After having my photographs lost for a couple of weeks I was starting to wonder if they'd turn up at all.Fortunately they did and with the help of Dudley members we managed to get a few shots that won the competition for a 2nd year running with a  ...
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Deep inside Bruniquel Cave, in the Tarn et Garonne region of southwestern France, a set of human-made structures 336 meters from the entrance was recently dated as being approximately 176,500 years old. This discovery indicates that humans began occupy ...
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View from the entrance to Rat CaveAnother day, another tour. This time Tu Lan Four Day Expedition.Rat CaveNo floods. No cuts. No dramas.Frog or Toad with 'Go Faster' stripeSix clients, all fit and quick, good fun.Bat Cave, is this Batman?This is the fi ...
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Hang En small entrance, well, the small bit of the small entrance to be preciseA standard tour, nothing exceptional happened so few words for this entry, but here are a few pictures from the tour.Hang En OxbowThe picture above shows the Hang En Oxbow p ...
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Early morning on the Son riverIt's wedding season! We've been invited to five weddings this Month, we couldn't both get to all of them, but between us we had them all covered.Which way is up?As well as the weddings, we've been busy (as usual) with tour ...
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Scientists roped in the use of high-tech laser scanning, photogrammetry and 3-D mapping technology to map Homo naledi's Dinaledi chamber. ...
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A walker (f,37) went over on an ankle, coming off the bottom of the Cove steps. After pain relief and splinting, she was taken by CRO vehicle down to Malham village for transfer to a road ambulance. Volunteer hours: 24 ...
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Under the dictatorship of Anton...All but one managed the trip from Stream Passage Pot to Gaping Gill, and out of Bar Pot/Small Mammal, taking advantage of the Bradford Pothole Club's rigging during the Winch Meet.DCC Rock On!Mud Pot Gaping Gill M ...
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Yorkshire Ambulance Service asked for assistance when someone fell from a bridge into the beck. Very quickly, however, they were advised that there was road access, so a rescue team was not needed ...
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A walker (m,50) dislocated his left kneecap, high up on Ingleborough. CRO members immobilised the leg, gave him pain relief and put him onto a stretcher. He was carried and ‘sledged’ down to a CRO Land Rover, driven to the road-head and transferred to a Yorkshire Ambulance Service road ambulance, waiting in Chapel-le-dale. Volunteer hours: 70 ...
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As Jess was off cycling in Yorkshire I decided to pop to Castleton for the presentations for the 50th anniversary of the Giants/Oxlow connection. This started with a great talk by Clive Westlake as he read from his journals of the original digging proj ...
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A wet start to the day

What a difference a day makes! A lovely day yesterday on the walk out from Hang En, but an overnight thunderstorm of almost Biblical proportions has changed things somewhat. Many of the roads on the way over to Tu Lan were very wet,  and the road through the village of Trooc was under thirty centimetres of water. The streams were orange with mud and in full spate.

Have we got to cross that raging monster?

The situation was no different at Tan Hoa but the guides and office staff assured me that the rivers would be ok to cross, one tour had already left so I assumed that if things were bad we would see them before we got to the first river crossing.

First river, deep and nasty, should have got the safety line out - or even a boat!

We managed to cross the first river, three at a time holding hands, but it was nearly chest deep with a very strong current, Personally I thought it was a little risky and we would have to take more precautions for our next crossings.

A stormy La Ken valley

After lunch in Rat Cave, the weather had improved, but it was going to be some time before the water levels dropped. We made our way to the crossing which would enable us to get to Gibbon Cave (and beyond). Vū (the guide) had one attempt at crossing before I pulled 'the plug' and decided that it was not going to be safe. We moved on to where the porters cross, but that to was far too dangerous so we moved on to a final location, after that I wasn't sure what we could do.

River deep, mountain high

The final crossing location was still not possible with the equipment we had, but we were able to make a call to the office for life jackets and a floating rope. As the water was deep and not so fast here, with fewer dangerous obstructions in the water, we figured we would be able to cross once we had the safety equipment.

Second river crossing.

While we were waiting for the life jackets, some porters came back and crossed exactly where we were. Coming towards us it was a wade, followed by three metres of swimming across the current to a tree, once at the tree they walked on submerged branches to our side, we had a route across!

