Just finished an awesome trip through Nettlebed with Scott Simper who is gong to be one of the cameramen on our next expedition. Flew up to the top entrance and wander down through Blizzard rigging the pitches. Normally we would do a pull through and double rope the pitches and pull our ropes down as we go, the recent earthquakes had me a little paranoid as there is a major pile of rocks to squeeze through about an hour from the surface so we rigged to cave just in case the way on was blocked. After approx 250 metres of descent down 10 pitches and a short grovel through a rock fall is the enormous yellow brick road chamber. Had to take a short detour here to check out a passage was heading down towards stormy pot. Very strong wind blowing out of the passage, unfortunately a crow bar is needed to pry away some large rocks out of a tight squeeze. On and downwards we went. The 100 metre deep pile of loose rock called the funk hole turned out to be fine after all our worry and we made quick time down to the Knee trembler. Before heading to the Salvation Hall campsite we took a 3 hour detour almost to the most uphill end of the cave to have a look at camp 2 and to see if we could find a suitable alternative. I was very surprised not to find any other campsites. We returned to our packs and descended the steep screes and boulder slopes to the salvation hall campsite for a well earned dinner and sleep. Next morning we slept in a bit then headed out to the bottom entrance. Its a lovely trip out with the odd pitch thrown in, one or two little squeezes ands a very cold pool where we had to almost fully submerge to get under a wall. Luckily by this stage day light was not too far away and we emerged out into a beautiful hot sunny day. Looking forward to returning in 2 weeks
Posted on: Wed, 02 Oct 2013 10:07:54 +0000
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