My First Time Diving P8, June 2014

So having had some instruction in the dark art of cave diving, the weekend after the training camp I decided it was time to go and dive something local. So at the Orpheus BBQ plans were hatched to go and do P8.

An amazingly strong team turned up to carry down it for me, so many I didn't have enough tacklebags to split my gear up for everyone to carry! This, however, turned out to be a blessing.

I'd only done P8 once before, about a year a go, and it was the first ever cave I got to the sump and thought "Why does it have to stop here? Why can't I carry on?"

Well now I could, so I would.

We set of down the cave and all was good, though most people had never carried dive gear before and the people with cylinders were struggling quite a bit! 

It was also decided that this was going to be one of the newer members of the club, Jack's, first attempt at rigging a cave! Here he is at the first pitch head getting supervision from Rich. He did a cracking job. 

So we carried on down the pitches and through the cave. Life was good.

I took this photo heading down the second pitch. Here life started to not be so good. As I said I'd only done P8 once before, and I took a wrong turn and started heading down a horrible system of tight, muddy tubes. 

Here's Jack in one of the larger sections.

But soon enough, we were at the sumps. After I mentioned at the CDG camp the week before that I wanted to dive P8, and at the OCC BBQ the night before, people started to tell me stories of what an appalling hard dive it was, particular thanks must go to Tony Seddon and Simon Brooks on that part, so with a lot of trepidation I geared up and set off into the sumps.   

Sump one started off as a zero vis nightmare, with line traps and silty squeezes to pass through. Thats my glove on the line, about 6 inches in front of the camera.

But soon. the vis cleared up! Almost 2 metres! It turned into quite a nice dive really. The picture directly above is a bit of floating wood that was in there and captivated me for a minute of so.

Soon enough, sump 1 was passed! All I had to do was carry on into the cave until the start of sump 4, my planned turn around point. 

I had been warned about a point in sump 3 where it often silted to the roof and it needed to be dug away to get through. In what I thought was zero vis, I arrived at the silt bank and started to dig. I soon learnt what real zero vis was, it was pitch black! I couldn't see a thing. I started to squeeze. I had a camera on my hand throughout this dive and had it running, my favourite part of the video was this squeeze.

As I squeezed a little bit of silt got stuck in the exhaust of my regulator and stuck the valve open. As I breathed in water, on the video, through the water and the regulator, you can audibly hear me say "Fuck".

I quickly started to purge the regulator by pressing the side of my head into the silt bank so I could breathe and carried on through the squeeze, I couldn't swap regulators as I couldn't get my hands to my mouth.

I soon passed the squeeze, swapped regulators and shook it to remove the silt from the exhaust. All good again. I carried on up a lovely cobble bank in great vis, as you can see above, to surface at the end of sump 4 in a huge rift.

 I walked along this looking at all the years of exploratory gear left here before turning and heading for home. 

I surfaced from the water to the team waiting for me, which was really really nice. The photo above was what I saw as my head broke the surface of the sump pool.

So we headed off out the cave, using the correct route this time, relatively uneventfully, and headed to the wanted for a well deserved pint or five.

I promptly fell asleep, stood up, outside, holding a pint. 

It was a good day. 

CDG Training Camp June 2014

So after recent misadventures down Pwll Dwfn and Dan-Yr-Ogof, I let slip I used to dive alot and I was "invited" to come and try out cave diving at the Cave Diving Groups training camp.

I was told to read the CDG manual and practice in a pool/open water to get used to my gear. This I did and felt incredibly prepared for the countless dry runs and open water practice that would follow during the weekend, if I was lucky, I may even get to stick my head in a cave on Sunday!



So I turned up the Friday night in glorious weather and was soon welcomed by friends who quickly had me set about the few barrels of ale that were on offer! Once several barrels had been depleted, at about 4am, I was asked "Where do you fancy tomorrow then?"

I had no clue, I hadn't expected to go in a cave and knew nothing about cave diving in Wales. It was decided for me, Llygad Llwchwr.



