Huw Jones, Morgan Specht, Malcolm Reid and Huw Durban

By Huw Jones
Photos Huw Durban

It was very nearly a year on from the last trip but we were back, all ready to drop the pitch in Fault Rifts, Ogof Draenen. Everyone was available this time so we had four people to share carrying all the kit.

We met up in Blaenavon again and then drove up to Pwll Du for another early start, picking up the 40m rope from Indiana Highway along the way again. Once in Fault Chambers, we quickly got our SRT kits on and headed up the rope into Fault Rifts, that me and Morgan had rigged last time. To keep things moving nicely, as soon as I was up, I stripped of my SRT kit and headed straight to the climb up Headache Rift and passed the message back for everyone else to do the same. The rift was still very hard work, even using a jammer and footloop but definitely easier than doing it without! As soon as the next person (Morgan) was up we moved off to the next obstacle, the low, tight crawl leading from Headache to the parallel passage. It was hard work dragging a bag through here and the team bunched up again. Once through the damp choke, we made our way down the parallel passage, to the pitch.

Things at the pitch head were a bit different from what I thought I remembered from my last visit but that had been twenty months ago and the batteries in my lamp had been running low so I didn’t have that much light! The top of the pitch seemed smaller, the right hand wall very uneven but more solid and the left hand wall, that I’d decided it would be best to rig from was covered in a thick layer of wet mud. We got the kit out and I started rigging on the left wall. I placed a bolt back from the pitch head and tied in the rope to give protection to rig the main hang further out. I had to use the chisel we had with us to scrape off the mud before I could drill the hole for a bolt. It was so bad that I had a bit of a wobble and thought maybe it would have been better to use the other wall. I felt a bit under pressure. This whole thing had been my idea and I’d persuaded the others to go on a number of long, hard trips. Now, the others were getting cold waiting for me to rig the pitch. I realised it was silly to feel under pressure like this. If it was me up there, I would have been happy to wait for as long as it took for someone else to rig the pitch. I pulled myself together and got on with it. Two more bolts gave a nice Y-hang and I slithered down the muddy wall for about 6m, landing on boulders wedged in the rift. Out to my right, the shaft opened out, with the water falling on one side. The muddy wall ended in a sort of a prow, sticking out into the shaft. I held the rope to different parts of the prow, to find a good spot for a rebelay, then placed a fourth bolt, which gave a 20m free hang to the floor.

Huw J at the pitch head

Huw J rigging

We’d finally got down the pitch but were we in new passage? A small rift passage headed back under the way we’d come in and I check out a muddy slope at the start of it. There were footprints! Not many so probably only a very small number people had been here before but it wasn’t new passage. From the very small number of prints there could possibly have only been a single trip here before us. They hadn’t come down the pitch so the passage must connect to somewhere else in the cave. I didn’t tell the others about the footprints, just called for them to come down. I walked across the shaft base, through the falling water, through a short rift passage, to where it opened out into a small but high chamber. I sat on a steep, loose slope and waited for the other’s, telling each one about the footprints as they arrived at the bottom.

When everyone was down, we had a little explore, finding a long, narrow rift with a stream flowing at the bottom. There were a couple of crawls going off and in the tall chamber, a passage could be seen, a few meters up one wall. We didn’t feel like pushing along any of the small passages and anyway time was getting on. We all got back up the pitch, de-rigged it, packed the kit up in the bags and headed out disappointed.

Malc arriving back at the head of the pitch

Where did the name Boulder Rodeo come from? When Morgan got back to the top of the pitch, he sat down, straddling a boulder that we’d all clambered over/around to get to the pitch head. I’d sat on it while getting my SRT kit on. This time however, it started moving, twisting right over towards the pitch, with Morgan still sat on it! It seemed funny, if a little disturbing afterwards but could have been nasty as a few rocks fell down the shaft as Malc was coming up. Morgan came up with the name!

It was a long, hard trip out, especially with the heavy bags and I, for one, was very, very tired. It took me an hour to get out from Cairn Junction to the entrance, double the normal time! It was a disappointing end to the effort but I suppose a lead in the cave had been ticked off and no one else has to go there.

