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.
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