Holiday - Scotland Day 12 - Caving in Cnoc Nan Uamh System (Knockers)

Scotland Holiday Day 12

Caving in Cnoc Nan Uamh System (Knockers)

Today we woke up around 10 am.  The weather was dry but still very cloudy - no sign of the hill or mountain tops!!  It did look brighter in the distance so hoped it would get better later.  We deciced that we would go caving as it didn't matter if it was drizzly.  We got partly kitted up and drove up the road to the base of the valley we were going to walk up.  We finished kitting up and had a look at the map to check the route up to the cave.  It was just over an hour to walk up the valley to the entrances.  

There were 3 - the first one we got to was a 100m waterfall flowing at a 45 degree angle.  

It leads to a sump where the stream sinks.  It can aparently become quite exciting in high water conditions.  The second entrance was a shake hole shaft above the start of the waterfall in the previous entrance.  The third entrance is the one we wanted

 - it was a rock shelter with a low archway to the right hand wall which gave access to the rest of that cave.  A short stooped walk led to a 1m climb down into the stream passage.  The stream carried quite a bit of water and was flowing rather forcefully.  We had to cross the stream and climbed up a bolder slope to the right hand side.  At the top a low crawl brought us out into Beachbarow Chamber.  A pretty chamber with gold and silver moon milk and some straws.  Another low crawl round to the left led into the top of the Grotto.  Climbing down and to the left opened into pool chamber where the stream was deep and flowing across from right to left.  Climbing up in the Grotto revealed some straws and some small stal.  

Climbing down and to the right in the Grotto brought us to a powerful waterfall.

Climbing up to the right led to the streamway at the top of the waterfall.  Crossing the stream we climbed up one of the short falls to climb up along the streamway following it upstream.  This brought us out into Landslip Chamber - a large chamber sloping up to the right with the stream running through it on the left.  Continuing through this chamber at the bottom we went round the edge of the sump pool.  A few crawl and small chambers on from there took us to Far Passage.  We gave up and called it quits half way down this passage as it eed to be on hands and knees crawling.  The passage evenutally leads to a static sump that we had no intention of going through.  On the way out we madde our way back to Landslip Chamber and then found a higher level route that bypassed the waterfall climb and instead brought us out into the Grotto.  After an awkward climb down into the Grotto we headed out through Beachbarrow Chamber the same way that we had come in.  On the walk back down the valley we tok a small diversion to look at another cave entrance and were glad we had not chosen that cave to go in as the entrance looked very wet.  It was still drizzling for our walk back and was still very misty.

Back at the caving club we got showered and changed and then sorted out our kit.  After dinner we had the very exciting task of doing some hand washing!  We had a relaxing evening with the wood burner going!  Tomorrow we are hoping to do our drive around the north coast.