A short piece about dropping the pitch appeared in the Welsh News section of Descent magazine (No. 250, June/July 2016), accompanied by one of Huw Durban’s photos.

Morgan Specht & Huw Jones

After our failed first attempt to drop the undescended pitch in Fault Rifts, we needed a rethink. It had been a long, hard trip and we hadn’t even managed to get the rigging gear to the pitch. Plus of course, Morgan had been unable to climb the tight rift up to Headache Passage.

To start with we needed an easier way into Fault Rifts. The Going Square route was hard work and the climbs slowed things down. We could use the original route via Fault Chambers but that involved a very exposed 7m climb. It was also longer but hopefully easier. But what if we did a separate set-up trip and rigged the climb as a pitch. When we came to drop the 30m+ pitch we’d have our SRT kits with us so another little pitch would be no problem.

Next was the tight rift climb; what to do to ensure every member of the team could get up it? Various solutions were thrown around. The rift could be widened in some way, chiselling or capping maybe. Apart from making it bigger, that might also produce better holds. Stemples could be fitted in the rift to give something to push up on. A third idea was for someone to climb the rift again and rig a rope down it. A jammer and footloop could then be used, pushing the jammer up the rope a tiny bit each time and then forcing yourself upwards by standing in the footloop.

Another way to make the route to the pitch easier and quicker could be to dig out the larger, choked crawl that went between Headache and the Parallel Passage. This would cut out the very low crawl, the damp choke and the other crawl in the Parallel Passage itself. It would be awkward though as the slabs blocking the way were through a little arch, which restricted working room. They’d also probably need to be capped so we’d have to drag a drill (which we didn’t have) all that way.

I the end we decided that the choked crawl between Headache Passage and the parallel passage was too far in and the time saving wouldn’t be worth the effort, likewise widening the rift climb up to Headache. On the other hand, rigging ropes on the climbs seemed like a good idea, made even better when Huw Durban donated a small drill to the club so placing bolts would be quick and easy. I still thought that fitting stemples in the tight rift was a good idea as well.

It took a long while for the next trip to come to fruition. In that time, apart from the new drill, some of the club equipment had been replaced, including ropes and karabiners. That meant there was some old gear knocking about, which included the 40m rope we had stashed in the cave, that could now be used on projects like ours.

Only myself and Morgan were available on the date chosen for this set up trip, 9 months after the first one! We met in Blaenavon at 8am on a Sunday morning again and this time I made sure I had the Draenen key with me! We transferred all the gear into Morgan’s camper van and drove up to Pwll Du. It was windy and cold, which made changing unpleasant as usual. We were underground by 9am, with a heavy tackle bag again each. Apart from the drill, we had a good length of the old rope, some through bolts, hangers and slings of mine, plus a few of the old club krabs. Along with that lot we had a lump hammer, crowbar, and chisel and a couple of pieces of timber for stemples, plus a saw to cut them to size. Plus, of course, food, drink, spare light and batteries and some emergency stuff. Morgan also had his SRT kit. The drill was protected inside an insulated/padded lunch bag, inside a dry bag. Most of the rest of the gear was sealed up in bin liners to try to keep everything dry through the entrance series, to keep things lighter and the wooden stemples easier to cut.

We made our way via Going Square, into Fault Rifts, again with the faff at the climbs, to arrive in the chamber overlooking Fault Chambers. We got to work straight away. I unpacked the drill and placed a backup bolt to rig a traverse line, for protection at the head of the climb, while Morgan got his SRT kit on. Then Morgan used the rope for protection while placing two bolts at the pitch head, one in each wall and rigged a Y-hang. Then he descended the pitch and cut off the spare rope, using the lighter from my emergency kit to seal the ends. Once he was back up, we quickly packed up and moved on to the tight rift climb.

