Still caving

Friday 22^nd June 2012

I know how much you must have been missing my caving stories, so I am here to tell you I am still caving and I now own some Kit.  And some Books.  And, in a move that appeals greatly to my inner-nerd, a caving log book.  My caving log book is sparkly and adorned with sequins and beads.  It was a Christmas present and was destined to become a future knitting design note book but I have decided that it has another purpose.  In this book, I record all my caving trips and a few notes about where we went, what we did and so on.  I am about to undertake my 11th caving trip, including the 2 trips planned for this coming week, but because I have re-visited some caves and once did 2 caves in 1 trip, the number of caves now explored is about to reach 9. Caving kit could not be more different from knitting kit.  Aside from my log book, which I think may be the only sparkly caver log book in the club, possibly in the Mendips, or even the UK, the essential items are mostly not shiny or pretty.  However, they are still very cool.  It was recently my birthday and I was very excited to number amongst my gifts a karabiner and a sling! I know! A karabiner can, for example, have a rope passed through it and then be clipped to your belt to secure you in a climb.  You (well, I certainly) also need a person to control that rope.  And rig it.  But I hope to begin to learn these additional skills as time goes by.  A sling appears to be a long loop of super-strong woven fabric, and some of the many operational uses for this bit of kit will, I am told, be revealed to me this weekend, in a cave. As a birthday treat, I was taken to a very beautiful Mendip cave this week, Charterhouse cave.  This is a cave that features many really beautiful decorations, especially in Midsummer Chamber (aptly, for our trip was on the eve of midsummer day).  Access to the cave is therefore closely controlled.  Like most it is locked, but it also operates under a leadership system, so you cannot enter without a designated leader for that cave and the maximum number in the party including the leader is 4. Your kit must be clean. Charterhouse also features a series of challenging squeezes.  We only went to the principle and most well-known areas, albeit that this fairly short trip took us about 2.5 hours, so I do not know if the rest of the system offers a similar level of challenge. Some of this time was passed, by me at least, having a little lie down whilst trapped between 2 rocks.  Interspersed with thrashing and wellie-boot loss.  But the part that we did was, in places, extremely small with spaces that ranged from really small and awkward to quite scary and on first observation, probably impossible.  They are possible, assuming you will bodily fit, even if to do so you have to wriggle, struggle and squeeze, usually lying down, often in enough water to drench you through. In fact, I have a tendency to say in a repetitive fashion:  how on earth will I get out of here?  Or:  I am now fairly sure I won’t be able to get back up this.  And:  is this a round trip?  I ask this in the hope that it will be and therefore I won’t have to re-visit an area or feature (or several) that I didn’t like.  I have always read up about the cave beforehand and sometimes – though I am starting to think this might be a mistake – looked at YouTube videos of it before I go.  So I know, really, if it will be a round trip or not.  Yet somehow I seem to have to ask.  Florence now informs me that I am no longer allowed to say:  ‘I am pretty sure I will never get back up this’ as I slither in my amazingly graceful way, down a sporting climb. Sporting.  A word often deployed by cavers and used in my current favourite book, Mendip Underground, to describe some caves or some features of the cave.  You may imagine, as I did, that sporting means quite good fun, a bit of a challenge maybe but basically rather jolly.  Here is a clue as to its real meaning – and an insight into the humour of the average caver:  aspects of this (climb/squeeze/rift etc) are tricky, even sporting.  Ah.  So, sporting is rather further up the challenge scale than tricky.  Perhaps rather as in England, if we say:  I’m not sure if I will be able to come/do that/be there, we probably mean:  there is no way I am coming/doing that/ being there, so it is in caves. These are what the terms mean to me, someone who feels destined to be forever a novice.  Awkward means unpleasant, verging on difficult.  Tricky means difficult, verging on the alarming.  Sporting means alarming verging on the:  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do that. When I run and cycle in challenging races or training, I often think and sometimes say out loud if I am sure I am alone and have the breath:  your boundaries are not where you think they are.  I have had to use this mantra so many times when caving.  So far, not aloud though I fear it is only a matter of time…The thing is, whilst I accept that I need to push my mental boundaries and I am trying to do this, and I also accept that I can improve my technique with practice, strength building and confidence – I have a feeling that my caving boundaries might be a bit closer than I’d like. Twice I have caved with absolute beginners and on both occasions, I have been awed by how good they are, from a standing start.  Once, I was also an absolute beginner but once I wasn’t.  Everyone I have ever caved with, is far better at it than I am.  Now, I have said before and it’s so true, that caving is as far from a competitive sport as you can get.  It’s the absolute embodiment of a team activity and the spirit of cavers is that of support and team-endeavour, partly because it’s a massive pain in the knickers to have to rescue a person out of a cave and I gather that the paperwork is epic afterwards.  So no-one has ever even by any hint or glance indicated that this is a problem. I just wish I felt that I was contributing something to the activity, rather than taking.  Perhaps for now I will have to accept that whilst others may bring skill, teaching, patience, ropes and ladders, I will bring my karabiner and enthusiasm sometimes bordering on the manic (for example, when ‘climbing’ a lengthy free-hanging wire ladder out of a mine shaft recently, upon reaching the fixed metal ladder that I knew represented the end of the climb, my victory yell was amazing as I brought this glad news to the others, most of whom I’d never met before, one of whom was already at the top and basically hauling the rope, and all of whom were well aware of the existence of the metal ladder which I had, in fact, not installed or discovered. Awkward).  I also bring the tendency to point at amazing things down caves and say to the person who has been good enough to take me there and will later coax me back out:  Look!  Look at THAT as if it is me that has brought them down and then discovered this amazing feature.  Finally, I bring energy gels, the legal drug of choice of any endurance runner or cyclist and now, I have to tell you, a staple of my cave kit check list.  I offer to  share, but no-one cares to try them.  But I will continue to take double the number I think I will need to consume (usually 2) in case I can one day, be of help to a fellow caver. Caving continues to be an activity I absolutely love, despite the personal frustrations and bruising it sometimes brings me.  If I repeat a cave, in some ways I enjoy it more than the first time, so far anyway.  And yet, there are so many new caves to explore too.  I think therefore there will be plenty of caves and trips that will fall somewhere between my current boundaries and the place where my boundaries might end up being, even if that place isn’t all that far.  I also think I am lucky to be visiting caves for the first time.  As when you first read an amazing book, no matter how often you may re-read it and however many new layers you may reveal, you can’t recapture the feeling of that first time.