You either love Bagshawe or you hate it. Ok, maybe love is a strong word, you tolerate it. That said, it was Just Josh and I this evening on what would be Josh’s day of reckoning. We met at 6pm and opted for changing in the Coe rather than the pissing down rain outside! I showed Josh the Eldon’s 'base' as it were, him now being a fully-fledged member and then proceeded to kit up and march on down the steps. I gave him the whole spiel on Bagshawe's history and it’s discovery, showing him the entrance to Mulespinner and pointing out such features as Calypso’s Cave, Agony Crawl, the Dungeon etc. before arriving at the first gate. Here’s where it starts to get complex and the story telling becomes more illustrative (mainly due to its era of discovery and EPC’s involvement). We proceeded past the first gate as our plan for this trip was an act of in-situ rope scaling.
We headed up the second gate (The Snake’s Pyjama’s) admiring the pretties along the way. Once at Full Moon Chamber I gave Josh a quick rest bite (Bagsahwe comes with it’s own type of fitness) and once recovered we made for a quick glance at the connection to the Aven Series from a far, telling the story of Return of the Cosmic Juice Extractor II and Moose’s Revenge. We now headed along Moose’s admiring what we could at Pearl Harbour and thus the need for conservation and caver due diligence. Now I could really talk his arm off as we were approaching my part of the story and the dry connection to the Hollywood Bowl Series. We hesitantly made our way over Finn’s Pot and started the crawl of the French Connection. It’s mad to think how much effort went into digging this connection and the fond memories which spanned over 18 months of my early caving career. Still, sometimes it gives me the willies! The amount of sessions we had to flea from the dig rapidly due to stale air (normally when Jim forgot to pump air as he was chatting too much…) when you’re crawling head first down the tube, with all the blood rushing to your head, something clicks in the brain that makes me panic. Safe to say I raced through this section and left Josh struggling for breath (not due to bad air) and proceeded to fight my way up into the chamber known as A Wave of Apathy.
We took another breather here, again telling Josh how we’d seriously lucked out with it’s position (we were convinced we'd end up in Arverscough's Beds - alas). We both climbed through the scaffolded boulder choke into Madame Guillotine and made our way to the base of the pitch. We came prepared with harnesses and cow’s tails and I showed Josh the ropes or lack there of and made our way up the staples. At the top we took another breather, Josh now feeling the effects from the pace, now it was time for my evil plan to hatch. I had an ulterior motive for coming here, having climbed this pitch many times since the completion of the bypass (15+ years ago) I've always looked up and wondered where the dangling ropes head off to? At the top of the pitch lays a coiled 50m dynamic red rope of various vintage which I guess probably came in during the Hollywood Bowl's original exploration (circa early 90's). Heck - even the belay was a climbing nut which is still chocked in the crack from where the static rope leads off! The aven stretches up out of sight from the top of the pitch, with only a rope dangling down leaving multiple questions around it's belay high above. As most caver's will be aware, usually in-situ ropes up avens, especially ones which don't see much use tend to have rather crusty bolts, bolts you wouldn't want to hang your trousers from. I always thought it'd need a drill to re-check these leads as a fall on the rope wasn't worth the risk, but now with the staples in place I managed to de-kit Josh to a point where I could create a solid belay from one of the top staples (hoping not to pull out - right Joe?) which gave me just enough protection to traverse to a gulley on the SW side of Madame Guillotine.
From here, Josh was enrolled to ensure the belay remained decent or alternatively watch me take a 10m whipper on static rope! Once safe in the gulley I proceeded to climb up using a back and foot technique, choosing not to look to my left and the gaping abyss which was gaining depth with every foot scaled. The rock was pleasantly solid as everything had calcified with the amount of water which pisses down from high above. At about 8m I eventually met the belay which turned out to be a solid thread, giving me a little more confidence. Here's where it got spicy... From here I had to unclip to get my head right into the aven proper as it all started to tighten up. A fall from here would be catastrophic and for sure would take hours and hours just for Josh to exit the cave, let alone call a rescue. Luckily 3m above the aven reached a solid roof with no way on. I down climbed back to the belay and clipped back in. I traversed out into the void to take a solid look at a parallel aven next to the one I had just scaled, also blind and around a similar height but bigger in diameter. I hesitantly started the down climb, trying to remember all the foot holds and hand placements but in reverse. At this point Josh had left his post to enjoy the circus show happening above and was lying down at the pitch head where he could just about glance up to see me shitting me kegs. Grateful to be back in the base of the gulley, there was one last job... one last lead in the MG upper vicinity, a heavily calcited tube on the opposite side. I started to traverse around, with my dumbfounded confidence from the 30yr old rope belayed to a staple which could possibly pop out at any moment. However, it dawned on us both that I'd never get into the tube clipped to the rope. Thinking fast, mid climb, I managed to unclip from the rope and remove my cowstails from my harness (which were currently still clipped to the rope), jam in one of the crabs behind a calcited rock whilst dynoing into the the upwards trending calcited tube to mediocre safety. It was here where Josh began to think this all seemed rather stupid! But here, stupid worked. I was in the tube (just) and my rope was within reach (just). I crawled up the tube for 5m to a further aven 2m high, choked with a typical Baggers flat roof - job complete!
Once back to safety we headed back down the staples and reversed our steps, taking in the Hippodrome en route, surfacing around 9:45pm. I'll leave it with Josh to tell the story of how I made it back to the staples alive.
