Rift Pot on the Ingleborough Allotment is a splendid vertical adventure, with two routes of descent, one being passable in fairly wet conditions. It is even better when enjoyed as part of an exchange with neighbouring Long Kin East (for which dry weather is essential).
Rift Pot was one of the first caves to benefit from the new IC anchors about five years ago.
Since then, a crack has appeared in the rock near to the anchors above the third pitch. This was brought to our attention by a caver using the Report Defective Anchor function on our website.
A few weekends ago, Gary Douthwaite and Matt Ewles headed up to Rift Pot with anchor installing kit and the CNCC’s new anchor puller. They found that the crack above the third pitch did indeed look concerning and generally the whole wall showed signs of fracturing above the anchors.
The decision was made to relocate the anchors for this pitch to a safer location. Two new anchors were installed over the pitch head in the main rift down the centre of the passage, which provided a much safer descent, positioned out of the way of the fractured wall.
One of the two original anchors was successfully removed using our new anchor puller, however, this suffered some damage during the attempt and so the final remaining original anchor awaits removal and has been temporarily decommissioned until then.
The rope lengths on the rigging topo are unchanged, although the deviation just a few metres down the third pitch may now need to be treated as a rebelay due to the new location of the anchors above (or a direct descent may be possible with care to avoid rope-rub).
Our online route description has been updated to reflect these changes.
Photo: Entrance pitch of Rift Pot (on a very wet day), courtesy of Clive Westlake.