A flurry of emails over the proceeding week saw us all arrive at the Orpheus caving hut on Friday night with most of a plan, including dragging Richard over from Neston to deliver rope and prove that day trips to the Peak are feasible. A few beers and a good look at the survey on the wall filled in the details to ensure that this wasn’t a simple SRT bounce but instead included some proper caving. Finally, a nip of Arentas’ ‘interesting’ fruitcake schnapps sent us to bed.

Bags were packed using the rigging guide available at the peak district caving website (link at bottom of report), using a single 117 m rope for all of the Leviathan pitches. Additional rigging beta:

• Rope lengths in the guide are generous.

• There is a resin anchor to add an additional re-belay a little below the half way point of the entrance pitch allowing two to exit together – it benefits from a little deviation to reduce rub.

• All the deviations in Bitch Pitch are resin anchors – most can be treated as re-belays and have handy ledges to stand on when passing.

Richard came with us to the entrance to test his shiny new rack on the first pitch prior to taking it to the USA later this year. Following a fair amount of support and encouragement as the rest of us carefully pointed out how easily it could all fall apart and sparse the instruction manual was on details, Richard decided to accept a belay as he tested it. I did not talk to Richard after this trial, but second-hand reports suggested he was not fully sold on this descender. I await his reports from the US with glee.

While the entrance pitch group trained / faffed, Steve and I got on with rigging Bitch Pitch. As it was my first trip in JH, I thought nothing of the traverse lines over a couple of mini-abysses (well, once I’d tied out the chafed sections), but Steve pointed out they are normally full of water. The summer has been exceptionally dry.

Below Leviathan, the record dry spells had another surprise for us. As we emerged from the boulder piles into the speedwell streamway we were confronted with… nothing. It was completely dry. On our last visit, the water had been so high as to make getting down the bung ladder touch-and-go. This time we marched down the empty passage – quite peculiar.

Almost immediately below the bung ladder, we started gaining height once more as we ascended block hall. First a handline, then a series of (maybe) 5 pitches with some fun SRT cumulating in leaving the rope and diving into Watt Passage – a short flat-out crawl – emerging into The Kingdom of the White River Series. This passage was truly spectacular – plenty big enough there was no need for stooping or squeezing, it’s very well decorated with brilliantly white calcite features. The standout for me was a series of pools skinning-over with crystals allowing view of a snapshot of the formation of this calcite skin in different stages of completion. Truly brilliant.

What goes up must come down, and we were soon at a series of 3 pitches (Top to bottom: Fourth Pitch – 15 m; Fever Pitch – 15 m; The Ventilator – 16 m). I’ll tell our story in a little detail here as there is some useful beta to capture for next time. 

These pitches were descended using a 45 m rope to pull through. The details of these pitches were split between my and Steve’s heads resulting in some nagging rope-length doubt. Following a check form the end of the rather physical free-hanging traverse at the head of Fever Pitch, we committed to the descent and this proved to be ample for the task. In-situ tat at the pitch heads and nice clean hangs means there is little chance of the pull-through snagging, but next time I would like the contingency of a second rope – the ledge between Fever Pitch and The Ventilator is not overly spacious and it would be a shit place for a group of four to wait out a call out and rescue.

From here on out, it was a drag through Liam’s way and Colostomy Crawl before we were able to take advantage of the low water levels and plough on up bung streamway ignoring the Short sump bypass saving us time and knees.

Up the pitches of JH, Steve and I scarpered out leaving Arentas and Russ to de-rig the cave. The full team was out into the starry night to see the Ascent of Mars a shade over 10 hours after entering the cave. No doubt, that was a proper caving trip.

(Link: https://www.peakdistrictcaving.info/home/the-caves/castleton/james-hall-s-over-engine-mine)