Third river crossing

Having crossed into the La Ken valley proper, we only had one more river to cross before our camp in Hung Dung for the night, and with the equipment that we now had I was confident we could make it although we no longer had time to visit Gibbon Cave.

This is normally the swimming pool at the Hung Dung campsite

Once at camp, I immediately spilled a cup of coffee over myself, this was not going well. By the next morning the water level had dropped by over a metre, although it was still high I thought that there was a good chance that we could get through Bat Cave.

Bat Cave, way too wet for safety

How wrong I was, the water was still way too high so we had to retrace our steps, back to the Hung Dung camp for a swim before continuing on to the La Ken campsite.

A much improved Hung Dung Swimming pool, still wet though

With the water levels dropping, everyone was more relaxed and happier, knowing that we should at least be able to complete our itinerary for the next two days.

Monster card game?

The walk over to the Tu Lan valley was uneventful and we arrived in time for a swim before lunch. The water levels were high but manageable.

Butterflies in the sun

After lunch it was Tu Lan cave, no problem for us but the porters had fun getting the boats into Tu Lan. Crossing the bridge between the two camps is easy, but in high water there is not much room to get a boat beneath it!

Boat limbo dancing

At the entrance to Tu Lan we saw a baby bird that had obviously jumped out of its nest just a little bit too soon. Hopefully it will survive.

Bird is the word

After Tu Lan, we went to Hang Ken before dinner, there was some more rain overnight but this had no effect on the water levels. On the downside, I seemed to have developed my first case of foot rot, hopefully I can get rid of it before my next tour in three days time.

A nice night for an evening

By the final morning, my foot rot was no worse, which was a good sign, so we set off to swim through Hang Kim and Hang Hung Ton.

Hang Kim, before the swim

Thankfully the swimming was uneventful, leaving just Secret Cave to go. I saw the little chap below right beside the entrance, not the neatest spiral in the world, but not a bad effort.

Spider spiral

The picture below shows the river outside the Tan Hoa office before and after our tour. Next up for me is Hang Son Doong, passing Ruth on the hill. but before that there is the small matter of two weddings.

Same spot, before and after the tour

b ...
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Jumping for fruitSo, another week, and another Hang Son Doong tour, this time with Watto. As well as the normal quota of porters, there were others in the cave who were doing a bit of tidying up and fixing, more on that later.Do you expect me to go the ...
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Due to a whole lot of reasons there was no digging action at Hallowe'en Rift this weekend! ...
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Enormous thanks to Steve for hosting and organising his tree rigging weekend. Steve worked very hard to organise a brilliantly fun couple of days. I think he deserves some sort of special club stunt award for his "Corsican Crawl". (And maybe his outdoor toilet too). Huge thankyous to Tom Howard, Olly King, Cath, Sophie & Sean, Charlotte Meakin, James, Pete & Heather Johnson, Nigel Dibben, Robert and Louise Stevenson, Geordie & the kids, Paul Richardson, and especially to Scott Bradley of the TSG who we all agreed needs a proper DCC thank you.



Olly abseiling down the tree for the first time

Steve had wanted to rig a zip line in his garden for a very long time - years in fact. Back in October, I suggested we set a date for it to finally happen. There was much discussion in the months before it about the logistics and safety concerns. Myself, Olly and Dave Dillon went to Steve's a few times to look at the tree and discuss plans in the 2 weeks leading up to the weekend itself. There has been a rope up in Steve's tree for the last 10 years or so, and apparently this rope came from the Berger expedition of 1991, so this obviously needed to be replaced before anything else could happen up the tree. We agreed though, if the zip line wasn't possible or didn't happen for any reason, we would still have a damn good weekend at Steve's playing on ropes and giving the DCC Rocket a fresh lick of paint.

Me 100ft up on a cold and windy Friday night

Unfortunately the weekend had a disappointingly poor turnout for a big club event that has been in the calendar since October. Not getting at anyone in particular, it turned out to be a bad weekend for many- of course I know there are very good reasons why. Sorry to say many missed a truly incredible weekend. And the weather was perfect, sunny no wind. For any of you that haven't been to Steve's place it is awesome and quite special...


