Peak Cavern

After a night camping near Castleton which provided the first wet weather test for a tent I had bought on the day of Pete’s wedding, I met Rachel and Richard for breakfast. We then drove to the TSG hut to sort out a trip into Peak cavern. At the TSG hut, cavers nurturing various degrees of regret from the previous night’s partying were trying to stir themselves into life. Both the CDG and SUSS had held their AGM and meal the day before, resulting in around one hundred cavers behaving as well as could be expected.

After completing the paperwork and paying the insurance, fixed aid and entry costs we headed off to the cave having been joined by Marcus. We were unable to get anybody else to come along, even with promises of wide open passage, it was almost like they didn’t believe us? Marcus wanted to dive the Peak resurgence to look at a dig in the sump but the vis was too poor so we headed into the cave with his kit in the direction of Surprise View sump. On the way we passed several piles of material destined for the Dooms Retreat project and eventually took pity on a solitary scaffold pole that was looking lonely and in need of a trip up stream. At Surprise View Marcus found the sump in an obscure bedding at the start of the trench down to the ladder climb. After descending the ladder with the scaffold pole we headed upstream towards Ink Sump collecting a lost looking bag of scaffolding clips on the way. Returning to drop of the items at the start of the passage to Ink Sump after a navigational error was corrected by Richard we headed back to the ladder. A small diversion took us into some fine passage with some strange plumbing in the walls and delayed us long enough to meet Marcus as he tried to get out of the rift with his kit. I found the bedding plane a bit to cosy so Richard slid in to hand up the kit. Marcus reported that the dive had been committing.

Back on route Marcus showed us the way up to Treasury Chamber and Sump plus the start of Colostomy crawl before departing—wise man. The crawl is the link between the Peak and Speedwell systems and has a well deserved reputation. Richard and Rachel went ahead (by a long way) with me bringing up the rear. Exiting the crawl down a couple of pitches we joined the Speedwell stream way and headed upstream. At a junction we met a team doing a through trip from JH, including Jim, Martyn and a new diver called John. They were going the sensible route through Treasury sump, the others in their party were going to have to slog through Colostomy. Taking the dry bypass at the junction to avoid a very low airspace duck we rejoined the stream way and headed up to the Bung, a dam that maintains the water level for the boats in Speedwell show cave. We turned at this point and headed out via the joys of Colostomy crawl (I was even further back) before the nice walk down to the muddy ducks and the scrubbing off point so that we could exit the show cave wet but clean.