This was proving to be such an obstacle, that I decided it needed a name, Headache Rift, as it obviously led up to Headache Passage but also as it was proving such a headache for the team! I really wasn’t looking forward to it again but started thrutching for all I was worth, slowly working my way up, heart and lungs working like crazy. Again, I’d trailed a rope behind me and once at the top, I had to decide how to fix it in place. I could haul up the drill to put in a bolt but first I looked to see if there were any useful natural belays. At the top, the passage went a short distance in the opposite direction to Headache Passage, and had a boulder floor. Here, there was a tight thread belay, in a little alcove, that could be used. The only thing was, the rope would run over a boulder in the alcove that rocked back and fore but which wouldn’t actually come out of the alcove. I thought about using the boulder as belay, as I couldn’t remove it but decided against using a rocking belay so awkwardly pushed a sling around the thread. The rope ran over the boulder and also over the edge of the boulder floor and I considered using the drill to place a bolt out in the rift, to give a better hang but in the end decided that what I’d rigged would be adequate.

With the rope rigged, it was time for Morgan to try it out. He clipped on his jammer and with his foot in the footloop hanging from it, pushed it up the rope a little and stood up, forcing his body up the rift. It was still very hard work and slow but Morgan made it to the top! He was keen to take a look at Headache Passage but we didn’t get very far as there was a bat hanging in the boulder choke, just a little way along and not wanting to disturb it, we decided turn around.

Back at the bottom of Headache Rift, we made a start in fitting the wooden stemples. I measured up the first one, Morgan cut it to size and I tried it back in place. Repeating that a few times, plus some light chiselling and we had a nice fit so I hammered it into place. We decided that one would be enough but left the other one there, along with the saw, just in case it was needed on the next trip. We also left the digging kit for next time.

Back at the climb, now pitch, down into Fault Chambers, Morgan put on his SRT kit while I abbed down using a sit sling and an italian hitch. I hadn’t been in Fault Chambers for a very long time and I’d forgotten how impressively big they are. The way through Perseverance Series back to The Nunnery was longer than I remembered but still easier than taking the Going Square route.

Back at the car, it was still cold but the wind was now much stronger and where we were parked was very exposed. Morgan made best use of a small embankment by a fence to get, at least, some shelter. I headed across the road, to a clump of trees and got changed there. It was definitely a bit better but I just wonder what the people in the two cars which passed thought when they spotted me stripping off in the trees!

It had been another hard trip but everything was now set up to drop the big pitch.

Huw Jones, Malcolm Reid, Morgan Specht

Fault Rifts is a small and obscure series of passages in Ogof Draenen. It was first entered when myself and Peter Bolt of Morgannwg C C, climbed in to it from Fault Chambers, soon after the initial big breakthrough in the cave, in 1994. We found that the series had another connection into Fault Chambers, plus a connection to another passage that we later realised was Going Square. I explored the series again, a couple of weeks later, with Huw Durban. We did the scarily exposed climb up out of Fault Chambers again and followed a southerly trending passage down a loose climb, through a bedding plane and to the base of a narrow rift. The rift is a bit like the notorious entrance rift in Llanelly Quarry Pot but much, much more difficult! At the top we found a loose passage trending South but choking after a couple of hundred metres. I named this Headache Passage, as that’s what Huw D was suffering with! Unfortunately his headache quickly developed into a full blown migraine and we had to start out, leaving a couple of crawls heading off to the West. Back down the rift and up the loose climb, I spotted a little rift on the left and pulled out a few boulders to find a large shaft with a fair bit of water falling, which obscured the view up and down. We then made our way out via Going Square.

Later I dropped the wet shaft with some MCC people but at the bottom, the water flowed into a passage much too small to follow. I named the shaft Vertical Reality. Sometime later, while talking to the people from Chelsea S S who were doing the Grade 5 survey, they asked about the way into Fault Rifts from Going Square. “Is it up the climb, across the awkward traverse and through the little hole?” “That’s the one.” I replied. Sometime later again, I bought an interim copy of the survey and noticed that Fault Rifts was on there. I also noticed that the surveyors had obviously been through the crawls Huw D and I had left in Headache passage. I’d forgotten all about them! It was a bit difficult to work out from the survey but it looked as if at least one of the crawls linked into a passage running parallel with Headache. To the North it ended at the other side of the wet shaft we’d dropped previously – Vertical Reality (we had noticed a window, high up on the other side). It also headed South, well beyond the limit of Headache Passage, to end at another shaft. It was the way the pitch lengths were marked that got my interest. Where as all the other pitches on the survey were marked with definite and obviously accurately measured lengths, such as 14m or 22m etc., here the shafts were marked as being 15m+ (Vertical Reality), 20m+ (same shaft but from the window at the northern end of the parallel passage) and 30m+ for the shaft at the southern end of the parallel passage. They looked like estimated depths so it was probable that the surveyors hadn’t been down the pitches and maybe no-one had been down the 30m+ pitch. 30m would also make it the biggest pitch in the cave and I thought I just had to check it out. I never did though and then I stopped caving for ten years!