Magical English Bluebell Woods

Upon arriving yesterday, a small group of us were mingled underneath the tree wondering where Steve was. I rang him and was given the cryptic instructions "walk down the meadow and follow the mouse trail"... So off we went and followed the white mice directing us over the bridge, we went through a beautiful woodland filled with thousands of bluebells, there is so much to see. But shortly after Scott arrived at midday, we got on with having a crack at this crazy zip wire idea. I think we are all in agreement if Scott had not come it most likely wouldn't have happened, or at least not as successfully. We needed someone with more experience rigging zip wires than us, and he gave us the confidence in what we were doing. None of us were sure it was possible to do safely, less so in one weekend, and even less considering all the other individual factors involved in putting a 10mm steel zip wire 90 feet up a Corsican Pine the best part of 300 years old, with a bit of a dodgy lean to it?! Fortunately the tree is healthy, and the lean is backwards away from the wire. The tree has been anchored to two other large trees behind it, so that the zip wire cable does not pull the old 100ft tree over. It was under tension by Saturday afternoon, however it was reduced yesterday morning. The main cable is rigged directly to the tree, 27 metres up using planks to protect it's trunk. The forces involved here are big- tons of pressure at either end of the line. At the far end of the meadow 282 metres away the cable ends 20odd metres up another tree, with the main tensioning anchor redirected from there to the bottom trunk of another huge tree. By 7pm on Saturday, the cable was fully hoisted up the tree at one end. It still didn't look great though, we knew there was a lot more work and testing to be done yesterday. Nevertheless we had the traditional DCC knees up with a moonlit midnight walk around the mouse trail, and late night around Steve's dustbin fire. Falling asleep in my tent next to the river with the sound of the waterfall was magical.


Pruning

So after a leisurely breakfast we got on with it, hoisted the cable up the lower tree, and I gingerly weighted the lowest point to see what happened. I sank to the floor. Higher it went up the tree. Less tension though, the real danger clearly being over tensioning rather than being too slack. Olly and James were towed up the line, with more adjustments and eventually after looking at everything, we decided to go for it. Scott slowly lowered Olly down the zip wire from the top of the tree, along with a saw to get rid of the branches in the way at the top. After some extreme high wire tree surgery, the 80 metre belay rope then came to an end, and it was time to let him go! (There is one small branch in the way still that was just out of reach, but it's not particularly painful unless you're wearing shorts!) Olly rode gracefully down the rest of the line, with the long rope acting as a gentle brake on the long grass. Then it was James' turn, from the top this time. He went bloody fast but slowed down almost as quick and came to a comfortable stop on the floor about 200 metres down the wire. My turn next and I went the furthest, came nowhere near the floor and ended up coming to a stop hanging about 20odd metres away from the end, Charlotte followed me screaming, and then Tom with a zimmer frame for good measure.


Extreme high wire tree surgery

The method we used is to connect yourself to the pulley with your locked stop on a 15 metre or so length of rope, which is attached to yourself coiled in a bag, when you come to a stop, you can abseil down the rope to gradually release yourself from the cable. Clearly weight is a huge factor in this zip wire as to speed and landing. Everyone involved did a bloody good job with simple yet effective rigging. There was no hoist system installed, you had to prusik to the top of the tree, and connect yourself to the cable whilst stood on a branch. All in all a fantastic weekend, many thanks again to all who were involved! Needless to say, we didn't get around to repainting the rocket, maybe we can organise another weekend to get the job done before the September open weekend?

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After a short tip in OFD Keith felt ready to return to the scene of his unfortunate accident 6 months before.This time Keith went fully harnessed and belayed down in to Fernhill accompanied by Ian and John to take in the splendid curtain formations whi ...
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It had been a long wet winter and as the entrance series can flood to the roof we had been hampered from visiting the newly discovered Ogof Marros. I had first met Phil Knight a few years ago when he joined the SWCC where on one of our regular jau ...
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The Mäanderhöhle cave near Bamberg was previously regarded as an archaeological sensation. It was thought to contain some of the oldest cave art in Germany. However, a researcher has demonstrated that the markings discovered inside the cave in 2005 are not fertility symbols carved by humans as previously thought. In fact, these lines occurred as a result of natural processes, the archaeologist says ...
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