1st August 2014 – Rob Eavis, Luke Cafferty
In the absence of Dave or Simon being available from my side, and Moose from Luke’s, the two of us got together to fulfil our mandatory digging allowance. We’d previous only ever met briefly in Titan about a year ago, but I heard from his Watershed Aven exploits that he’s good in tight places, so figured he’ll be suitable for a Crusader trip (yes, the new stuff now has a name).
A quick blast up the hill overheated us plenty so it was with great pleasure we abseiled into the cool entrance, rigging as we go, to pretty quickly find ourselves once again overheating as we blast along Pilgrim’s Way. We started surveying from where the distoX had packed in two weeks ago, near the pitch down, and with Luke’s recently gained surveying experience we made steady progress down and then up Main Stream Inlet series, and to the old digs.
I knew this part could be interesting to survey, as there are two small crawls, both quite awkward and winding, especially the second ending in a quite steep slope upwards to the base of the final aven. Attacking these forwards is normally quite challenging, so for Luke blindly going feet first, on his first trip there, was a little thought-provoking. Nevertheless job completed seamlessly and onwards to the Crusader squeezes. Again Luke was to pass these ahead of me, but luckily both squeezes are quite short so we could mix forward and backward-sighted legs to make the task significantly less challenging. Luke agreed that the main squeeze looked impossible, but passed it with surprising ease through into the new territory.
First we went up the ramp ahead, and Luke managed to bag 4 more metres up the continuation of the climb. He noted some small white scratch marks on the walls which ignited imagination of wild beasts hiding around the corner! On closer inspection I think they are just lines of calcite extruded from thin cracks in the rock. Maybe…
We climbed down the short rift and into the short spiralling passage leading down to the first chamber. So far I think Luke was a little underwhelmed, especially with the vastness of his recent discovery in Peak, so it was satisfying for me to hear him mutter a short “wow” when he looked down at the way on. That enthusiasm soon somewhat waned as we drop down into the main Crusader Passage and slosh our way along the muddy first few metres of this otherwise very pleasant crawl, all the while trying desperately to keep the survey gear clean.
Soon we’d reached the main dig, and all that was left to survey was the little passage to the North. This starts in an elbow deep pool, and even though I thought I’d directed him sufficiently, Luke managed to flop around in this for a good minute or two before having to come back out again and then re-attempt feet first, allowing us to continue the surveying to the bitter end.
Now thoroughly chilled and it just passing midnight, we make our return, breaking surface around 1:30am. After the last two trips being squeezed into school nights, it was of small relief to have finally organised a Friday night trip, so that we could sleep in the morning after. It wasn’t until near the end of the trip that I realised that Luke had to be up at 5:30am for work!
Data - I'd originally counted the new finds to be 75m long. Now all the data is processed I was pleasantly surprised to see that it is actually 98m. I'll upload a survey once drawn...