The trip to our pushing front was uneventful if you exclude climbing up the rope into Northern Powerhouse with a heavy tackle bag on my back as uneventful, it wasn't. -The lead was indicated by a station 12 in red nail varnish on the LHS Wall. The lead is the pitch down, and identified later an inclined aven up... Chris rigged the pitch and Frank started surveying it. The pitch edge is a nice wall of pebbly fill, which makes the edge less than stable. Two re-belays and a deviation off an upside down spike. Arrived at the bottom to find the rope 3m too short and a long length of deviation tat double fishermaned on. Swung off to a ledge and started surveying the chamber, after a few legs out of the chamber we found a bolt with a red survey dot, bugger, An A lead killed. +
+The lead was indicated by a station 12 in red nail varnish on the LHS Wall. The lead is the pitch down, and identified later an inclined aven up... Chris rigged the pitch and Frank started surveying it. The pitch edge is a nice wall of pebbly fill, which makes the edge less than stable. Two re-belays and a deviation off an upside down spike. Arrived at the bottom to find the rope 3m too short and a long length of deviation tat double fisherpersonned on. Swung off to a ledge and started surveying the chamber, after a few legs out of the chamber we found a bolt with a red survey dot, bugger, An A lead killed. +
On exit the critical deviation pinged off and had to be replaced. Interestingly the draught at station 12 was not present either on the pitch or at the bottom of the pitch. The general thought was that the draught is going up the pitch. Had a look at climbing up the incoming aven but it was getting late. The aven is relatively clean washed and water from it has incises through the brown and ancient looking pebbles in the pheratic rift. +
Returned to camp really late and ate dinner quietly because Becca and James had gone to bed early. Crawled into my pit and got the end space which was particularly lumpy for a side sleeper and had lots of unconscious slide and cuddle potential. Got up late and headed out, this took ages because I'm particularly slow for some reasons, potentially related to age and unfitness.