P8 - Alan Brentnall
On last night's trip, we went back to an old favourite - P8, aka Jackpot, although that name gets very little use these days. There were nine of us in total: Alan, Brendan, Pete, Julian, Jess, Alex, Steve, Jenny and myself. The weather had been pretty summery, and we didn't expect too much water in the system.
In fact the entrance climb was only just flowing, making the initial descent quite slippery. This was to be my last caving trip for a while for medical reasons, and Pete and Steve had gone ahead to sort out the rigging while the rest of us changed into our caving gear. We elected to take the fairly straightforward route, traversing off pitch 1 in Waterfall Chamber, and traversing over the bad step to the old "Iron Ladder" pitch.
The plan was to take a look at the Christmas Aven dig, and, when we got to the end of the long traverse above Lake Bentham, we found that the second stream which feeds this passage was bone dry.
In t'Owd Man's Rift, after passing The Elephant, we climbed up to the left on slippery mud, aided by an old, knotted, climbing rope. Nearing the top of the slope, a low, hading passage opened up on our left, and all but two of us squeezed into this and following a muddy, undulating passage through various puddles, climbs and squeezes to a sizeable chamber, well decorated with some fine formations, but now far muddier than it used to be. This was Christmas Aven.
A platform, built with stacked deads, occupied the upper part of the chamber, and this gave am excellent view of both the dig and the chamber's pretty decorations. There was a hand line and a haul rope, complete with mud-clogged pulley, and a syphon tube all left in situ from digging days - and an empty champagne bottle, evidence of breakthrough celebrations.
Brendan and Alex both decided to descend into the dig and explore the short new passage; the rest of us decided that it was time to start moving back towards the surface.
Deferring to my medical problems, I'd decided not to descend into the dig, and, because of this, I had removed my foot-loop and rig in the passage below to make the climb etc easier, and to save the kit from getting too muddy. Unfortunately, some bastard do-gooder decided that I'd accidentally left this stuff, and brought it all the way through to the aven for me. As the saying goes, "no good dead ever goes unpunished", and I spent much of my time dragging my newly-found embuggerence through the squeezes and climbs grumbling at a distant Steve, who, oddly, found the whole situation very amusing.
The journey out went slowly, but uneventfully, and we were greeted on the surface by an almost completely formed, orange harvest moon.
A lovely trip - P8 never disappoints - and, as I say, my last for about a month. But I was assured that trips will carry on during this time, so watch this space!!