Group members – Gancho, Helen, Gareth, and Dai

By Dai MacDonald

I’ve not been caving an awful lot recently because of my work pattern, but this was the first trip of two into Ogof Draenen in a week.

As is tradition Gareth and I were late, but it was entirely my fault. I woke up late, and by late I mean roughly the time I was meant to be leaving and picking Gareth up. We’d arranged a 10am meet and we were roughly an hour late, but both Helen and Gancho were full of smiles on our arrival. There was dense fog covering everywhere, and you couldn’t see further than about 50 yards, but it wasn’t raining, and it wasn’t windy, so we made short work of getting kitted up and heading to the gate.

The entrance series was really dry, but what water there was, it was bloody freezing! Gareth rigged the climb to lifeline Gancho and Helen. While waiting I talked both through the best way to tackle it, and also reminisced the first time seeing it and how much it scared me, and now I’m talking and assisting others through it.

The log book signed, we headed for “Wonder Bra” and then “Tea Junction”, not without me trying to take us the wrong way a couple of times first though. From “Tea Junction” we were heading for “Gilwern Passage” and after the lengthy passage we stopped for a quick snack and drink before heading to “Galeria Garimpeiros”. We finally called it a day after we’d got to the junction for “Y Gwter Fawr”, “Sons Of The Pioneers”, and “Echo Inlet”, just at the end of ”Forever Changed”. Along the way Helen took a lot of photos as there’s lots of formations, and pretty passage along the way. We finished the inward journey with a photo at the junction.

The journey outward went smoothly, with Gareth life lining Helen and Gancho on the climb again, and then one last photo as we exited.

For a change at Pwll Du it wasn’t bad at all, but it is Pwll Du after all, so it wasn’t pleasant either.