As I gazed into the water and froth which between them filled the whole of the entrance bedding, save for the furrow gouged by Howard's head, I began to wonder if he might have been pulling my leg. "Ends at a bedding. Bit tight, but it soon opens out beyond. It'll make a classic through trip." "Yes", I mused as I spluttered through the foam, "classic!".
On the slopes of Ingleborough a number of streams cascade down the gritstone capping before plunging down the great chasms of Yorkshire Gaping Gill, Alum Pot. Meregill Hole, Juniper Gulf. Other streams make a less precipitous descent at such places as Sunset Hole and Long Kin East, while one not insubstantial flow sinks inauspiciously into the mud below a small cliff in the sinkhole known as P5. From this point, the course of the streamway had remained unknown for centuries.
The first underground sighting of the P5 waters was almost certainly attributable to a certain R.D.Leakey and friends (1) during their exploration of the lower reaches of Grange Rigg Pot. This sighting was on the occasion of the discovery of what became known as the P5 Inlet, where Leakey and M.G. Riley were later halted in the ante-chamber (2) below Pinnacle Hall.
Little is known to us of activity over the next decade, but in 1957 the Bradford Pothole Club explored P5 to its original terminus. In 1962, Christmas Pot was connected to Grange Rigg by the BPC and this facilitated easier access and a more thorough examination of the P5 Inlet. The waterfall which had stopped Leakey and Riley was climbed by Pete Livesey, who was rewarded with the discovery of the towering Pinnacle Hall.
The quest for the source of the water crashing down this beautiful shaft inspired Livesey to some very bold climbing. The attainment of the passage above was a laudable effort, but unfortunately, the fine stream passage led only to a fork and two chokes of gritstone boulders. This led Livesey to assume that the connection to P5 must exist through the smaller left-hand inlet above Pinnacle Hall. It is now known that the gritstone chokes lie directly beneath the P5 shakehole. Excavation here would open up a superb exchange trip, but examination from above and below indicates that the chokes account for the whole of the 15m vertical 'gap'. Such a digging project is beyond our capabilities (and inclination), but it would be a worthwhile exercise if there were any takers!
The discovery of the chokes effectively heralded the final contribution of the BPC, and the area was probably neglected for much of the next decade until 1972, when Dave Checkley, John Gardner and company addressed themselves to the problem of finding the Clapham Bottoms Master Cave (3). Their work resulted in the second scaling of Pinnacle Hall and the original discovery of 'Carlisle Passage', subsequently rediscovered by White (4), Griffiths (5), Hartley (6), Ibberson/Iles/Jones (7) and Lunt (8)! However, the Clapham Bottoms Master Cave remained as mythical as ever.
By 1978, D.C. had learned the lessons of King, Crescent etc., and determined not to let another of his old digs fall to someone else set about unlocking the door to Clapham Bottoms with renewed interest. Ably assisted by Jones, Boothroyd and Augus Wood, he set about a dig in the terminal boulder chamber in P5. Excavations revealed the tantalising bedding plane continuation, but the loss of the survey notes by someone who shall remain nameless (because Colin gets annoyed if we mention it), proved to be the final straw for waning enthusiasm.
To get into the bedding plane necessitated a hand stand which left you lying flat out with your chest and back touching the top and bottom of the bedding plane, with the water running in at your ankles and out through your sleeves. This was the obstacle to further exploration for several years during which time various methods were used to enlarge the bedding plane, until it finally became obvious that only chemical persuasion would work. We borrowed several drills and broke all, but eventually Dave Checkley designed a hand drill which nobody seemed able to break. Also, I borrowed a Black and Decker cordless power drill and using the two of them we started systematically drilling shot holes and enlarging the first section of the bedding plane.
A day dawned with Paul and Colin going down first and Dave and I going later to have a session and "one last bang". By the time I got to P5, Dave was struggling with an awful hangover and when we reached the bottom we found Colin had pushed through the continuation squeeze without any clothes on. The rest is history and the Cave Rescue Organisation had its 50th annual dinner somewhat highlighted in the press.
Not many clubs can Claim to have had photographs and surveys of their digs in the Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times magazines, and Colin even received 'fan mail' from adoring females who, having seen his naked body scratched and clawed, wondered what other perversions he was into.
