Location:
Entrance:
Description:
The first part of the Cheese Cave is a low walking passage opening out into a
cheese room, with the remains of the cheese shelving still standing.
In the cheese room a drip from the roof with a
can under it provides a supply of clean water for drinking and filling carbides.
The muddy passage on drops down and doubles back on itself, entering the Foetal
Ball Room, a tiny chamber at the start of the Constriction of Doom. The
constriction itself no longer holds any terrors, as it was severely bashed
by last years expedition, but was originally impassable to larger cavers.
It opens out into the Room of Doom, a small chamber with a roof of unstable
rubble, where cavers must wait for access to the Corkscrew.
The Corkscrew is a contorted crawl, with its vertical entrance in the floor of the Room of Doom. Just below the entrance is a shelf known as the Seat, where someone must sit in order to pass tackle bags through the most constricted part of the Corkscrew. The crawl emerges in a small chamber at the top of the first pitch, where SRT gear was donned. The pitch is descended by treating the section to the first pitch as a traverse, then abseiling down a domed structure to the top of the second pitch. In the face of the first pitch is a tight slot, which leads directly onto a climb down into the Drinks Cabinet (I seem to remember you telling me that this was not the name), a chamber with clean running water suitable for drinking.
The second pitch drops, via a deviation, to the top of aclimb down to the right of a calcited butress, with a feasible but more difficult climb to the left. It is only on reaching the bottom of this chamber and looking back that its true beauty is appreciated - it is easily the most attractive part of the cave, with extensive calcite decoration, largely in the form of flowstone. A climb down a short passage from here leads to the top of the third, and largest, pitch.
The big pitch, as it is inevitably referred to, is thirty three metres (108ft) long, and after a rebelay and two deviations on the top twenty feet is a free hang. Again, the full grandeur of the chamber is not appreciated until you reach the bottom. It is a huge aven, which continues for a considerable distance above the pitch head, and opens out at the top. As access to the upper regions of the aven has never been gained, and it is beyond the forty feet range of a zoom, the full extent of the aven remains unknown. In addition to this, there is a large unexplored passage entering the aven about forty feet above a large mud ledge, which must be gained by climbing a short distance from the floor of the aven, avoiding some attractive pools. From this ledge, access is gained to the short fourth pitch (the water flows under the ledge, which is in fact the remains of a false floor).
The fourth pitch has been nominated the name Bastard Rub Pitch, for reasons which became immiediately apparent on descending it. Despite some remarkably contorted rigging, involving two deviations, the second best treated as a rebelay while standing on the large ledge halfway down, there are several significant rubs which could not be illiminated. At the bottom there are two ways on. In the upstream direction, a dead end is reached in a fairly well decorated chamber, but the other direction leads to another short pitch into the Waiting Room. The descent is made above a shallow circular pool, but is possible to pedulum out onto the higher false floor of the chamber. Though the pool and walls around the pitch are of clean and attractively coloured rock, the rest of the Waiting Room is characterised by mud formations.
It is here that bashing teams awaited their turns at assaulting the terminal constriction, access to which is gained by climbing down to a crawl at the far end of the chamber. The crawl, noted for its ability to wreck oversuits, emerges into another, almost equally tight, fossil streamway. It is here that the strong draught, noticeable throughout the crawl, begins to affect carbide flames, and at the constriction itself, about three metres downstream, they roar continuously. The constriction, keyhole shaped, is of solid rock, and its location in a narrow section of the streamway made it awkward to bash. Beyond it, a small chamber could be seen, with a narrow slot in the floor, from which the draught appeared to emmanate. It was made even more frustrating by the loud boom caused by pieces of rock dropping down the slot.