When I’d started caving again and rejoined my caving clubs, I had a few things in mind that I wanted to check out, including some in Draenen. I was chatting to Malcolm Reid about Draenen at one of the BCC meetings and he mentioned the 30m+ shaft in Fault Rifts, which was one of the things I wanted to look at! He also thought there was a chance that no-one had been down there, despite it being nearly 20 years since it was discovered. We soon had Huw Durban and Morgan Specht interested too and started to make plans to drop the 30m shaft.

In the end Huw D. couldn’t make it so it was just myself, Malc and Morgan. We arranged to meet at a car park in Blaenafon at 8am on a Sunday morning, where we could leave two of the cars and travel up to Pwll Du in just one, hoping to be underground by 9am. The early start was because it was going to be a long trip and also Morgan was hoping to spend some time with his better half in the evening. Unfortunately Malc was a little late and then realised that he’d forgotten to bring the Draenen key with him! We put all our stuff into Malc’s car, went to his to pick up the key, then drove straight up to Pwll Du.

We headed into Draenen with a heavy tackle bag each and I remember saying to Morgan that it was going to take about two hours to reach the pitch but that the route was a bit involved. We stopped off in Indiana Highway to pick up the 40m rope we’d stashed there after the trip where we dropped the big pitch that you normally traverse over but where we’d failed to get down the second pitch (see the previous trip report). Two hours after entering the cave and we were just heading into the start of the ‘involved’ bit as we turned down Going Square! Going Square is mainly walking but interspersed with a few tight crawly bits. At a corner we headed into the connecting passages to Fault Rifts, which start with an easy going crawl leading to a slightly larger passage. At a complex little junction we took a short, flat out crawl on the right, which includes a couple of tightish bits. This led into a walking passage, where a hole at the back of an alcove on the left is the way on. The hole is at roof level, about 3m up and can’t be reached directly. We crawled through a hole at the base of a wall which separates the alcove from the main passage and climbed onto the top of the wall. Then we had to traverse over to the hole which is awkward because the tiny footholds are only about a metre below the ceiling, which means the traverse has to be done whilst bent double. I went first, then hauled the bags up. Another climb followed, higher but more straightforward. As I touched the first handhold, it promptly fell to the floor! With one person at the top and one half way, the bags were passed up the climb. At the top, we entered a chamber at the head of the direct climb up from Fault Chambers, the original way into Fault Rifts. Turning right, we made our way along the bouldery passage, taking a quick detour to have look at Vertical Reality, to the loose climb down near the end. Something fell off this climb every single time someone climbed up or down it! At the bottom, a short crawl through a bedding led to the climb up to Headache Passage.

I remembered how difficult the rift had been, when me and Huw D climbed it for the first (and for us only) time, all those years ago and there were a few doubts in my mind as to whether or not I could still climb it. Below where you climb up, the rift opens up and drops away so there’s the worry that if you slip, you’ll slide passed the bedding plane, into the wide bit and fall right to the bottom. Not wanting to think about it too much, I made a start. I stepped off the bedding floor and wedged myself in the rift, that bit was easy, making upward progress was a different matter. This part of the rift is very narrow and there is not much in the way of hand or foot holds other than a few, not very pronounced, bulges. Thrutching for all I was worth, I started to make agonisingly slow progress, sometimes slipping back a little, loosing hard fought ground. I was already breathing very hard and my heart was pounding so I decided I needed to go for it as hard and fast as possible, to get up before I got too tired. After about three metres of this frantic effort, the rift became less tight and the holds a bit more defined, although well spaced out. At least I could rest a little and was now fairly certain I could get to the top. It still wasn’t easy but I arrived at the top, at the opposite end of the rift to where I needed to be and traversed easily over to the other side. I’d trailed the end of one of the ropes behind me as I climbed and used this to haul up the bags.

