Winnats Head Cave - Phil Wolstenholme

Present: Luke Brownbridge, Alastair Gott, Louise McMahon, Connor O'Neill, Ben Tout, Phil Wolstenholme, Dominika Wrøblewska

This trip was primarily intended as a first session for some 360° video that Dominika need to shoot for her VR project - we'd had some moderate success a few weeks ago creating a static 3D computer model via photogrammetry, but moving video adds a whole extra dimension of time into the mix, and we were eager to see how a large chamber would look with several cavers interacting with it. We'd established that Fox Chamber was large enough and dry enough to easily take several people simultaneously, and with an interesting entrance passage and an extremely interesting exit (!) was therefore the ideal location to try this out. And as there were plenty of people we could then do the long-proposed full trip to the bottom so no-one felt used and abused - most of us who'd been before had never done it, and most of us had never been before at all!

We bravely decided to walk it up, what with us all being young (!) and fit, and I'm pleased to say I was there first, despite setting off last and stopping at Speedwell for a chat with John. Ha! Anyway, after a bit of fettling we dived off down the entrance crawl, with bags getting stuck almost immediately. Only when we reached Main Chamber did we find out that Luke had decided not to bother and had set off back to the Chapel. After some preliminary hand-held video, with us all clambering about on the large boulders in there we set off down into the first choke, laden with several bags and a Peli case containing the business end of the project - the 360° camera and a binaural microphone 'just in case'.

Remarkably we reached Cornwall Avenue above Fox Chamber with no issues at all, so Dominika and me took the kit down into the centre of the chamber with the others waiting out of shot, and we set up the tripod-mounted camera on a large boulder high enough to cover most of the chamber. I then legged it back upslope so we could all enter together, with Dominika remaining close by, controlling the camera via her phone Bluetooth - a very neat arrangement as it still means you can use it underground as long as it's not too far away. Once we got the shout, we all slowly walked down, split up and traversed the whole chamber over 2 X 5-min takes. It all seemed to go well, with monitoring possible on the phone, so once we were done we packed all the gear, leaving the camera kit behind and set off down into choke #2.

Again, we had no problems at all and it was extremely good fun wriggling through all the problems - before we knew it we were at the first sump, and I was amazed at the size of it - far, far bigger than I expected, and with a very interesting and prominent vein in the roof running along the long axis. It is possible that this vein is the same as that seen in Longcliffe as it's on a very similar bearing and in a straight line from it. There is smashed mineral all over this cave, even down here, but as far as is known, no miners ever worked it. I did find a big lump of baryte with galena in it just below the vertical slot squeeze. We had a bit of a rest there and admired the large blue pool - all aware that the next passage, called Down in the Sewer may be a bit wet and was definitely low. In reality it wasn't that bad, and after a few wet and grunty wriggles, we were all through and at the base of the first up-pitch. There's an interesting traverse over the rift at the top, followed by an easy slope and then a crawl to the next pitches, up and down. The rock here is very orange and brown, with large lumps and strips of black chert protruding everywhere, almost like tiger-patterns in places.

Al had already established that the krabs on the upward pitch deviations were jammed solidly shut, so we couldn't go up there - that was fine as we had the three downward pitches to rig and drop, and all were damp to rather wet, depending which one it was. Even so, we all made it down to the bottom, despite occasional discussion of mutiny on the way - we were all very wet by now, and it is very cold down there. However, we all looked into the bottom sump eventually, all crammed onto the boulders to try and keep out of the spray (plastic suit next time!), though none of us climbed down into it, having read the guide-book. And so there was nothing left to do but begin the climb back out again, de-rig and then start the torturous journey back through all the chokes with three bags full of now very wet rope.

Even now I'm amazed to say that it all passed without incident, and even with the heavy bags having to be passed and hauled up through the tight vertical slots, it was remarkably good fun, and we all found ourselves back in Fox Chamber relatively quickly, given the party size. Picking up the camera gear and having one last good look around, we then tackled the final twisty choke before the ultimate ending - the uphill and very awkward entrance crawl, now with the added bonus of the bags getting snagged at every opportunity. This took some time, but we all managed it in the end and headed back to the chapel for a welcome shower and some warm food and drink.