Today we had decided to go caving. We double checked the weather forecast and it was looking dry till about 17:00.
We decided to go to Bull Pot. We didn't have enough rope with us t go down all the pitches so we had decided to do the first 3 which still required us to take just over 100m of rope on the trip!
We got all our kit ready and set off to Kingsdale. The first task was to find the entrance! We know it was on the top of the Kingsdale scars so we had to walk a lot of up! By reading the caving guides we had we had a rough idea on how to get up there. We drove up the road and when we thought we were in the right place we parked up. We got everything we needed out of the car and set off up the hill. After a considerable amount of up we came to a vague track running across the top of the first scar. We headed right along it and came to a little stream. From the description in the book the entrance was near to where a stream sinks. We both started to have a look around for the entrance - we had seen photos of it so knew we would recognise it when we saw it. I followed the stream downhill and after a short while I found the cave entrance.
Tim came and joined me and we started to get our harness and SRT kit on. Tim began rigging the entrance pitch and once he was down the bottom I set off.
At the bottom of the first pitch we scrambled down the rocks and followed the cave passage round to the top of the second pitch. We started looking for the bolts to start rigging from. We couldn't see any at a sensible height, only the ones high up in the ceiling. We followed them back and found that we needed to climb up one wall a bit further back and start rigging a traverse line high up. Once over the second pitch we abseiled down and swung over to the ledge. We had decided to go on down Slot Route as it would be safer than Fossil Route if it rained. Tim rigged it with a re-belay point just less than half way down and abseiled down. Once he was down I followed.
The bottom of this pitch was as far as we were going to go. We followed the stream passage to the top of the fourth pitch and then turned round to head back out to the entrance.
Once I had passed the re-belay point I called to Tim so he could start headding up the lower part of the pitch.
At the top I took a few minutes breather before making a start on the next. I was a little way up when Tim emerged at the top of the previous pitch. He un-rigged and packed the rope away while I was ascending.
Once I was at the top he was able to start climbing up.
Back across the traverse un-rigging as we went we were at the bottom of the entrance pitch again. It is always a nice feeling to be nearly back at the surface!
This time Tim lead the way out and I followed. We then had the job of the final bit of un-rigging and packing all the rope away and the walk back down the hill.
It was a good trip.
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