Eldon Hole

On the second day of our trip to Derbyshire we went to Eldon Hole. The Derbyshire trip was led by Sam since he first learned to cave with Sheffield and knows the area well. He also managed to recruit a few of his friends from Sheffield for the trip, making it the perfect opportunity for us to learn SRT. Unfortunately Eldon Hole was in no way a suitable place to learn SRT (this is classic Sam). Picture a chasm 5m wide, 30m long, and 60m deep. It was absolutely terrifying.

Since I had actually learned some SRT the evening before I was actually one of the more experienced members of the team, and spent around half an hour helping Alex on the ropes, who was rightly freaking out as this was his first cave ever. I eventually made it to the bottom, and after a short crawl through some gravel entered into an absolutely incredible chamber which must have been 50m high. Just as I crawled back out to the bottom of the hole I met Ollie who had just made it down.

What followed was a completely hilarious exchange where Dan, Mikey, and I were trying to convince Ollie to crawl down and check out the breathtaking chamber while Ollie was completely convinced that we were just trying to make him crawl into an awkward hole with nothing on the other side. This genuinely went on for about 10 minutes. On the way up we all got incredibly tired from hauling ourselves up. Dan was carrying about 20kg of soggy rope with him as well and had a pretty rough emotional time of it.

The next day was much more successful, with two separate groups entering a small cave system in different places, doing a through trip and ending up at the same exit. This was some fantastic route finding experience for Rupert and me and holds us in good stead to lead trips in freshers.

Honorable mentions to:

• Carl and Alex who were absolute champions in the face of a terrifying first caving experience.

• Mikey and Ben who won CharDeeMacDennis.

• Dan who sustained an injury in the glass smashing portion of CharDeeMacDennis, and Rostam who patched him up and was just a legend in general.

• Rupert who threw up after one beer.

• Sam, Ollie, and Josh who drove all the way to Derbyshire from Southampton/Exeter and back.

• Eileen from the Orpheus caving hut who got really pissed off at us but we charmed her.

• The farmer from Eldon who got really pissed off at us and complained to the BCA.

Ben McKechnie

By Benjamin McKechnie