Banging continued and shortly after Colin returned from China, a Tuesday evening solo trip through the bedding plane revealed 100 feet of some of the nastiest passage in Yorkshire - flat out with a flow of water and several acute, tight bends to the head of a 20 foot pitch. Unfortunately, he was unable to descend the pitch and further banging was necessary.
A cold February morning with six inches of snow in Clapham Bottoms saw Dave Checkley and myself struggling with the glow of the sun off the snow affecting our somewhat hung-over eyes. A party the previous night had meant a late start. It could have been any one of countless weekends with myself, Dave and the others wandering up to the entrance. We got down, blew the top off the pitch and Dave and I were fortunate enough to represent the first group of workers to stand up in the new extension.
The small chamber we dropped onto was at first disappointing, until we noticed the small crawl outlet which we had to dig in to. This led immediately to a short climb, then after a bit of decent passage, to a 30 foot pitch. Retrieving the ladder from the previous pitch, Dave and I and immediately found Colin's Petzl suit which had been washed down by the intervening floods. Here at last we had walking passage and we ran down it whooping and singing and reminding each other it was a bit like Spain. This was our first discovery in years in Britain and one to be savoured. The rift eventually led to a couple more short free climbs and a ramp of cobbles with some very loose boulders on it. Not far down this ramp it unfortunately closed down to a small cobbled up sump. On the way back we śtried to climb up into a high level passage but decided to leave such things for the next day.
Exiting tired and jubilant, we had at last managed to push a dig to conclusion rather than leave it for someone else to find the way on.
The next day several others in their turn savoured the delights of virgin exploration. Paul managed to climb to the high level passage and 'Life Boulevard' was soon gained through some pretty gour pools. The whole of the high level passage became quite extensive with tales of avens leading everywhere, crawls to push and sumps to dive. The next couple of months saw a frenzy of LUSS activity as the student group became involved in the exploration. There was a focus for activity which proved to be a great boost to the student club and one which was badly needed after several years of rescue history and very little else in Britain. Three notable explorations after the first weekend saw a couple of avens climbed by Colin, one rising up for over 100 feet to a gritstone boulder choke which is certainly worth radio-locating. The second was a small misfit stream mainly discovered by Simon which started with an incredibly tight pitch leading down into a sumpy passage which led from duck to duck, until it was finally given up. The way on is still open for anybody who has gills. The third was the sump which Colin dived after quite an arduous carry (see below).
There are still several possible continuation points in P5. One of the most promising will be the slot above the original sump at the end of the downstream ramp discovered by Dave and Howard, or even the digging out or blasting the sump itself. However, all exploration in P5 is unpleasant due not only to the arduous nature of getting beyond CRO crawl but also due to the flood liability of the entire system. In fact one LUSS exploration team got caught by a small increase of water and suffered a few pensive moments there. It is not a place for the faint-hearted.
Credit must go to the student members of LUSS for joining in the exploration and providing a lot of manpower for the aven climbing, sump diving, surveying and photography, which was subsequently carried out.
As luck would have it, P5 not being content with hosting some of the most inhospitable passage under Ingleborough has also a small (yet divable), inlet sump. The sump in question being that at the upstream end of Shrimp Passage.
Colin Boothroyd dived on a base-fed line for almost 50m into the sump. The bedding nature of Shrimp Passage continued into the sump with a series of shallow dog legs with three small airbells developed along cross rifts. The dive was stopped as the diver was concerned about the safety of a long base-fed line. (Since when has this bothered you, Grain?)
A return dive was made two weeks later with a line reel. A further 20m of line was laid past two more airbells to a point where the bedding became too low for comfort. A high pressure leak caused considerable anxiety and consequently the makeshift line reel was abandoned.
As the sump appeared to be heading directly towards the location of the downstream sumps in Grange Rigg Pbt, the latter two sumps were investigated with one mini bottle. The slot that takes the main flow in normal conditions was too constricted to be entered with a bottle and a double wetsuit. However, the adjacent side sump (previously dived by Chris Baxter (9)) dropped 2m into a heavily silted bedding. Before the silt was disturbed, the view of the tight bedding looked very similar to that at the end of the P5 sump. Although a connection between the two sumps is unlikely to be made, the two do appear to be one and the same and now await the confirmation of the dye test.
Refreences: