Valley Entrance & West Kingsdale Master Cave

Arctic conditions in Guisborough and a DIY frenzy in Harrogate looked like leaving us with only the leader available for my trip into WKMC via Valley Entrance. But at the eleventh hour, I received a call from an outdoor education student called Richard who wanted to go caving the next day, so the trip was back on. After complex telephone negotiations and some arm-twisting, it was arranged that Richard would collect the tackle from Dalton on his way, and I'd meet him Inglesport at 10 AM.

Following a bite to eat and a chat in the cafe, we set off for the cave in Richard's car. After a frosty start, it had turned into a beautiful sunny day, and the Kingsdale road was thankfully free of ice. The dale looked superb with a light dusting of snow on the ground, and the sunshine and lack of wind made getting changed quite pleasant, despite the low temperature.

After kitting up and inspecting Richard's shiny new SRT kit, we made our way up to the oil drum entrance, and were ready to go underground by 11:45, thus breaking one of the cardinal rules of the Caving Section! We slithered through the drum and wandered leisurely along the Roof Tunnel, pausing at each aven to give our backs a rest - well, this trip was supposed to be an "Easy", after all.

We stopped again at the ducks to soak the rope, and then meandered further along the twisting passage, most of which is at an awkward stooping height. We noticed several passages going off on the left, but didn't investigate them, as today's objective was to get down the pitch and explore the West Kingsdale Master Cave.

On arrival at the pitch head, the stream at the bottom was babbling away in a normal-sounding way, so I set about the rigging, while Richard settled down for a (longish) wait. I'd half expected to find the pitch already rigged, as we'd seen three red-suited figures making their way up the hillside towards the top entrances, but the only rope we found in place led across to the ledge in the left wall.

Richard had done some SRT before, but just to be on the safe side I made sure he was OK with the techniques and saw him onto the rope and down the pitch before descending myself. Once we were both safely down we set off upstream to find the cobbly ledge that marks the point where the route to Master Junction leaves the streamway. We must have overshot a bit, as the first passage on the left that we entered closed down, so we backtracked and tried a bit further downstream. This time we soon arrived at a low, wide area marked by a cairn, which presumably indicates the Master Junction.

Carrying on in the same general direction we arrived at another dead-end, so it was back to the Master Junction to try the passage going off slightly to the right. This soon led to deep water that I didn't remember from my last visit, so we made our way back to the cairn once more and decided to have another look up the first passage. This time we found a muddy passage off to the left, which climbed a bit, and then dropped down through a hole into a crawl in shallow water that seemed more familiar. I went into this a little way, but at that stage we decided not to push on any further as I wasn't totally sure of the route.

So, back to the streamway, a short stomp downstream, and then a bit of prussiking revision. I went up first so I could watch Richard off the pitch, and then all that remained was to de-rig and make our way out. The drop in temperature as we emerged into daylight was quite noticeable, and we were surprised to find that we'd been underground for about two-and-a-half hours.

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Valley Entrance & West Kingsdale Master Cave

Nick James