Report by Jules Barrett
Cavers: Jules Barrett (EPC), Toni Murphy (non-EPC)
Fancied a nice easy Yorkshire trip today with some traversing, straightforward abseiling and ladder climbing practice for Toni. Heron Pot looked like it would fit the bill. Arrived at the parking opposite Yordas wood early afternoon and walked over towards Kingsdale Beck. Met a party of four cavers on their way back to the car after a Heron trip and they said that there was still another party in the cave on ladders. We walked up the dry valley towards the entrance and found it pretty quickly. Dropped into the entrance and a bit of crawling and slightly awkward stuff leads to a junction with the water. From here we went downstream passing under some nice flowstone curtains in pleasant stream passage. Eventually arrived at the top of the first pitch to find the other team just on their way up. That was handy cos after five minutes wait they were out of the way and I was rigging. Since my SRT kit was elsewhere I was experimenting with a set up which consisted of basically a climbing harness, gri-gri and mini-traxion. Toni abseiled down the first pitch with a figure-of-8 descender and I followed. Second pitch got rigged (using the world's biggest Y-hang) and then we dropped down there. The bottom of both pitches was pretty wet and you certainly wouldn't have wanted much more water in there. There is a single-bolt rebelay that you can put in on the second pitch but since Toni's never seen a rebelay we left it well alone and took our chances in the water at the botttom of the pitch. After a mooch downstream we headed back to the bottom of the second pitch. I started to ascend (generally slowly) with my minimalist prussiking set-up but thankfully it's not a big pitch and soon was at the top. Dropped a ladder down and lifelined Toni up. Lots of screaming and giggling as she swung into the water but she was soon at the pitch head. Similar fun and games on the first pitch and then headed out.
A very pleasant (though short) trip and excellent abseiling and ladder practice for Toni. There is a through trip that you can do but was a bit wet today for that.