From 136ba6d48900e93414c31253fe87a7363bd9371f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Frank Tully
+Walked over to Gruffalo via the Tunnocks col, go over the col and follow the bunder free strip down until it intersects the huge fault which has closely cropped grass, take a right and continue down until you find the large doline again with close cropped grass. We found a Gemza skeleton in the bottom, which was nice. +The general consensus is that this is an easier path than going via Fish Face and Happy Butterfly. It needs more cairns and some reflectors if it becomes a trade route. +
+Gruffalo is 15m up on the East flank of the depression above the tall larch tree. +
+The draught is really impressive, clouds billowing out. More impressively the first 50m of the shaft are lines with ice. +
+Followed the string down past two squeezey bits to where the shaft enlarges. Luckily James went to the bottom, because he found a bag with rope and a bunch of unused studs. +Paella'ed the kit out of the hole in good time, James had to take his harness off to return the second squeeze bit. +
+The heavens opened whilst we were down there, there was a roaring in a parallel shaft and behind the ice. The general shaft stayed dry. +
+The rain was torrential by the time we got to the surface and everything got soaked. started walking back with oversuit on and all the wet rope. I was too knackered to make it back to the Tunnock's col with all my load and dumped half the rope on the way back. This still needs collecting 25 July 2025. James obviously was fine carrying his overload up the hill. +
+Arrived back to top camp around 17:00 +Top camp needs gas and is out of Cous Cous, and the stoves need fettling, so we went down the hill to get this sorted. It stopped raining as we arrived at base camp. +