Team Awesome - Jon, Luke, Rob
Our general guess was that after last week’s flood Loper Lust in Cussey was going to be properly sumped, so we needed to look elsewhere or our weekly fun. Not a team to be often tempted by “tourist” caving, we needed to find somewhere with a purpose. On the list for a while has been to check out Gautries Hole.
Back in 2008 the Eldon were successful (lucky?) in being the first team to check out the end after a hard winter, only to find that the mud sump had been washed out and open passage was there for the taking. Over the course of a few years the cave tripled in length, helped partly by diverting the entrance stream to wash even more water into the far reaches. This was done using a small ‘plug’ which backed up the stream in the First Chamber which caused the water to overflow into South-West Passage, but this caused the short entrance passage to sump. Therefore a rope was attached to the plug which could be pulled upon arrival, allowing the sump drain and dryish access to the cave.
Also a good freedive line was installed by Rob Middleton through the two short sumps. This was after a certain embarrassing rescue where me and some Eldon diggers got caught in there during very heavy rain, causing the sump to come up, even without the plug in place. Ooops.
Reports recently were that the plug rope no longer worked, so you couldn’t get the sump down. Last known access was many years ago. I wonder what has changed after that much diverted flow beyond! Also, the plug obviously needs fixing or removing.
So our (my) plan was to freedive through, remove the plug, wait for the sump to go down, then the others come through and we go off exploring. Simple, right. Also good practise for if we do get into the SMMC and need to freedive Sump 2... It started off well. The dives through went fine, albeit slightly longer than I remembered, each about 10 seconds long.
Arriving in the First Chamber instantly I realise the issue; the plug is now buried under at least a metre of sediment! Bugger. I know roughly where it is so I start digging down with my feet, now up to my neck in surprisingly freezing water (it’s 1 degC on the surface). Every so often I dive down for a good feel around, but fail to locate the plug. I dig for about 10 minutes but get exhausted and totally frozen. Not really the ideal conditions for freediving back out, but I manage ok and go share the bad news with the guys waiting in the entrance.
We decide to cut our loses and go for a rummage around Perryfoot, a cave Luke had never been to before and one me n Jon hadn’t visited for many many years. We actually had quite a nice time, blindly poking about everywhere. The round trip was sumped unfortunately, but that meant we could do a hasty retreat and go see if the Stags was open, which is was so it was all weirdly worthwhile.
I will return and sort Guatries, but only once it's a bit warmer!