The morning (too) soon came and we had a few workshops, including line laying and following during which I remember been amazed by the simple ingenuity of the cave divers reel, as opposed to the fancy things you see in dive shops!

But now it was time to go diving! I received my directions, which consisted entirely of a finger vaguely being pointed at a map and the words "turn right at the cattle grid and stop about 100 yards further on". 

Needless to say, as I'm not from Wales, the cave was over an hour from SWCC and I'm not the best with directions when I'm driving anyway, I was very late. Arriving just after everyone else had finished diving.

Most people rushed off to get back to the beer at the hut, but I must say a big thanks to those who waited around, particularly to Rich Hudson who gave me final words of advice, checked my gear over whilst I was setting up and when one of my regulators developed a fault, lent me his own.

I must also give a big thanks to Claire Cohen, who as soon as Rich lent me his regulator, quickly informed me "It's an apeks manta. One breath from death", this calmed my nerves a lot. She also gave me final words of advice and even waited around until I'd finished diving to check I was OK. 

The dive itself was incredibly fun, you start by descending, feet first, a 6m deep vertical shaft a little bigger than diver size. At the bottom it goes horizontal through a low passage and attempted to turn around from feet first to head first here was quite interesting. I carried on through another three sumps until I came across a patch of line that was nearly broken. This being my first dive I turned around rather than try to deal with it.

I'm sorry the description isn't more descriptive, but you must remember the cave had been passed, forwards and backwards, by about 10 divers before me, I could barely see the light from my own helmet mounted torch! 

 So it was back to SWCC, where Rich Hudson (again, big thanks) quickly set about servicing both my regulators for me, using his own parts and a fair amount of his time and wouldn't even take a beer in return!



Not so quickly was the BBQ set about, until a bottle of pure O2 turned up! Unreal amounts of food appeared from nowhere, unreasonable amounts of alcohol came out of cars to supplement the two remaining barrels of ale in the hut, and we whiled away the night into the early hours of the morning.

During that time, but I can't remember when exactly, plans were made with Malcolm Stewart for me and him to go and dive in Ogof Ffynnon Ddus Dip Sump.



So, with a heavy hangover, we found ourselves stumbling through OFD with a 7L cylinder on each side and a bag on our backs, fortunately, the carry is not particularly hard, but neither of us enjoyed it!

The dive, however, was incredible, with amazing visibility and such awesome passage as you can't even imagine. I turned getting cold quite a way into the system and was treated to my first view of a diver swimming in a cave as Malcolm shot past me on his way in. Turns out the trick to diving in a wetsuit, is to swim fast!

Torrent De Mortitz April 2014

An Orpheus caving trip to Majorca started with a nice day of canyoning. The start of this was incredibly surreal as we traipsed through a beautiful vineyard in the Majorcan countryside. 

After a while of the beautiful vineyard, we cut to several hours of bush wacking before coming to the dry river bed. Walking from this point onwards was easy, except for the occasional pool of water we had to climb around. 

Reaching the water after several hours in the midday sun was bliss. It was amazing to move through this canyon. 

The sheer beauty of the place really knocked me back.

Even if some of the anchors left alot to be desired...

Every pool we came to had thousands of these little black dots that scattered the second we touched the water. Eventually we managed to catch one and they were these huge tadpoles. I honestly can't describe just how many there were though. 

Look at this pitch. LOOK IT. 

Eventually the canyon lead us right down to the sea. All we wanted to do was jump into the beautiful water. 

But instead we decided to stick to the plan, which was quite a long climb/via ferrata back over the rocks next to the canyon. 

As we climbed back towards where we'd left our dry clothes, we got to overlook the canyon where we'd been, as well as getting ourselves into some amazing positions. 

Now anyone who has climbed for several hours, in a wetsuit, in the midday Mediterranean sun shall tell you it gets hot. Really hot. Simon passed out in this pool of water whilst we were all getting changed. Oh, how we laughed. 

All changed and concious again, we started on the walk out. We tried to take a shortcut. We missed dinner. 

Pwll Dwfn March 2014

The final weekend in March 2014 was one that is already proving to be one of the most important in my caving career. 

It all started the night before in South Wales Caving Clubs long common room. I'd only been caving 8 months but was racking up some harder trips and had done a fair bit in Wales recently, just the weekend before I'd been at SWCC with members of The Cave Offenders Register, details of that trip shall not be getting published...

This trip I was down with Orpheus Caving Club, Friday night we're discussing planned trips. The trips that were decided on were trips I'd done the weekend before. So OCCs chairman decided to try and find me a bit more of an interesting trip.

There was only one offer, from a gent called Gareth Davies. He wanted a hand carrying some diving gear to Pwll Dwfn?

Pwll Dwfn is situated on the hills above Dan-Yr-Ogof showcaves. So with two compliments of dive gear we headed off up. Here's Malcolm carrying way too much gear. 

Its a vertical pothole with approximately 150m of descent. At the bottom is a dive that is being actively dug to try and discover new cave passage. It was the biggest SRT trip I'd done at the time, and I had to do it dragging dive gear. But much more impressive was the engineering that had gone into the dig at the end. 

This is the compressor on the surface. It runs an airline through the entirety of the cave to the bitter end to power a few different tools. The long piece of metal and bucket is a homemade cooler to stop the pipe blowing off the end. 

So off we went down. I wasn't too bad at SRT at this point. But I was flumoxed by the cylinder between my legs!

Just above the final pitch, I came across the bucket with a firehose attached!

"What the hell is that for Gareth?"
"It collects the water from the waterfall, and we put the hoses in front of our mask in the sump to increase visibility!"

What a genius idea!

Down at the sump, we drilled some bolts in. I can't remember why, but this was the best photo I'd taken in a cave at this time. 

The dive base is an impressive place. It's a platform made out of 8 tonnes of silt they've removed from the sump using an airlift (a massive, homemade, underwater vacuum cleaner) and held together with mesh and scaffolding.

It's also a pretty hectic place. 

Pwll Dwfn always has issues with the compressed air line for the tools. My first visit was no exception. This is the air reservoir located just above the sump.  

The goal of these dives was to drill holes in the roof of the tight section of the sump to insert explosives and make it bigger. How many divers do you know who's equipment includes a drill?

So off they went to dive, I explored some of the avens which rise nearly to the surface again just to the side of the sump pool. I actually managed to squeeze a bit further than anyone had been before. But the top of the avens is a slightly larger than body size tube situated over 100m up a rift...it's not hard to go further, just scary. 

By the time I'd returned from playing up the avens, diving had finished, all that was left to do was haul the cylinders back out the cave, and head back to SWCC.

On the walk out, Gareth asked me if I fancied carrying to the end of Dan-Yr-Ogof the next day, I also let slip I'd done a bit of diving, to which he replied "You should try cave diving, want to have a go?"

I stupidly replied yes to both...

Chere Couloir Aug 2013

After a few failed attempts at pretty hard routes, including some nasty, unplanned, open bivvis, we decided to try and hit something easy for the last day of the trip.

The approach definitely did not disappoint. With Lee heading off on his first easy ice lead 30 minutes after boarding the lift way down in Chamonix. 

This photo is actually from the third pitch, or the second actual pitch. One of the hardest on the route. Why do people always leave them to me to lead?

The entire route had tonnes of abseil stations and belays to use. It was incredible not to be searching for a belay. 

The crux pitch. A really fun pitch of 60m of vertical ice (in those conditions) I remember not placing any gear at all and just running it out on the perfect ice. One of the best pitches of my life. 

Those of you who know me know I can't resist a good belay picture. This is the last belay waiting for lee to come up.

The entire route, we were shadowed by these Belgian guys who were incredibly nice and also seemed to be very good climbers. We shared a few belays and chatted away in Franglish. It was a very nice feeling to set a pace experienced climbers couldn't over take us on. 

We were back at the lift for noon. Sipping beers by half past. Not a bad end to a trip,