10th July 2014 - Rob Eavis, Dave Harley
After staring at the Castleton survex file for too long, I decided the only way to work out what was going on at the end of the New Oxlow stuff was to go have a look. The puzzle was that the whole of Pilgrim's Way and the Giants connection is formed on an obvious bedding plan, but beyond North Chamber all the formation is below it. This in itself seems plausible, but the exciting idea was that maybe originally the development continued downstream along the bedding, taking it over PB chamber and onwards to Peak. Mainstream Inlet is formed predominantly on that bedding also, so that was to be the starting point.
Neither myself nor Dave had been passed the Chamber of Horrors connection, so we were pleasantly surprised to witness that as soon as you pass that point the agonisingly boring crawling of Pilgrim's Way becomes big stomping passage, with large avens, cross rifts, chambers and a short pitch for good measure. This is classic Peak Cavern caving, with elements of Stemple Highway, Treasury Passage, Western Highway and even a little bit of Upper Gallery. Great stuff….
A less great flatout crawl in water leads through to Boulder Chamber and the sump through to PB Chamber. Near the start of the crawl the Mainstream Inlet rift passage comes in from the North. This leads up a to a dark room with a small waterfall dropping in from a small hole in the roof, 8m up. But how to get up there!?! A determined nose around in some rifts off this room lead us up a spiral climb and a scramble into a horizontal passage, quickly leading to top of the cascade. Proper caving!
Seeing that this passage was on the bedding we followed our noses, taking the most Easterly option at all junctions. It’s a nice passage, similar in dimensions to Streaks’ main passage. This eventually led us through an old dig and up some small climbs to a small aven above another dig. In the constriction to enter this last aven we both noticed a strong inward flow of air, so our cave radars were fully turned on. Whilst Dave inspected the final dig I thrutched up the aven above him and spotted a small tube near the top which looked to open up after a short distance. Struggling without obvious footholds, I posted myself through and stood up in another aven. Again up at roof height was another tube, this time along the line of the rift, but looking significantly smaller and more awkward than the last. But mud on the walls suggested someone had been up there, so up I go.
This is a strange squeeze, probably worthy of a name, because it simply looks impossible. Only once fully in it can you start to think you’ll fit through. It involves squirming up to the top of the narrow rift, turning yourself by 90° so you’re horizontal, and then caterpillaring your way forwards through the squeeze. Needless to say, once through the walls were very clean, new ground!
The squeeze pops you out in a rift, with both a 4m climb down and a ramp in front heading up. It’s not big cave, but it’s got a weird feeling that it’s part of a bigger formation. I shouted back to Dave but he’d gone off climbing other avens, so politely I carried on regardless. The climb down looked good so I went up the ramp first. This led up roughly 5m to the base of a small aven, small calcite crystals on the wall glistening, this was exhilarating work. All ways off were too small but I’m sure there’s a draught up there to be followed.
Back down the ramp and a slide down the 4m climb landed me on a sandy floor. A 30 second dig led through to a descending tube which spiralled around and dropped into a roomy chamber, roughly 3m in diameter and 3m high. A passage scooped off at floor level to the NE, but a fridge sized boulder totally blocked the entrance, providing only the tantalising sight of a 1m diameter horizontal passage twisting out of view.
After taking it all in I returned to the squeeze to see where Dave was. He’d been off climbing stuff but nothing new, and upon hearing my stories came straight through. We both agreed that whilst the squeeze looks impossible, it’s definitely a very little bit easier than it looks! With two of us we managed to get the fridge moving slightly, and I took the punt that it’ll be small enough to simply push down into the passage, allowing us to crawl over. A big push later and the passage was now properly blocked! Ooops. With no other options we started mining underneath, and after ~15 minutes we (mostly Dave) had loosened it enough for us both to pull it back away from the roof of the passage and into the floor. Success!
To make up for my earlier politeness I let Dave go first, and thankfully it provided well. A hands and knees crawl led in total for roughly 50m, and although in retrospect is difficult to describe interestingly, it was awesome! New cave, in the Peak, and without any digging! After ~30m a T-junction is met. To the left leads for a short distance to another T-junction. Left was mostly full of mud, but the air space above gave a tantalising glimpse of things to come, and right was just slightly too small without digging the floor out but took a good draught. Back at the main junction we both noticed a change, not only were we now heading more right (East) than we had previously, we were also heading down hill. We stopped for a chat.
Here we were, sat in a new passage, 1km away from Peak, roughly 100m higher than Main Rising, and we’re heading directly towards it. This could get interesting! Another 20m further on and mud reached the roof. Nevermind, the dream was exciting enough, the realisation would have just been the icing on the cake! Just before the end a small passage to the left went through an elbow deep pool into low passage which we hoped might oxbow around the dig, but it also met the same fate.
By this time this mid-week evening trip had probably gone on too long, assuming that we planned on doing anything useful at work tomorrow, and with all leads now requiring at least a little digging effort, we made haste. On the way back I counted body lengths, and roughly counted 75m all in. A surprisingly quick derig and we were back on the surface just before midnight.