Yeah, well.... just found my dad passed out drunk on the toilet, what a lad! I suppose I should ridicule him like he's done to me all day since he found me passed out in the bathroom last night. Standard christmas shit, I might add.....
Either way, he's denying it! I also demanded he stop smoking, blagged his fag on the way back from the pub to prove my point, hopefuly he'll stop at last as he's been talking about it anyway. Thought id pass the buck to mother aswell and do them both some good for their new years resolution. =]
Anyway, have a good Christmas everyone who might potentially be reading this, ima be nicely merry come noon tomorrow!
Saturday, 24 December 2011
Thursday, 22 December 2011
American summer, more Caving madness, broken hydraulics and beer!
So I applied for Camp work in the USA for the Summer of '12, its looking good at the moment, got through to the interview stage although it has to be done over Skype and my little netbook can't run it very well! Either way, it's in January and am looking forward to it! If all goes well ill be spending 3 and a half months in the US with 4 weeks of it travelling which will be nice!
On to the Caving, Mike and myself decided to go Caving the weekend just gone with Exeter Speleo Club, they were staying at the Belfry Caving Hut so it was promising even from the start! We left on the Saturday morning after I spent a good 2 hours faffing around in the A&E Club stores getting the kit sorted, on our way Mike wanted to buy an SRT kit so we popped into CaveClimb and spoke to Andy Sparrow. During our hour or so there we tried on SRT kits, both practiced on the shops pre-rigged course and eventually Mike left with a nice shiny new toy. Excited to use it we drove over to the MCG hut and after a nice cup of Tea we got our crap together for a two cave trip, Upper Flood for the pretties and so Mike could sort out his keys, then Waterwheel for some basic SRT practice rigging at the bottom. This was my first time in both caves and I have to say Upper Flood is absolutely beautiful, pristine calcite formations including straw tubes multiple metres long! The cave involved a reasonable amount of crawling due to the delicate formations on the ceiling, but there was some good photography and general bantar!
On to Waterwheel next (after finding the damn entrance in the dark with only headtorches), little did I realise (stupidly) just how WET Waterwheel is. After about ten minutes in the passageways became full of water giving about 3ft of water and 2-3ft of headspace in most of the waterways, in some places a keen 1ft of headspace which was just about small enough to feel like real good fun caving! Mike was generally whining something along the lines of "hands" and "cold" but on we went to the pre-bolted rigging point at the pitch above the streamway pool. A quick piss around rigging it and out Mike swings and starts playing, after "adjusting" the gear he quickly found himself unable to ascend and thanks to good planning the pitch was free climbable to the top to make a good escape. I had a play too and swang around for a bit before agreeing that something was wrong and after a swim around we left the cave. By this time the outside air had cheekily dropped below 0 and our nice wet oversuits were keen on freezing slightly.
Off to the Belfry after our quick MCG shower and egg sandwich to meet the Exeter lot. What a nice bunch of guys they are! Mike and I are now known as Plym 1 and Plym 2 as Exeter (being simple and unable to learn names =P) named us as we walked into the room. A very savage loss at beer pong later (less the beer, more the jager, and LOTS OF IT) we were already getting pretty drunk. The night was Sexy Santa fancy dress and as Mike and I hadn't bought costumes prior to leaving we instead bought some wrapping paper on the way up and decided to go as presents! Off we went and got changed, a short while later we return and my next recollection is of people lying down on the table in the common room, having bum or boobs painted bright yellow and then hoisted up to imprint the ceiling. Standard caving shit, so of course - we joined in - Mike going the whole hog he now has an imprint of his little man on the ceiling of the belfry!
