Chamber of Horrors - Louise McMahon, Grace Chu, Dominika Wróblewska

Louise:
We arrived at the layby to find i had left my harness at the hut, not a great start but some quick driving by Grace got us back to grab it. We went in via Oxlow rigging was fine although there are quite a few bolts in really shit spots the "Y-Hang" at the bottom of west swirl chamber an the deviation on the pitch above west swirl, grace had lots of problems with that.

We were up the pull through quite quick, taking your harness off in a crawl is fun. The first lot of crawling is not too bad as its hands although for me it did become apparent my wet suit was too tight and was making it hard to crawl.

Eventually you turn right out of the nice hands and knees crawl and into a flat out gravely thing. Dominika went through the squeeze on her front like it was nothing and then Phil tried and wasn't getting through, I gave it a go and got through on my second go and Grace basically ran through. I think the issue is its not really a squeeze but a very flat passage 2m that turns through 90 degrees so the short people can stay in the middle but us tallies are always going to have issues, there are also very few hand or foot holds or push off so you have to wiggle 1 inch at a time.

Some frantic conversation ensued and we decided to go and have a look at the ducks and leave Phill to head out. In hindsight that wasn't fair and we should have all gone out together, but I had my head set on getting through too much really.

So off we went down, down, down into the hole eventually hitting water where we put our hoods on. I went first and found the first duck and could feel a draft through it so knew their was air and we would be able to communicate. Left hand went in found the air and then i followed. What came next i still dont fully understand but i couldn't find air. Perhaps with my eyes closed it was there and i just needed to go up but floating on your back its really hard to know where up is at times, so i had to reverse and found air back on the side we came from. Once again i felt for the air and found it deciding to just go to my hand i went through again and there it was a verry small air space which was basically a crack you had to tilt your head slightly to get your knose in. Shouting to the others i was through it became apparent with hoods it was very hard to communicate. After a lot of "Say again" "What!" etc Grace tried and also failed to find the air I was already very cold by this point and grace didn't fancy another attempt so I went back through and we started the long crawl back.

By this point i was starting to feel very knackered and had the beginnings of a migraine, i know the others were also feeling worse for wear. The crawl back was quite grim and i wasn't looking forward to the squeze. At the squeeze grace went first and had issues with a stuck bag so Dominika followed to help her and dig some gravel out for me. I was also encouraged me to go it on my front which was not going to happen as my head was forced 1/2 into the water but it did allow me to some digging. So reverse swap onto my back and now pushing my bag ahead of my for the others to grab if it got stuck.

After the squeeze its only a few more meters to the wider passage. I dont think I've ever been so relieved to see a hands and knees crawl before. Nice crawling and even some stooping occurred until we made it to the pull though. Me and Grace nearly went past the junction for it, no idea where we would have ended up had we.

Putting a harness on in a crawl is even harder than getting it off and i was feeling really fucked and quite sick by this point. We decided not to derig as we were getting close to our call out so we sent Dominka first to let Phill know not to worry we were on our way out. I went next with grace following and we took our time. I think we surfaced around 6:30 PM ish having gone underground around 11:30. A quick car ride back to the hut and I made it to the garden just in time to throw up (Migranes fucking suck). So i took some drugs and put my head down for a few hours.

Thanks for washing the kit while I shirked it off.

All in all it was a good trip we got to see most of the it and I think we did the hard bit first really. Looking at the survey we were most of the way to giants really. Next time I may just take a small cylinder and reg would be much more pleasant that way.

Grace:
This was my third trip into Oxlow, as usual, I spent a long time struggling with the deviation. It’s a bit too far for me and how I wished my arms and legs were a little longer. It took probably a good 10 mins to sort it out. I heard Phil shouting my name from somewhere in the darkness to check whether I was alright. I shouted back to say I was alright but only stuck at the deviation and that I would be fine. Once I was down I soon caught up with them.

At the tight squeeze Phil couldn’t get through. Although we all got through but in our minds we were thinking we would crawl back to stay with Phil. Phil said he would be fine going back on his own so Louise asked me and Dominika what we wanted to do. We were both happy either way. So decision was made. While Dominika was saying goodbye I felt that Phil was worried and Dominika was reassuring him that we would be fine as we would keep assessing our safety as we went along.

We crawled quite a long way, or it seemed quite a long way, then we came to a duck. The ‘pecking order’ was, Louise, myself and Dominika. So Louise went through the duck first. She figured out where the airspace was and gave me hints to get through. So I plugged up my courage and went forward. I had ducked 3m length before but 6m seemed like a mile. I hesitated a bit. Louise wiggled her foot and told me to grab it then move to my right where the air space was. I took my helmet off, ducked down, I think it must have been 3m or 4m far, really don’t know, I stretched my hand out but couldn’t find Louise’s foot, in a split second I suddenly felt scared, I felt as if I was going to drown. So I quickly backed off to take a rest and try again. Louise was really cold. In fact we were all very cold. I decided that’s it, I didn’t want to risk it because I was too scared to go through the cold muddy water. I felt sorry for Louise because she had to do the horrible duck again to come back out. When she was out she felt sick and told us to wait a bit. I thought she swallowed water but I didn’t ask. I only knew she got migraine from her trip report.

At the time when I couldn’t do the first duck and had to back out, I was disappointed because we couldn’t make the connection. However, I was thinking a lot on the way out I felt differently. I didn’t feel disappointed anymore. We had a good trip. Certainly good company. I was really glad I joined in and tried. It was a good experience. Thanks all for it.

On the way to the Chamber of Horrors. Illustration Copyright © Dominika Wróblewska