Caving - GB Cavern

GB Cavern

Written by Tim

For our first trip of the year myself and Sas decided to take a gentle wander around GB earlier today. Whilst driving up to the Mendip hills we splashed our way through many a puddle on the roads and admired the high water levels in the rivers, hoping the cave would be equally as wet. Fortunately we were in luck and the main stream-way was wetter than I've seen for several years. I should add we only tend to go to GB a few times a year, so today's level of wetness is probably somewhat less rare than the previous sentence suggests!

We set off down the usual route to the gorge, being accompanied by a modest flow under foot through the entrance passages to a view of a reasonable waterfall issuing from above the second climb. The main stream-way was in full flow requiring a bit of careful foot work in places to maintain dry socks. Once at the bridge we stopped for a photo or two before continuing over it and traversing the gallery route to the window overlooking main chamber.





From here we took the oxbow to the bottom of the cave re-entering the gorge to find water not far off lapping at our feet and entry to the ladder dig requiring a swim. This was slightly surprising as only this week I'd been told the bottom of GB no longer fills up! You can see the chain hanging out of the ladder dig in the second photo...





We then headed up stream to the bottom of the waterfall to take a look, but decided not to climb it to avoid the inevitable juice to the face. Here's a photo of Sas stood at the bottom...



From here we retraced our steps back up the oxbow, this time taking the longer route via the loop, rift chamber and white passage back to the bridge. Back at the gorge we noticed the water level was dropping and the colour had returned to clear rather than (taken from the Dulux colour chart) 'flood brown'. Back up the entrance passage to emerge to glorious sunshine. A fine trip.