Caving - Derbyshire Holiday
Day 1 - 06.04.12 - Owl Hole
We arrived at Miller's Dale where we were staying and unpacked the car. We then headed to Dowell Dale to see if we could find Owl Hole. There had been a lot of snow earlier in the week so we drove as far as we could up the country lane, kitted up, abandoned the car and carried on by foot.
The Cave has many entrances within a very large shake hole. We scrambled down the side and found the first entrance we wanted to try. It was 7m up the rock face - Tim climbed up attaching the ladder on the way. The first chamber we reached was full of taped off formations and two possible ways on. We followed the route round to the right which led to Hoggmorton Aven - another formation filled chamber - in the description we were advised that the way on from here to Pigs Trotters was best not investigated as it is a low crawl and it's difficult to preserve the formations when you are covered in mud! At this point we turned round and set off down the alternative route from the first chamber. A 5m ladder Pitch brought us down into Crystal Pallas Chamber - an even more finely decorated chamber. Off this a descending passage lead to a small gour chamber which was to be the end of out trip in this section. We headed back out and had a look into one of the other entrances - Orpheus (Three Chambers Extension) - This was mainly crawling passage with three chambers - Chambers' Chamber, Kemico Chamber and Nomis Chamber.
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| Me, Rob and Matt in Hoggmorton Chamber |
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| Crystal Pallas Chamber |
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| Formation in Kemico Chamber |
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| Survey with route marked |
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