Needless to say the next morning was rather dreadful, a hangover the size of jupiter and damn cold weather to boot! The cave in question was Manor Farm Swallet, an interesting cave sporting a nice 15m entrance pitch followed by a 6-8m steep rift (both need to be rigged) going down more horizontal to a variety of curtain, false floors and avens - very pretty! Mike had gone to lead Upper Flood so I was with some of the Exeter guys, Mike kindly let me borrow his SRT kit to play around in the entrance pitch with, while Exeter ladder & roped it down (the ladder broke the first time but its cool - they turned it upside down!). I went down last and told Exeter to go on ahead and I spent about 90 mins going up and down the pitch to gain experience and technique for future SRT caves, while doing so I adjusted the kit so that it could actually ascent and then eventually I decided to go right to the bottom to meet the others. A slightly dodgy descent of a should-be belayed rift and a bit of crawling later I bump into the rest of the party heading back to the entrannce, I passed them and carried on for a bit for a quick 20 minute nosey before heading back to meet them (there were a few of them so it took them considerable time to negotiate the narrow rift ascent and entrance pitch). After climbing the rift I went ahead to quickly SRT up the entrance in order to set up belay for the rest climbing the ladder up, this led me to solidly confirm my hatred of munter's hitch knots in static, rigid, dirty caving rope, I might as well have been tieing a wire coathanger. Not long later everyone was up to surface and we all shot back to the belfry for shower and packing, Mike had to go to london afterwards so my journey back was alone - therefore requiring multiple rest stops to prevent falling asleep as I was shattered!
On a completely irrelevant note, was working yesterday in Launceston and the lorry delivering our skip decided to lose all hydraulic function just as the skip got suspended in mid air halfways off the back, was a bit awkward......
On to the Caving, Mike and myself decided to go Caving the weekend just gone with Exeter Speleo Club, they were staying at the Belfry Caving Hut so it was promising even from the start! We left on the Saturday morning after I spent a good 2 hours faffing around in the A&E Club stores getting the kit sorted, on our way Mike wanted to buy an SRT kit so we popped into CaveClimb and spoke to Andy Sparrow. During our hour or so there we tried on SRT kits, both practiced on the shops pre-rigged course and eventually Mike left with a nice shiny new toy. Excited to use it we drove over to the MCG hut and after a nice cup of Tea we got our crap together for a two cave trip, Upper Flood for the pretties and so Mike could sort out his keys, then Waterwheel for some basic SRT practice rigging at the bottom. This was my first time in both caves and I have to say Upper Flood is absolutely beautiful, pristine calcite formations including straw tubes multiple metres long! The cave involved a reasonable amount of crawling due to the delicate formations on the ceiling, but there was some good photography and general bantar!
On to Waterwheel next (after finding the damn entrance in the dark with only headtorches), little did I realise (stupidly) just how WET Waterwheel is. After about ten minutes in the passageways became full of water giving about 3ft of water and 2-3ft of headspace in most of the waterways, in some places a keen 1ft of headspace which was just about small enough to feel like real good fun caving! Mike was generally whining something along the lines of "hands" and "cold" but on we went to the pre-bolted rigging point at the pitch above the streamway pool. A quick piss around rigging it and out Mike swings and starts playing, after "adjusting" the gear he quickly found himself unable to ascend and thanks to good planning the pitch was free climbable to the top to make a good escape. I had a play too and swang around for a bit before agreeing that something was wrong and after a swim around we left the cave. By this time the outside air had cheekily dropped below 0 and our nice wet oversuits were keen on freezing slightly.
Off to the Belfry after our quick MCG shower and egg sandwich to meet the Exeter lot. What a nice bunch of guys they are! Mike and I are now known as Plym 1 and Plym 2 as Exeter (being simple and unable to learn names =P) named us as we walked into the room. A very savage loss at beer pong later (less the beer, more the jager, and LOTS OF IT) we were already getting pretty drunk. The night was Sexy Santa fancy dress and as Mike and I hadn't bought costumes prior to leaving we instead bought some wrapping paper on the way up and decided to go as presents! Off we went and got changed, a short while later we return and my next recollection is of people lying down on the table in the common room, having bum or boobs painted bright yellow and then hoisted up to imprint the ceiling. Standard caving shit, so of course - we joined in - Mike going the whole hog he now has an imprint of his little man on the ceiling of the belfry!
