Trip to Illusion Pot/Dale Head Cave -- 19th April 2009

Home Page

Back to Regional Index

Content and images
© WCG 2003-2015

Click images to enlarge

Last Changed: 26/1/2015

E-mail webmaster

Trip to Illusion Pot/Dale Head Cave -- 19th April 2009

Group: Ian, Dave

A very pleasant sunny afternoon saw us park up in Kingsdale and after donning oversuits etc head off to try and locate Illusion Pot. After a false start we headed over the fields to the line of shakeholes and found the lidded shaft.

Removing the fairly heavy lid revealed a very well engineered shaft with concrete pipe and linings. The first section had in-situ steps and further down were several steel ladders fixed to the shaft so no gear was needed. At the bottom a short crawl led into a streamway with shingle and a small amount of water. There were several quite reasonable formations in alcoves as we headed along towards the canal. Among these was some very nice mud formations in a taped off area.

Further on a set of mud banks were met and the headroom decreased through a mud filled passage which then opened out into a reasonable size passage just before the canal section. There was a dam made out of bagged earth to hold the water back and a load of buckets for bailing out the canal. Fortunately the recent dry weather meant that traversing the canal wasn't too bad. The other side of the canal was a large passage which carried on a short distance to a massive cavern with a peculiar tube-like aven, the "Missile Silo". The floor was covered with breakdown and other rubble.

Heading to the left and climbing a slope led to a window showing some fantastic formations. An awkward climb down a hole near the floor (care!) and then a careful climb up enabled access to the passage with the formations. It is necessary to be extremely careful here to avoid any damage to the formations, A moments inattention could easily damage something which has taken tens of thousands of years to grow and so it is essential to watch each other to make sure arms, legs, heads are well away for the delicate straws and other formations. They really are beautiful and need to be kept that way!

While we were photographing the formations another party (from TSG) arrived and had a look before heading off towards the sumps. We carefully extracted ourselves from the pretty passage and climbed back into the chamber. Heading back past the entrance passage we climbed up and down over dusty blocks and gravel and carried on along Vandal passage. Several low sections to the RHS had beautiful iron-stained, but almost translucent stals which looked really spectacular.

A bit further on was a bit of rope heading down a gravel slope. We followed this into Rushton Chamber and caught up with the other party at the rope traverse. This needs cows-tails and is slightly awkward if you have short legs. After the traverse the gravel slope drops steeply down to a rather wet sump. We headed back out and admired the straws and other formations in Rushton Chamber before heading back to the Missile Silo.

We crawled back through the canal and ascended the shaft and met up with the other group. It was still warm and sunny outside which was icing on the cake after a fantastic trip.

Overall trip time about 3.5 hours. This is not a trip for the clumsy or inexperienced...