes, including the ~15 mins messing about with the syphon, proving it's not that big a trip. Got to wash off in the Saltpan too, lush!