On a completely irrelevant note, was working yesterday in Launceston and the lorry delivering our skip decided to lose all hydraulic function just as the skip got suspended in mid air halfways off the back, was a bit awkward......
Thursday, 15 December 2011
Let's play catch-up!
So this is my first blog, hopefully will update it when I can if I dont forget about it within a week. I feel it will be needed sooner or later especially since I have just applied for a Camp Councellor position for 3 months in the USA and will be travelling the country for 4 weeks afterwards, it would be nice to have a record or diary for it rather like when I went to NASA in 2008 with some friends and members of other colleges courtesy of Birmingham CLC. The link to which can be found here (Callington CC updates for 2008 only): http://www.stocklandgreenclc.bham.org.uk/callington.html
Most updates will be about my weekends away or significant happenings in my life that I feel should be shared, if any, such as my recent Caving trip to the Mendip Hills in Somerset or another in Dalesbridge in the Yorkshire Dales.
The Dalesbridge CHECC Forum - as its known, the largest meet up of Higher Education Caving Clubs in the UK was a great laugh, plenty of alcohol, not alot of caving on this one although I did find myself freeclimbing something like a 60ft entrance shaft to the wrong cave due to some incorrect local caver advice. Turns out it was an SRT cave - oops! Had to climb out relatively sharpish in the end as the nearby stream had turned into a torrential river due to rainfall and the task of carrying little Liv across the river was certainly amusing. Anyway, back to Dalesbridge Center and our cosy bunkhouse before the fun and games started! Friday night beforehand we turned up at 12:30am because of the gruelling 8hour drive up, dressed up in our POKEMON outfits and away we went to get hammered, saturday however, we started drinking early. Games involved Beer Pong with officials to lay down the rules and bucket drinking games in which Thom chundered on the spot and Aidan threw up so hard his nose bled! On to the other room now where us Plymouth lot started the Pan & Sling, the aim to balance on a pan in a pair and get a climbing sling from around the pan, over your bodies and to the ground. This ended up with a few injuries and a lot of stripping! The winners were a mixture of exeter and oxford. Sunday involved NO caving due to extreme hangover and then the nasty drive back, stopping in lancaster to drop Mike off and have a nice pub lunch before Thom had the task of keeping me awake the whole way back.
Mendips was slightly less inebriating, the saturday involved a bimble down into Eastwater Cavern where I encountered some considerably bad air at the end of a dodgy looking tunnel, a trip down to dolphin pot where we decided linking three ladders together unroped would be a silly descent method and where leaving the Entrance Chamber via a suspicious looking Boulder Choke was slightly more concerning then entering through it. The Sunday involved my second visit to Swildon's Hole, including my first trip to Sump 2 where we encountered a slight problem i.e. Mike attempting a free-dive and subsequently me attempting to drag his blonde ass out of it, although it would have been my second trip through and it was damn good fun last time - we decided against the round trip through the troubles due to a time shortage. Back to wessex caving hut it was before setting off back to Plymouth, Aidan trying to keep me awake for what seemed the longest drive back EVER!