Morgan tried next. He got into the rift but just couldn’t make any progress. He’s taller than me and I think he just couldn’t raise his long legs enough to be of any use in pushing upwards. He soon got tired and had to slip back down into the bedding. Morgan and Malcolm were both concerned about slipping and falling to the bottom so, finding a large, solid thread belay, I dropped a lifeline down. Malc tried next but made little more progress than Morgan had, until Morgan wedged himself in underneath and let Malcolm stand on his shoulders! Malc managed to push upwards a little and then started thrutching diagonally up the rift, towards me. This meant that rather than going straight up to reach the wider bit, it was tight all the way but he made it, passing under a boulder that was wedged in the rift. He went to have a look along the passage while Morgan had another go. I tried hauling on the lifeline but that didn’t help so I locked it off so Morgan could pull on it. That didn’t work either as we were at opposite ends of the rift so he was getting pulled sideways rather than upwards. As Malc returned, Morgan had to give up. We had now been underground for about 3.5 hours, so much for my estimate of 2 hours to get to the pitch!

Still keen to get down the pitch, I asked Morgan if he would be prepared to wait while myself and Malc at least made a start on rigging the pitch. If there were no useful natural belays, then we would have to install a number of bolts by hand and that would take 20-30 minutes per bolt! Morgan agreed and we repacked the rigging gear from Morgan’s bag into the other two. We lowered Morgan’s bag back down to him and luckily he had brought along some extra clothing that would help him keep warm.

Malc and myself started off along Headache, each lumping a ridiculously heavy and over stuffed tackle bag. First of all there was an extremely loose boulder slope / choke to negotiate. In fact, the whole of Headache Passage is very loose, being developed along a fualt. I’d forgotten just how loose! We made our way along and soon found ourselves at the choked/calcited end of the passage. We’d completely missed the crawls! We backtracked and found the first crawl that looked like it should connect with the parallel passage shown on the survey. This was the larger of the two but quickly choked at a narrower section. We backtracked some more and soon found the other crawl. This was a lot smaller, wide but very low and with a few small stals dotted through. We’d now been going for about four hours and still hadn’t reached the pitch. It looked like it would be a very difficult job to get the big bags through the low crawl and even if we got the gear to the pitch, we wouldn’t then have time to do anything useful. We also didn’t want Morgan to be waiting alone for too long. It was time to make a decision. I suggested leaving the bags but still going to the pitch, that way something useful would come out of the trip. We could quickly reconnoitre the parallel passage and could confirm whether or not there were any signs of the pitch having been rigged in the past, such as bolts or even just tell-tale marks.

Malc agreed and so I led on through the crawl, now into new passage for me and thankful to be caving without the bag for a while. The crawl was low and got lower, to the point where you had to breath out to move forward. The crawl rounded a very sharp bend and ended at the base of a damp choke. There was a route upwards through it and I wondered if it had had to be cleared the first time someone had come through here. At the top was a small, short passage and then a little porthole through into a much larger space, the parallel passage at last. We turned left, South, and the passage immediately shrank to a hands and knees crawl. After a climb down into a continuation of the crawl, the passage enlarged to a taller rift about a metre wide. A short passage on the left was obviously the other end of the larger but choked crawl between Headache and the parallel passage. After a short traverse we arrived at a climb down with a large, deep, straight rift heading off in front. I climbed down and considered if it was best to traverse across from where I was or drop down again to the base of the rift. Malc decided he was going to stay at the top of the last climb and wait for me there. I decided to drop down and moved forward along the bottom of the rift but it was tight and I was dislodging crystals from the walls as I went so I regretted coming this way. At the far end, the rift was wider but also had a big pile of boulders almost filling it. There appeared to be two possible ways on, either underneath the boulders or a tricky looking climb up and over the top. I could now hear falling water, I presumed from the pitch itself. The sound of the water was loudest from above and so I decided to go that way. The rift was wider here and the climb a little daunting, particularly as I was on my own and it certainly got the adrenaline flowing as I really didn’t want to take a fall here! At the top, an easy passage, with the boulders on the left and a solid right wall, quickly brought me out to the pitch head.

