Present: Will Astle (TSG), Oscar Doyle (TSG), Ben Marks (EPC), Toby Ward (SUSS)
So, the time had come for me to pluck up the courage to lead a trip down Cussey Pot and through the sump into the Stoney Middleton Master Cave. I had been on an evening trip down Cussey with Rob Eavis and Chris Hibberts a few weeks back, and the water levels in Loper Lust left much to be desired… Rob had assured me there was airspace (which there was), but a shame the distance between the tip of my nose to my lips was larger than the amount of airspace in the crawl! I couldn’t bring myself to ‘dive’ it face down – there is something horrific about freediving in a flat out tube filled with brown water! So instead, I opted to take my helmet off and attempt to suck the ceiling. On both trips through, I ended up fully submerged with a good mouthful of water each time due to my nose pushing my face underwater, as well as dropping my helmet behind me in the sump which I then had to retrieve!
Luckily Eldon had sent a team in on the Thursday evening before my planned trip for TSG, so I was able to receive the good news that the water levels in Loper Lust had receded to the point where you could maintain air all the way through if lying on your back with your helmet off. They had also managed to set up the siphon in ‘The Boil up Sump 2’, meaning that with a bit of luck the main free dive would only be about 3m in length instead of the 5m that the team had encountered on Thursday. Rob also kindly annotated a survey of Cussey which made sense to me, and Lisa Wooton had managed to laminate some copies of it for me to take for the trip. All was looking promising for our attack on what has to be one of the finest caving trips in the region…
Toby and I met in the Eyam Hall car park and got ready, with the arrival of Will and Oscar shortly after due to a hold up in Peveril Stores! It was wetsuits all round today after my advice having done the trip in both a wetsuit and a normal undersuit before. The lid was soon opened, and all the team marvelled at the tremendous draft billowing out from the entrance pitch. I’m sure you could float an inflatable beach ball on it! The pitches were abseiled with ease, and the ‘Shattered Dreams’ squeeze passed by all without too many complaints. All of the team had soon managed to descend the spectacular 30m pitch into ‘Inglorious Bastards’, the large breakdown chamber at the bottom end of Cussey Pot.
SRT Kits were swiftly dumped, and Toby went into Loper Lust first. The wet part of the crawl which we were all dreading came around far too quickly, but to our luck it was more than doable with helmets off, ears fully submerged and then inching along as calmly as possible on our backs. We soon made it down to the fixed ladder marking the start of ‘Doom’ and ‘Wet West’ and hopped off it about a metre down. This is the first time in the trip in which nice walking passage is encountered, but unfortunately it closes right down again and you are back to another flat out crawl in viscous sticky mud – ‘Vulgarious Bastard’. It’s not too bad; I’d say its roughly akin to the smaller parts of Colostomy Crawl, but there is a nasty wet duck which requires some more flat-out ceiling sucking around a 90 degree bend at one point. After this however, a rift is soon met down a very slippery slope which you approach headfirst, and some stemples are present to help with the climb down into more walking passage, this time with a good dolloping of welly sucking mud. Just down here, ‘Race Against Time’ is intersected. This is a fantastic stream passage, which despite being the upstream continuation of Carlswalk feels nothing like it!
Heading upstream, the team made their way to ‘The Boil-up Sump 2’, which would be today’s main mental obstacle. After checking the levels as reassured to me by Jon Pemberton on a last-minute phone call, I was satisfied that it was low enough to free dive safely. Toby was hyped and already in the sump pool, so he bravely went first, and sure enough a few seconds later I saw three pulls on the dive line, so I popped through. To my surprise, when I sat in the sump pool I could hear Toby and see his light through the sump – for the first time ever there was about 10mm of air space! The siphon has worked really well.
It really is an awesome freedive. Spacious, and long enough to feel like it is a good achievement, but not too intimidating. We were all soon through and enthused by the adrenaline of the dive. We made our way into the master cave streamway and walked upstream for about 20 minutes. The water had a fascinating green tinge to it, and it soon dawned on me that John Gunn and the Eldon team have been doing some Dye Tracing in the Stoney Middleton catchment. SMMC streamway was certainly a positive result! There was a good flow down the streamway this time. I had not seen it flowing properly before, so that was a welcome treat. It really is an incredible stretch of streamway: everything is still sharp, and there’s inlets and avens just waiting to be climbed. The size of the passage is akin to the Peak Cavern streamway in many places, but the limestone is far darker. We soon decided that it was probably time to head back, so turned around at the next boulder collapse we found in the streamway. The length of the passage is quite astonishing, we had barely scratched the surface of it!
Back down the stream we walked, and pushed the downstream end of the master cave until it became a muddy crawl. The water sinks down some pots in the floor of the streamway roughly opposite to the inlet in which ‘The Boilup Sump 2’ is situated in, and the water can be heard roaring deep below through multiple holes further down the downstream continuation of the streamway. Definitely some digging potential here, even if they might just sump quickly. Once we had all made it back to the sump, we took turns to dive back through. It’s definitely harder on the way back as you’re fighting against the roof a bit more as it is a shallow slope down into the water rather than a vertical ‘lip’ of rock like it is on the other side. You have to really pull on the dive line and keep calm, and your helmet takes a fair old knocking as you fight your way through. Will had a bit of a nightmare under water and ended up getting stuck for a few seconds, but surfaced, did a lot of swearing and vowed he’d never dive the sump again! Poor Oscar on the other side could hear the panic stricken shouting, but didn’t have a clue what had happened… Bravely, he dived through anyway and soon all of us were making our way back up through all the crawls and into Cussey Pot. Toby went off to have a quick look in ‘Doom’ whilst I waited for Will and Oscar, and then we all headed back to ‘Inglorious Bastards’ where SRT kits were donned and we started the journey back up the pitches. ‘Coconut Airways’, a tight rift freeclimb of roughly 4m provided some resistance for everyone on the trip but Toby, but eventually everyone was back on surface elated after having a successful trip. We all dekitted and cleaned up as best as we could, and I headed back to Castleton to clean my kit and get ready for a party in the evening. It’s such an amazing trip, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Just prepare yourself for it being a bit grim in places, but think of the end goal! That streamway is such an experience. Everyone did really well, and Toby is now one of the first student cavers to get into SMMC I believe! Well done ?
