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Long Churn Caves & Alum Pot

Sunday 16th June 2002

"We've got no ropes!" were Steven's first words to Mike and me as he arrived in the Inglesport cafe‚ on a recent Sunday morning. According to the programme, we should have been in Wales, but the SOC Cavers newsgroup had indicated a distinct lack of enthusiasm for what was billed as the "Wales Weekend", so instead we were once again sitting in the Inglesport cafe‚ with the familiar faint smell of rubber drifting up the stairs from the shop below.

The lack of ropes was due to Steven not having met up with Paul and Alison in Richmond as planned. This was a bit of a blow, as we were hoping to do an SRT trip, but we decided to wait a bit and see if the others turned up. In the meantime the new arrivals - Steven had brought Karen (of Hagg Gill Pot fame) and her daughter Jade along too - decided to order some breakfast while we tried to think of some caves we could do without ropes.

We weren't getting very far with this (and Steven was concentrating more on his plateful of chips, anyway) when I spotted Alison coming up the stairs, followed by Paul, carrying an armful of cave guidebooks. Things were looking up. After further breakfasts had been ordered, we discussed options, and decided that our best bet, considering the mixed requirements of the group, would be to go up to Alum Pot, where we could split up into a number of smaller teams.

After piling the kit into a couple of cars, we drove up to Selside and joined the hoards in Alum Pot Lane. Actually most of the other cavers there seemed to be leaving rather than arriving, so it didn't look as though the place would be too crowded. Our plan was for Alison to take Karen and Jade on a tour of the Long Churns, while the rest of us would split into two twos and do a Dolly Tubs - South East Route exchange in Alum Pot. Steven and Mike agreed to go in via South East Route, while Paul and I would go down Lower Long Churn with the girls to the top of Dolly Tubs, where they could enjoy the riveting spectacle of me rigging my first pitch.

I found that tying knots in rope is not so easy in a cave as it is on the lounge floor, where I'd been practising the night before, but we eventually had a satisfactory rig and set off down the pitch, leaving the other three to continue their explorations. At the bottom of the Dolly Tubs pitch, a short length of horizontal passage brings you out into the daylight on a ledge about a third of the way down one end of the open pothole. It is not easy to see down into the hole from the surface, but the view from this ledge is indeed spectacular. You are looking along the length of the crater with the waterfall of Alum Pot Beck cascading down at the far end. Half way along, and a good way below, is the Bridge, an enormous slab of rock wedged across the width of the chasm at an angle, between the sheer vertical walls.

We set off along a ledge on the left wall, and so that we would get out of the cave this side of Christmas, Paul took over the rigging. A traverse line leads to the top of the Greasy Slab, a slightly sloping pitch of about 5m down over very slippery black rock. This takes you across onto another ledge on the opposite wall, where a further traverse ends up at the top of the Bridge. The crossing of the Bridge is not so much an abseil, more a backwards walk down a 45 degree slope. A rebelay is passed, and you then arrive in the angle between the boulder forming the Bridge, and the main wall of the shaft. At this point we met Steven and Mike, who'd been to the bottom, and were on their way out. After a brief chat with them, we continued on down.

This is where things start to get interesting. A short abseil takes you down and around a corner to a Y-hang on the underside of the Bridge itself, from where it's a 30m free-hanging drop to a wide ledge near the bottom of the hole, with a deviation a couple of metres down. I found the top of this pitch the most intimidating position in the cave, but you seem to view a vertical drop in a different way when you know that you are equipped to deal with it. Anyway, apart from spending a few minutes debating where the best place for my long cowstail would be, I managed to get past this obstacle without too much difficulty. Even the deviation was quite easy to pass and I was soon at the bottom of the pitch.

From this point, you follow the stream back towards the Dolly Tubs end of the shaft, and get onto a narrow ledge in the right wall which leads to the top of the final pitch of 8m. This pitch-head is somewhat cramped, and it's a bit tricky to find a stance where two hands can be spared for threading the descender. At the bottom, after so long in the daylight shaft, helmet lights are once more required as you enter the final section of streamway that leads down several cascades to the Alum Pot sump. Just before the sump is reached, the stream from Diccan Pot enters from high up in the roof, and today so much water was thundering down that it was difficult to make yourself heard above the noise.

After pausing at the sump for a few moments, we turned round and began our journey back out. The ascent of the Bridge pitch was pretty tiring, but after this we had the 34m South-East pitch to climb. This seemed to take forever to get up, but it was a very spectacular free-hanging climb with the water from the beck falling silently through free space alongside you. Looking up, the tree on the lip of the hole, to which our rope was belayed, eventually came into view, and the final part of the ascent was against the rock face. A final haul on some handy tree roots to get off the top of the pitch and, all too soon really, I was out.

This was one of the best trips I've done with the club so far, and I got some more good SRT practice, as well as being able to experience the very impressive Alum Pot at first hand. The Long Churn party also had a good trip by all accounts and visited all the main features of the cave. Not having a rope with them, they elected not to climb the chute above Dr. Bannister's Hand Basin, but another party they met demonstrated how (not?) to do it, and in any case this gave them the excuse to go back down through the cave again!

Nick James

Last Modified: 7 May, 2003