The Cave Formerly Known As Contour

Tuesday 18^th February 2014

…but now this cave is called Sludge Pit Hole.  Seriously?  Sludge Pit Hole?  This is a cave that is not getting a knitting design named after it.  I can’t imagine presenting you with the Sludge Pit Mitts. OK, it’s muddy.  (All caves are either in spate at the moment or muddy – or both).  But Sludge is such an ugly name.  And whilst this cave is not actually pretty, it’s nice.  It’s good fun.  It’s not sludgy.  Not compared to caving in Devon. It’s a short walk to the cave from our club, so we set off in the teeth of yet another Mendip howler.  It was so cold and wet that it was a real relief to get inside the cave which is, as usual, in a hollow in the ground, with a nice little path leading to some steps, and the locked, gated entrance.  A slither down for a few meters, leads to a deep ledge and at the end of this, a 25 foot drop to the cave proper.  This we rigged with a wire ladder and climbed down.  I don’t like wire ladders, but this trip was good practice for me, as it’s free-hanging and I need to control both my nerves and the swinging ladder if I am ever to conquer my nemesis, Swildon’s Hole and the hated 20 foot waterfall climb. Here we are, climbing back up, later: This is me, and here are Florence and Will: The trip was easy enough after that.  I’d never been to Sludge but the others had, and even though it’s not a huge cave, there are a few maze-like bits, so we took a survey (map, kind of) and this helped me a lot to make sense of what we were doing in terms of route-finding.  Here’s a bad picture of the ‘map’ as I call it: I also call the helmets you have to wear ‘hats’.  And I call the wriggly, curly formations you sometimes see in lovely caves such as Shatter, Nic-Nacs.  Do you remember Nic-Nacs?  I used to love them. You potter along the main way, very obvious and also ahead of you in the ladder chamber.  There is an entrance here also to a passage called Aragonite Rift, described as not obvious and to the right.  We found a not obvious hole, but it was if anything to the left, so we ignored it.  As it turns out this was Aragonite Rift, but we ended up coming back out that way, by way of a couple of fairly tight upwards squeezes – more pinch-point than squeeze to be fair – and this is the more awkward way, so we felt quite chuffed. None of the cave is that big, and parts of it, such as the Skeleton Series, are tight.  There are some fairly roomy chambers though, plus a streamway that I suspect is usually quite quiet, because even after all this rain, it was really quite gentle and small.  We went down the streamway almost to the sump.  There’s an active dig here. There is a rift called Four Pots Rift that we looked at and almost did – but the first bit looks awkward, so we decided to come back with someone who has done it.  Then there was a fun, narrow flat-out wriggle and back – here we are – poor picture quality is due to fogging of condensation: And here is Florence, same exit: On the way back up the streamway, we were looking out for the way up into Aragonite Rift, which has deposits of, um, Aragonite.  Aragonite is a crystal formation, and it differs from calcite in that because (I assume) of its composite makeup, its crystals are sort of long, square and pointy.  In  Sludge, they are not that pronounced, but they are there, and they have a sort of art-deco, 1920s New York sky-scraper style about them.  I’m pretty sure that’s how they are described in Mendip Underground. So although, despite having a survey, we were not 100% sure we were in Aragonite Rift at the start (which involved a neat, tightish thrutch upwards from the main passage and a sharp right turn), once we saw the deposits of Aragonite and also, many deposits of particles and sections of sea shells, we knew it was the right place.  Very cool:  route-finding by means of minerals. Aragonite Rift was excellent, easy and yet still interesting.  There’s another quite snug-not-tight thrutch up near the end, then a choice:  left, to Back Passage (I know, sorry), or right, where, with a wriggle and a twist, you see the ladder you left rigged at the entrance chamber and you slither out. My only problem was that for the last hour of the trip, which was 2.5 hrs, due to taking pictures which just takes forever to sort the light, I was dying for a wee.  You really cannot wee in caves.  I mean, it must happen and I guess it’s not such a big deal if there’s a raging torrent of streamway, but Sludge is quiet and fairly dry.  So that’s a no-no. It started – the idea that I needed to ‘go’ – as a whispered suggestion, a memo from bladder to brain, about 30 minutes in, and then slowly developed into an urgent need to keep moving and not listen to the tinkling of the streamway.  I was faster up the ladder than usual (bonus), and once I was safe by the entrance scramble, I started de-kitting (the kit is EPIC.  It makes knitters’ kit bags look empty) because I knew I had to go behind a hedge the moment I bounded out of the ground.  And I can tell you that, despite the howling gale and being very cold, it was the best wee I have ever had.