The most recent trip I took part in was this weekend just gone, a fun trip up to Snowdonia where our mountaineering minds came into play, Doug drove up on the Friday afternoon, arriving in the evening to the lovely bunkhouse just south of capel curig. The route for the saturday was the North Buttress Variant on Tryfan, a 914m highly prominent peak on the North side of the Glyders, easily viewable from the A5 through Llanberis pass. It was a good Grade 2 scamble by summer grading however being winter and covered in snow and ice the trek was certainy more challenging, the final pitch to the top was taken through two different routes, Will, Wildblood and myself diverted from the rest of the group to check out a snow filled gully that looked rather amusing, turned out that we made it to the top in very good time and I even had chance to sit on top of Eve before the remainder of our group arrived. A quick spot of lunch and it was back down the west face past Y Garn to a quiet cafe before heading back to the minibus sat beside the A5. Saturday night involved much to be enjoyed, hardcore games of twister and Dixit along with table traverse on the least sturdy table to date! Time went rather slowly as many of us were quite drunk by 9pm and most in bed by 11 ready for a good day Sunday. Sunday involved 3 different groups and routes, one group went for a quiet walk on the south side hills of snowdonia, another travelling up the Pyg Track to Snowdon summit and back again, whilst the third group - the one I was with - trekked the first part of the Snowdon Horseshoe route (a route I'd done in reverse 9 months previous) to Snowdon and intended to descend via the Llanberis pass. This went great for myself at the start, until halfway up towards Crib Goch my chunky B2 boots decided to eat away at my feet, alas i continued on up with Thom (LEGEND) beside me keeping me company. By the time we'd traversed the knife ridge and got to Crib Y Dyssgl, half of the group decided not to go to the snowdon summit and instead calmly decended the Pyg Track, the others and myself decided to go on to the summit and catch up on the descent, this proved hard for me as my feet were in a lot of pain, I decided to ask the others to continue to the summit, and that id try to meet them there - if not, see them on their way down and continue down with them. They obliged after some persuasion and to my suprise and excitement, I made it not long before they'd reached it. Usually a descent via the Llanberis path would be fault free, however we had a bit of a problem. Our descent route wrongly crossed the snowdon rail track, which seemed odd, however we kept going, excited for the prospect of warmth and food, approximately halfway down we realised we'd descended 2km in the wrong direction. It was decided to climb back up, a simple measure, however for myself who's feet were now bleeding on the achilles heel area, it was a totally different story. The pain was nearly debilitating, having to take sideways steps the entire way back up, Thom kindly stayed with me the entire way. After a gruelling hour of re-ascent we met the rail track, and decided that due to my foot troubes, we would descend via the railway track as its gradient was not steep. As it turned out, some manning up took place and snowdon was descended in 55mins by a swift jog down, there we waited to be picked up by the minibus where I gladly removed my boots and back to Plymouth.
All in all a successful few trips and some certainly notable experiences! Hopefully a lot of these trips will be summarised better on http://wwww.adventureandexpo.co.uk but for now the site is still being built.
Most updates will be about my weekends away or significant happenings in my life that I feel should be shared, if any, such as my recent Caving trip to the Mendip Hills in Somerset or another in Dalesbridge in the Yorkshire Dales.
The Dalesbridge CHECC Forum - as its known, the largest meet up of Higher Education Caving Clubs in the UK was a great laugh, plenty of alcohol, not alot of caving on this one although I did find myself freeclimbing something like a 60ft entrance shaft to the wrong cave due to some incorrect local caver advice. Turns out it was an SRT cave - oops! Had to climb out relatively sharpish in the end as the nearby stream had turned into a torrential river due to rainfall and the task of carrying little Liv across the river was certainly amusing. Anyway, back to Dalesbridge Center and our cosy bunkhouse before the fun and games started! Friday night beforehand we turned up at 12:30am because of the gruelling 8hour drive up, dressed up in our POKEMON outfits and away we went to get hammered, saturday however, we started drinking early. Games involved Beer Pong with officials to lay down the rules and bucket drinking games in which Thom chundered on the spot and Aidan threw up so hard his nose bled! On to the other room now where us Plymouth lot started the Pan & Sling, the aim to balance on a pan in a pair and get a climbing sling from around the pan, over your bodies and to the ground. This ended up with a few injuries and a lot of stripping! The winners were a mixture of exeter and oxford. Sunday involved NO caving due to extreme hangover and then the nasty drive back, stopping in lancaster to drop Mike off and have a nice pub lunch before Thom had the task of keeping me awake the whole way back.
