Oh Bugger it must be Raining

The day started off so well with a leisurely lunch in Inglesport while Jamie explained to me the plan of the day's activity, a trip down Pippikin Pot. `It's due to rain a bit later` he said `but its alright Paul reckons Pippikin never floods`. So off we went to Leck Fell stopping only briefly to pick up some Mars bars and to phone Paul to act as a call out for 10 o'clock, something that surprised me as both of us normally forget to bother.

Getting changed up at the farm the weather looked a little overcast but nothing special, and we were soon kitted up and traipsing off down the hill for our usual thirty-minute search for the right hole in the ground. Finding it fairly quickly for a change we began our descent squeezing down through the narrow passages and rope pitches in fairly good order save an acrobatic head stand on my part as I accidentally came out of the first crawl head first over a drop. A few hours into the trip and we were splashing along in the ankle deep stream towards the boulder choke that leads into the Hall of the Ten congratulating ourselves on choosing such a good way of spending the day. In the Hall of the Ten we stopped for a breather and a well-earned Mars bar looking longingly at the exit that leads to Mistral and wondering why we hadn't done the trip as a pull through in which case we could have been back on the surface in 15 minutes.

Leaving the Hall of the Ten behind we started back up the stream way and up the first pitch collecting our ropes as we went. As we entered the next section Jamie stopped by a large waterfall coming out of the top of the passage `I don't remember this on the way in` he said `I am sure we are going the right way though` (any one who caves with Jamie regularly knows getting temporarily lost from time to time is nothing unusual). Carrying on we came out of the rift we were following to be met by a torrent of water flooding down the adjoining passageway, `Oh bugger` said Jamie `it must be raining!!`

Looking at the water we came to a quick team decision to turn round and try to get back to the Hall of the Ten and exit through Mistral rather than try to fight our way up through the flow. I was first back to the last pitch and descended the rope to drop into the stream way. The water which ten minutes before had been ankle deep rose to over my waist. I muttered a few choice words as Jamie dropped down beside me with a slightly worried look on his face. We worked our way rapidly along the roof of the stream way back towards the boulder choke with the rising water rushing below us. A stalactite dropping from the ceiling finally blocked our progress, the water had risen too high. `Mm` said Jamie `I think we are going to have to sit this one out`, with no choice we went back to the last pitch careful not to fall in the now very fast flowing water and ascended into the roof of the chamber to find ourselves a safe place to wait. Jamie finally stopped and pointed to some delicate straws `those take ages to form and will get washed away by a flood, we should be safe enough here` he said calming my rather frayed nerves. So we sat down to wait playing a game of I spy to pass the time, although after R and W the game got a bit boring really. Jamie told me some of his stories about people drowning in caves to cheer me up before the stress of the situation overcame him and he fell asleep and started snoring. I sat there thinking how much trouble I was going to be in when I got home if we ended up getting stuck for a long time, although it was a bit cold and the sound of running water was a bit noisy we seemed safe enough for now.

After a long boring few hours had passed Jamie woke up and we decided to go and see if the water level had dropped, we made our way back to the last pitch and Jamie dropped down to find that although the water was still high it had started to go down. We decided to try to get out through Mistral and went down the stream way again to the boulder choke and found that thankfully the water had dropped enough to let us squeeze though. A rapid exit followed and we emerged finally out beside a rather swollen Ease Gill with the debris of the earlier flooding evident all around us. The water from the gill had come up all the way over the banks into the cave entrances in what must have been a very sudden and heavy downpour. Wasting no time we walked quickly uphill back to the farm to phone Paul. Having no watch with us (good planning as ever!) we had no idea what time it was and were rather shocked when we got through to Paul to find it was 5 minutes to 10, he had been just about to call out the CRO for us! Thankfully saved the embarrassment of a call out Jamie went on to tentatively explain to Paul that we had had to leave all the pitches rigged, and was somewhat relieved when Paul didn't seem bothered at all and even offered to go back later in the week to retrieve it all. I finally got home after midnight, Sarah was sat on the sofa `you're late` she said `you wouldn't believe the amount of rain we have had here today`.

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	Swaledale Outdoor Club

Oh Bugger it must be Raining

Simon Longley