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Swaledale Outdoor Club |
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Swaledale Outdoor Club |
| > Home > Newsletter > Caving > Marble Steps Pot |
Marble Steps Pot"Almost inviting" is how Alfred Wainwright described the entrance to Marble Steps Pot, and it is certainly one of the more attractive cave entrances, a mossy ravine surrounded by an isolated clump of trees leading down to the lip of the entrance pitch. It was inviting enough anyway for Bob and me to join Ursula for her trip there early last month. We had enough tackle to get to the bottom, but our plan was to play it by ear, following the basic trade route through the cave, and see how far we could get. At least the dry conditions meant that no elaborate rigging was required in order to avoid water - there wasn't any! Working on her backup LED lamp, her main one having mysteriously failed, Ursula rigged the entrance series of pitches in four sections separated by three rebelays. These initial pitches are a continuation of the (dry) stream bed that intersects the main hole near the take-off point, and are slightly off-vertical. The rope crosses from side to side of the shaft as you make your descent, and you land just in darkness in the Upper Main Chamber, at the top of a very loose boulder slope that leads down to the head of the 2nd pitch. We ignored this pitch, however, and instead made our way to the right and into North West Rift, which leads down over boulders to a point where there is a hole in the left wall. Crawling through this and passing under some avens brought us more easily down into the Lower Main Chamber, near the where the 2nd pitch lands. Next came a climb up onto a ledge on the right wall, a traverse round the corner and a handline descent down over a small cliff. We made our way along the 240 Foot Rift, an easy walk along a straight rift passage with occasional crawls and boulder obstacles, and then climbed up into the roof to traverse over a deep hole in the floor known as Pillar Hole, to the top of the next pitch - Stink Pot. This 10m pitch was quite tight at the top (prussiking back up this will be interesting, I thought), but soon opened out, and landed in a roomy chamber with another traverse leading off. This traverse looked a bit nasty to me (I don't like traverses much at the best of times) as it had an awkward-looking step down in it, so I was glad to see Ursula rigging a rope. Bob went through, then the bad news from Ursula: "We'll need that rope for The Ninety, Nick so can you unclip it and bring it with you!" In fact the traverse turned out to be less bad that it had looked, and I wasn't too concerned by the lack of a rope. It was at about this point that Bob decided not to proceed any further - probably wisely, as he was facing a long drive home to Cambridge that evening, so we had a bit of a debate, and agreed that Ursula and I would go on, and Bob would wait for us at the bottom of Stink Pot. But to minimise his wait, we would just quickly "bounce" The Ninety, and not bother with the final pitch. The Ninety is a 28m (90 feet in old money), free hanging pitch in a superb oval-shaped, smooth-sided shaft, and was well worth the not inconsiderable effort involved in rigging it. The passage leading to the pitch head was so narrow that I found it constricted my breathing as I reached out to derig the farther bolt of the Y-hang on our return. On the rope and just about ready to go, I found that I'd somehow managed to get the down rope crossed over the traverse line, and had to haul it up to sort things out. Having failed to let Ursula in on what I was doing, she was probably a bit disconcerted sitting at the bottom of the pitch to see the rope end disappearing up the shaft. Then, adding insult to injury, I proceeded to drop the end back down on her. Hmm... 0/10 for caving etiquette there - must do better! The Ninety was the high point of the trip for me, and after whizzing down it and taking a quick look at the head of the last pitch below a small squeeze nearby, Ursula set off back up to rejoin Bob, leaving me to follow and derig. I took the ascent nice and slowly so as to, um, enjoy the view (!), and at the top was a bit dismayed to find my jammer at the knot, and the ledge at waist level and several feet away. However, once I had launched myself into it, the passage was so narrow I sort of stuck there, and was able to inch myself up onto the ledge. Our exit from the cave went without incident, Stink Pot was overcome using very small prussik steps at the top, and we were soon making our way back up towards the daylight filtering in at the top of the entrance shaft. The 60m of rope on the entrance pitch pulled up without a problem, and all that remained was an easy stroll back to the cars and a refreshment session at the Marton to round off 4½ hours of excellent caving. Nick James |