Grey Wife Hole

Saturday, 15 September 2007

As both Sam and myself had plans in the evening, we decided on a trip down the short but fine Grey Wife Hole on Newby Moss. This trip was to also represent my latest dabbling in the dark art of underground photo-faffing.

After a fine, albeit sickly breakfast in Inglesport (its been a while), we headed over to Newby Cote and proceeded up the fell to the entrance, with black clouds looming threateningly. One can't help thinking of the potential of this area, with the major caves comprising just Grey Wife Hole and Newby Moss Pot - there must be lots more!

From the entrance, a climb down through a stabilised boulder choke leads down to a low crawl improving to a pleasant narrow streamway ending at the first pitch. This was pretty dry today and drops into the sump, Paradox Pond. Here we had a stop for some photo-faffing before proceeding over the filthy, uninspiring looking sump pool (last bits tricky to stay dry) to the other side, where a different streamway was then followed upstream.

Eventually we arrived at a chamber and the start of Jim's Traverse, with an old rope hanging down from above. I belayed Sam across the traverse, which was pretty straightforward although exposed, and then followed removing the gear.

Another 5-10mins of mostly crawling led to a small chamber with some very nice formations including 2m long straws in the roof. A 30min or so stop here to take some photos allowed us to cool off ready for the 3m long duck, which today, had plenty of airspace, but was rather chilly!!

Once through this, we explored the boulder choke to be found on this side (where we might have entered some new passage....not sure yet) before returning through the duck and heading out. Didn't take long to reach the surface which was reached around 5.30pm.

Excellent trip. Photos to follow at some point.