KING POT
Party:-F. Croll, W. Holden, S. Green,
M. Doran, S. Terry, M. Taylor & J. Newton.
Not much of a turnout for this
new, big find of the N.C.C. Perhaps it was the last of the snow, still filling
the shake holes or maybe it was the well known pugilistic Nazi-phile, who
warned Frank & I that we had “no chance”. Anyway only seven turned up &
one of these was a prob.
We had taken a couple of ladders & ropes with us as we had heard that the
ladders that had been left in were in a parlous state. It was slightly annoying
to see what determined digging can do & I hope the young lads took notice.
Although the wet crawl jammed Frank’s chest, we were soon past & into the
notorious T-shaped, S-bend. Figure that out! which I did and moving slowly, I
was soon standing in a much larger passage. A nice touch was the hammer &
chisel left on a ledge. Fat men for the use of. The others joined me with
varying degrees of trouble. It was a rough baptism for Mike Taylor but he
thrutched his way through.
The next section was of good
size with the odd formation & loose boulders. King Henry Hall was quite
inspiring & made up for the ladder which followed. This had broken &
then been joined with the C-links through a rung. Certainly made you climb
carefully. I’m afraid the crawls after this rather dampened my enthusiasm for
the hole, although the seventy was a very enjoyable climb. The final crawl to
the
No real trouble on the way out apart from Frank needing the combine effort of the party to escape from the top of the second pitch. Our trip of 9 hours was helped by the fact that it was laddered, but these are in a bad state & may even now have been removed. When the hole is done properly it will certainly be a serious undertaking.
J. H.
Newt on.