Trip to upper/lower Long Churn -- 22nd Jan 2012

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Trip to upper/lower Long Churn -- 22nd Jan 2012

Group: Mary, Paul, Dave, Dave2, Ian

First trip of the year to take a new recruit, Dave Taylor, to Yorkshire to experience the delights of winter caving. A dull and cold day saw 5 of us drive up to Selside and get changed in an empty car park. After paying the trespass fee we heard up the track towards Alum Pot and met a group of 4 cavers heading back.

The weather was cool and there was some snow on the ground, but at least it wasn't too breezy. We had a quick look in Alum Pot and then headed on to 'the churns', meeting a couple of walkers (one an ex caver) who were peering into the upper entrance.

We headed along the passage, water levels were average and those skilled at climbing or with long legs managed to avoid getting wet in the pools by bridging. It didn't take long to get to Dr Bannisters were had a crawl around. We then headed back towards the entrance, but decided to explore the cross passage which leads towards lower long churn.

The survey showed a duck, but this just turned out to be a deeper pool which was easily negotiated and landed the party near to the double lower long churn shuffle pool. We turned left and then turned right as we reached the main passage to exit into daylight.

A short walk brought us to the entrance to Diccan Pot and we headed in to locate the short tunnel which intersects with lower long churn near to the cheesepress. Dave unfortunately chose a narrow passage well to the right of the Diccan streamway and this turned out to be blind (and not marked on the survey). After everyone had reversed we chose the correct passage a few yards to the left and landed up next to the cheesepress. Dave volunteered to go first and got through with a bit of difficultly. Paul & Mary slid through without any problem being skinny. Dave Taylor almost got through, but probably opted to go the wrong side of the slight bulge and so had to be extracted backwards by Ian who then squeezed through. Dave climbed back up and rigged a safety line down the short pitch by the font and helped the other Dave down.

The party had a quick look at the Dolly Tubs pitch and then climbed back up to the passage above the font. We headed back along the passage and crossed plank pool and double shuffle without incident. It was probably a bad move to crawl out the side passage just before the waterfall as the water level was sufficient to get everyone wet., but it did mean we had covered pretty well the whole system. We headed back to the cars, changed into dry clothes and headed home.

Overall trip time: 2.5 hours