Not many Awesome members about this week so we were scrabbling about for a suitable project. Fabian was keen to go pull test the new bolts down Whalf climber, so that gave us a direction at least. After my very first trip into Whalf only a few weeks ago I was impressed enough to want to go back and look about the system more, and our rough plan was to chuck a rope down Knotlow Engine, pull through Whalf Climber and go through Meccano. Coolio. However Fabian and Sam were delayed arriving and me, Chris and Luke got too impatient to wait (self-serving wankers) so came up with a new plan.
Earlier that day me and Jon Pemberton had been reading through old Eldon newsletters of Clive Westlake’s adventures at the far end of Knotlow in the late 60’s, all of which I’d never been to and sounded gnarly, so I was keen to get to know the system better. We weren’t suitably kitted up for very wet stuff, but I’d heard that the Bung Series was dry and looked very natural on the survey so might be fun. We left Fabian a voice message saying we were leaving them to do whatever and headed off for Knotlow Climber.
Luke descending the entrance pitch of Knotlow
We chucked some rope down and made our way in. Luke and Chris had both been here earlier this year (I was probably 15 years ago!) and remarked how much shorter it is than they remembered. Then instead of going down Waterfall pitch we continued North, dekitting our gear. All this way I was amazed by how much was natural passage, very tantalising. Beyond a few wet crawls took some of the appeal away but it was still fun.
Chris in the first of the low crawls towards the Bung Series
Chris found a small hole in the floor with an inviting coffin level heading off East. At first it was crawling over stones but as we were heading downstream (although dry today) it soon became stooping height. 150m later it got low and gloopy and we soon reached a dodgy crossrift with a low, wet way on left. Luke finally realised he’d been here many years before and this was part of the Crimbo Pipe round (square) trip. When he had done it the place was much wetter, and his memories of the trip were enough to encourage us to turn around and look elsewhere.
Back along the main drag we soon reached the Bung; a well worn constriction requiring a two arms in front manoeuvre followed by a committing drop into a wet flatout squeeze on your side. Chris quickly decided this was not for him today so me n Luke (self-serving wankers…) left him there and went for a look.
Beyond the duck a T-junction is soon met. A quick look left didn’t look right, so I thought it’d be right to not go left but to instead head right. This passage is a phreatic tube like a small Streaks and continues for nearly 100m, and my guessing from the scallops and the sediment was that we were heading downstream. Halfway along a cross rift is met with the tube surprisingly continuing at roof level after an easy climb up. Shortly after that a slope up to the right leads to the Great Aven, which I agree to be appropriately named, and interestingly appears on the 1980 survey to be unclimbed, as does a tall rift nearby which we appear to have totally missed! Whilst Luke hung out here, I pushed on another 30m to a small cross rift (Rumble Chamber). Here the passages to the right got too small, whereas a short dig through a choke to the left reached a vertical slot down which I deemed too tight and committing for today.
I raced back to Luke, then together we raced back to Chris, both agreeing that whilst this crawling malarky was pretty tedious at least it wasn’t the far end of Baggers. Back through the Bung Chris was as ever chilled and seemingly happy we’d left him for probably 25 minutes, and we starting making our way out together. The trip to the surface is super quick, especially with a pantin, and we were soon at the cars and met up with Fabian and Sam who’d just finished their much more productive work checking the bolts. Debrief in the pub over a survey and pint got the tastebuds activated, maybe a trip to the end end whilst dry could be a good target?