Mendips was slightly less inebriating, the saturday involved a bimble down into Eastwater Cavern where I encountered some considerably bad air at the end of a dodgy looking tunnel, a trip down to dolphin pot where we decided linking three ladders together unroped would be a silly descent method and where leaving the Entrance Chamber via a suspicious looking Boulder Choke was slightly more concerning then entering through it. The Sunday involved my second visit to Swildon's Hole, including my first trip to Sump 2 where we encountered a slight problem i.e. Mike attempting a free-dive and subsequently me attempting to drag his blonde ass out of it, although it would have been my second trip through and it was damn good fun last time - we decided against the round trip through the troubles due to a time shortage. Back to wessex caving hut it was before setting off back to Plymouth, Aidan trying to keep me awake for what seemed the longest drive back EVER!
The most recent trip I took part in was this weekend just gone, a fun trip up to Snowdonia where our mountaineering minds came into play, Doug drove up on the Friday afternoon, arriving in the evening to the lovely bunkhouse just south of capel curig. The route for the saturday was the North Buttress Variant on Tryfan, a 914m highly prominent peak on the North side of the Glyders, easily viewable from the A5 through Llanberis pass. It was a good Grade 2 scamble by summer grading however being winter and covered in snow and ice the trek was certainy more challenging, the final pitch to the top was taken through two different routes, Will, Wildblood and myself diverted from the rest of the group to check out a snow filled gully that looked rather amusing, turned out that we made it to the top in very good time and I even had chance to sit on top of Eve before the remainder of our group arrived. A quick spot of lunch and it was back down the west face past Y Garn to a quiet cafe before heading back to the minibus sat beside the A5. Saturday night involved much to be enjoyed, hardcore games of twister and Dixit along with table traverse on the least sturdy table to date! Time went rather slowly as many of us were quite drunk by 9pm and most in bed by 11 ready for a good day Sunday. Sunday involved 3 different groups and routes, one group went for a quiet walk on the south side hills of snowdonia, another travelling up the Pyg Track to Snowdon summit and back again, whilst the third group - the one I was with - trekked the first part of the Snowdon Horseshoe route (a route I'd done in reverse 9 months previous) to Snowdon and intended to descend via the Llanberis pass. This went great for myself at the start, until halfway up towards Crib Goch my chunky B2 boots decided to eat away at my feet, alas i continued on up with Thom (LEGEND) beside me keeping me company. By the time we'd traversed the knife ridge and got to Crib Y Dyssgl, half of the group decided not to go to the snowdon summit and instead calmly decended the Pyg Track, the others and myself decided to go on to the summit and catch up on the descent, this proved hard for me as my feet were in a lot of pain, I decided to ask the others to continue to the summit, and that id try to meet them there - if not, see them on their way down and continue down with them. They obliged after some persuasion and to my suprise and excitement, I made it not long before they'd reached it. Usually a descent via the Llanberis path would be fault free, however we had a bit of a problem. Our descent route wrongly crossed the snowdon rail track, which seemed odd, however we kept going, excited for the prospect of warmth and food, approximately halfway down we realised we'd descended 2km in the wrong direction. It was decided to climb back up, a simple measure, however for myself who's feet were now bleeding on the achilles heel area, it was a totally different story. The pain was nearly debilitating, having to take sideways steps the entire way back up, Thom kindly stayed with me the entire way. After a gruelling hour of re-ascent we met the rail track, and decided that due to my foot troubes, we would descend via the railway track as its gradient was not steep. As it turned out, some manning up took place and snowdon was descended in 55mins by a swift jog down, there we waited to be picked up by the minibus where I gladly removed my boots and back to Plymouth.
All in all a successful few trips and some certainly notable experiences! Hopefully a lot of these trips will be summarised better on http://wwww.adventureandexpo.co.uk but for now the site is still being built.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)