Glad to finally be at the pitch, I started to have a good look around. Ahead was a decent sized black space with water falling on the right hand side. From where I was, I couldn’t see the top or bottom of the shaft but turning my lamp up to full power, I could just make out the far side, where it seemed to narrow back down into a rift. It was impossible to tell if there was a way on but a dark area part way up held out hope. I carefully checked out the walls and boulders around me but I couldn’t see any marks that showed that someone had been here before. Someone had of course, as the place was on the survey but whoever it was hadn’t left any signs of their presence. There were certainly no bolts in the walls and no scuff marks from ropes or slings. To get a better look down the pitch I needed to move forward but I couldn’t be certain if the boulders in the floor were solid and the walls were too far apart to bridge. Memories came back of doing something similar at the Vertical Reality shaft nearby, where I’d stepped onto a large slab lying on a slope dropping to the pitch head and it had started sliding towards the pitch itself! I’d probably only ‘surfed’ the slab for a fraction of a second, before jumping off and doing a starfish impression between the walls but it had seemed like much longer! I carefully stepped down onto a flat-topped boulder near the pitch head, very slowly transferring my weight onto it. It held firm and as I put my foot down a thin mud crust on the top split apart. I was obviously the first person to step on this boulder and I didn’t think anyone could have dropped the pitch without having stood on it. I was now completely sure the pitch had never been descended. I dropped a couple of stones down the pitch to try to get an idea of it’s depth. I didn’t time them properly or do any calculations but it seemed to me that the shaft was about the same as others in the cave I’d dropped stones down, most of them around 20 – 22m so less than the 30m+ shown on the survey.

It was time to head out. There was a hole and a slope down below the boulders wedged in the passage. I decided to check it out, to see if I could bypass the climb back down, on the other side of the boulders. The slope was steep and loose looking and as I carefully took my first step, a boulder slid away and caused a chain reaction, knocking down a lot more below it as it rolled. It made a terrific racket and Malc said later that he was a bit concerned about what had happened. I reasoned that the slope was now a lot more stable and tried it, with nothing much else moving. This brought me back to the start of the long, straight rift and this time, rather than squeeze along at the bottom, I climbed up a little and traversed, which turned out to be relatively easy. As I got closer to him, Malc started out in front of me. Back through the crawl and we were soon in the larger part of the parallel passage, where the route out to Headache was in the right hand wall. We continued North along the passage, to were it ended, overlooking the Vertical Reality shaft, then backtracked to take a look at a side passage that headed towards Headache Passage. This choked, probably near the loose choke at the start of Headache. The only option was back through the low crawl, after which we picked up the bags and made our way back along Headache, to the top of the tight rift climb. There was no sign of Morgan so we dropped down, crawled through the bedding and scrambled up the loose climb, where more things fell off! We were reunited with Morgan in the chamber at the head of the climb up from Fault Chambers. He had been waiting on his own for an hour and a half! We discussed leaving the ropes here for a return but Malc didn’t think it was a good idea to leave them in such a remote place, just in case we didn’t come back, plus he thought we might take another look down the pitch in Indiana Highway first. We gave Morgan some of the kit to carry and made our way out via Going Square, stashing the 40m rope in Indiana Highway again. I, for one, was pretty knackered by the time we got out! It had been a long, hard trip and we’d failed to get down the pitch but at least we now had better knowledge of the route and knew that no one had been down the pitch before. We were going to have to go back. Unfortunately for Morgan, he was too late for his evening out, which I don’t think made him very popular!

Huw Jones, Huw Durban, Malcolm Reid, Brendon Marris (Dudley Caving Club)

Photos – Huw Jones

We set out at 9:30 with three bags of rope, rigging gear and refreshments. It did not take too long to reach the pitch (at the far end of Indiana Highway), even though the two Huws went via Wonderbra, while Brendon and I took Beer Challenge.

