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….