We are delighted to report on some excellent work by conservation volunteers to remove disused digging equipment from one of our region’s most popular caves.
Notts II (entered via Committee Pot/Iron Kiln) is a feat of caver engineering, allowing cavers to explore the wonders of the Notts II region of the Three Counties System without diving, or even ropework. Discovered from below, a series of dug shafts now allows free-climbable access to the system from the surface.
Exploration is far from complete, and just beyond the bottom of the engineered shafts, before you reach the main streamway, you pass through Mincemeat Aven. Here, most cavers have become used to passing a large pile of digging equipment, including an elaborate complex of pipes, on route to the main streamway.
The cleanup of this disused digging equipment has been planned for four years, but last month, a small team including Philip Withnall, Todd Rye and Ian Walker took on the task...
Having taken several friends into Notts II in recent weeks to give them an introduction to caving, I found myself explaining the fossils in the passage wall, the history of the calcite, the prospect of bolt climbing up the aven, and – when we got to the obvious pile of digging gear in Mincemeat Aven – something about how people dig in caves to find more caves. I never managed to explain to my friends why this particular pile of hose and pipe at the bottom of the aven had been there for as long as I’d been visiting.
I made a few enquiries on the UKCaving forum and was put in touch with Tony Brown, who explained the history of digging the Mincemeat sump (the scaffolded passage that goes off here). They’d used the gear to drain the sump, and that although this is still a very good dig site with excellent prospects, the pumping equipment was no longer required for future work. He agreed that it was time to remove it, and that Tony’s club, the Northern Boggarts, had planned to do so, but various things had derailed their plans.
I thought it would be easy enough to remove the equipment in an evening. Conveniently, several of us were meeting up at Bull Pot Farm for the weekend, so I asked a few friends, and we went for a few hours on the Friday evening to haul the gear out.
Helpfully, much of it was bundled up with old rope already, so was ready to haul. We set up a few pulley systems and slowly raised the gear from Mincemeat Aven in five stages to the bottom of the scaffolded shafts, then in two parallel hauls to the top. This included three climbs up the shafts with a coil of drainpipe hitched to our harnesses. Thankfully it didn’t get caught on the scaffolding as much as we feared!
After four hours we’d got all the equipment out and to the fell gate, grabbed some mince pies and enjoyed a rare dry night on Leck Fell, before heading to Bull Pot Farm for the weekend.
Andrew Hinde, CNCC Chair, headed up onto Leck Fell the following day and picked up the waste. This is now happily on its way for reuse, disposal or recycling.
Report, and photo of the removed materials, by Philip Withnall.
Our thanks to the team for this excellent work.