Malc placing a new spit for the second pitch

Huw Jones rigged The Lost Crusade pitch (22m) from existing spits, a Y hang over the pitch backed up to a wedged boulder. The rigging point is below the normal route, at the base of the rift and has plenty of space to change. Once over the lip of the pitch a deviation is needed to keep the rope away from the lip of what is the ceiling of a roughly rectangular chamber some 3 by 5 meters. Once Huw Jones was down and we were following, he had a look at one end where a steep slope provides a vantage point almost a quarter of the way up the far wall.

The opposite wall has a rift up some 3 meters of easily climbed rocks and after passing a narrow section, soon opens to a small chamber with a hole at about head height (the second pitch head), almost doubling back the way we came in. We hammered a in a new spit and rigged a ladder and a safety line to this and the existing spit. Huw assured us that he had been through the narrow gap and down the next pitch (5m), yet he failed to get through, just as my attempt was equally thwarted. After removing the ladder and line, we used the lump hammer and a small crowbar to widen the gap, succeeding in removing sufficient rock to make access somewhat easier next time.

Malc attempts the second pitch

Malc receives assistance to get back out!

While we assailed the main pitch, Huw took a few pictures, although one of the flash guns misbehaved. After derigging we stashed a bag of rope and the rigging tools ready for a planned trip to investigate another pitch in the cave. The journey out was somewhat lighter and uneventful, getting out at 4:30.

Huw Jones, Huw Durban

Photos – Huw Jones

We made our way in to Cairn Junction via Darling Rifts and the original Pitch Bypass and then to Tea Junction via Wonder Bra. Here we turned left up White Arch Passage and soon found Back Passage in the right hand wall. Back Passage is a 200 foot long flat out crawl! And when I say flat out, I mean flat out – there are only a couple of places where it is high enough not to have your head turned on it’s side.

I went first and Huw D followed. It’s very monotonous as it’s just the same view almost all the way. Thrutch along, head on the side. Thrutch along a bit more, head on the side. There’s a couple of dug sections where the roof comes down and it gets even smaller. They don’t last long and it’s actually a relief to get out the other side, back into the ‘big’ bit! Then it’s thrutch along a bit again, head on the side.

Crystals – The Score

Eventually we got out into the larger Crystal Cruncher which is mostly hands and knees crawling in a wide passage. It has a dry, cracked mud floor with lots of crystals growing on it, hence the name. In fact there are lots of crystals everywhere, on boulders, on the walls and on the ceiling. After a couple of hundred metres, it enlarges to stooping height, before another short crawl leads into The Score. This starts off crawling but soon enlarges to a lovely big, impressive passage. There are still loads of crystals everywhere. We soon passed Oo Crawl, on the right, which is an even longer crawl than Back Passage and connects into the roof of the main stream way. Oo Crawl is taped off to protect the very vunerable crystals on the walls of the narrow passage. The crystals in The Score are just as good and a lot less vunerable so Oo Crawl is best left alone.

The Score (not the biggest bit)

We made our way along The Score, which involves a couple of short crawls, to where it ends at a cross rift. To the left just goes a short distance (only a 100m of digging here would connect to Crystal Mole Passage and create a Short Round Trip!), while to the right, a longer passage leads via a very tight and committing squeeze, to a low section of passage that has some pure white straws/thin columns with helectites growing off them and a stunning formation called the White Wormary.

Crystals – The Score

We had a bite to eat and as we packed away ready to head out, Huw D spotted a bat on the wall not too far away from us. This is a long way from the surface. We headed back up The Score where I took some photos of the passage and crystals. It’s interesting to note that as we now headed North, we were actually heading downstream in this passage. The major streams in the cave now flow South to resurge at Pontnewynydd but in the past, the water flowed North to resurge in the Clydach Gorge. The Score and Crystal Cruncher were part of the main drain flowing North to the Clydach.

Crystals – The Score

Of course to get out, we had to do Back Passage again. Huw D went first and took 15 minutes to crawl through, I took 30! I really noticed how steep the climb out from Cairn Junction to the surface is and was pretty tired by the time we got out.

It was my first trip in Draenen since 2004!