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Caving - getting hooked
"Why exactly do you do it?"
A good question. And one that I’ve often been asked (especially in job interviews, if the interviewer has bothered to read my CV). Any answer I attempt to give is inevitably long, rambling, multi-faceted, and probably still not the whole truth. What I can tell you, however, is how I got hooked.
I’d been caving a couple of times on Mendip, down easy things, and quite enjoyed it. Then when I went to Uni up North (Leeds) I decided to give it another go (Leeds being near the Yorkshire Dales, one of the main UK caving areas).
The first week we went down a very easy stream cave. It was OK, but no great shakes. I decided to give it one more chance, so went along the next week.
Six of us novices got taken down a squalid little Grade 3 (UK caves grade 1-5, where 1 is easy and 5 is severe) called Coppice Cave. Our leader was a guy known (for historical reasons which it was probably good that we didn’t know at the time) as Ud, and he was trying to go down every cave in the Yorkshire guidebooks.
We set off down this horrid little hole with Ud in the lead, and two other experienced cavers bringing up the rear with the ladders. The experienced guys behind stopped for a fag, and we went on ahead. When the laggards reached the middle entrance of the cave (Exhumation Hole) they looked at the next section of cave, decided it was too hard for novices and that we must have gone out, and left the cave.
Of course we hadn’t gone out, we’d carried on. Eventually we found ourselves at the top of a 60 foot pitch with no ladders, only two lengths of lifeline and one set of SRT (Single Rope Technique - abseiling) gear. Ud proceeded to teach us one-by-one how to abseil, and sent us off down the pitch. The rope didn’t reach the bottom. We ended up huddled on a ledge about 10 feet from the bottom, only to see Ud, last down, abseil past us to the floor. What he knew and we didn’t (being novices) is that lifeline stretches.
When we got down we went on to the bottom entrance of the cave. This comes out in Ling Gill (a nature reserve that we shouldn’t have been in). We couldn’t find a way up out of the gill, and had to climb several waterfalls before we could get out.
As we made our way down the track towards the minibus we met a group of very worried cavers from our club coming to find us, to see if we needed rescuing (because we had been a very long time). When they heard what we’d done, one of them said to another “I didn’t think they’d be able to do that!”.
Next morning I had a 9 o’clock lecture, which I failed to make because my body ached so much that getting out of bed was too unpleasant. And the following day I had a doctor’s appointment - why the doctor never said anything, I don’t know, because in my underwear I looked like a human dalmatian. I bruise easily. And I had bruises in places where it would be hard to imagine a kosher reason for being bruised.
But. When our would-be rescuer said “I didn’t think they’d be able to do that!”, my first reaction was one of fierce exultation (no other words for that feeling): “But we did!”. And that was it. Hooked. Totally. A fallen woman from that moment onwards.
An interesting footnote here is that, of the six novices on that trip, 5 of us went on to become very keen cavers (it often seems that people who become keen have some slight epic as an early experience of the sport). And I’m still in touch with these people, they’re still the sort of friends where I feel I could turn up on their doorstep at 2 a.m. and they would take me in, no questions asked, and look after me. As I would them. All those shared experiences count for something.
A good question. And one that I’ve often been asked (especially in job interviews, if the interviewer has bothered to read my CV). Any answer I attempt to give is inevitably long, rambling, multi-faceted, and probably still not the whole truth. What I can tell you, however, is how I got hooked.
I’d been caving a couple of times on Mendip, down easy things, and quite enjoyed it. Then when I went to Uni up North (Leeds) I decided to give it another go (Leeds being near the Yorkshire Dales, one of the main UK caving areas).
The first week we went down a very easy stream cave. It was OK, but no great shakes. I decided to give it one more chance, so went along the next week.
Six of us novices got taken down a squalid little Grade 3 (UK caves grade 1-5, where 1 is easy and 5 is severe) called Coppice Cave. Our leader was a guy known (for historical reasons which it was probably good that we didn’t know at the time) as Ud, and he was trying to go down every cave in the Yorkshire guidebooks.
We set off down this horrid little hole with Ud in the lead, and two other experienced cavers bringing up the rear with the ladders. The experienced guys behind stopped for a fag, and we went on ahead. When the laggards reached the middle entrance of the cave (Exhumation Hole) they looked at the next section of cave, decided it was too hard for novices and that we must have gone out, and left the cave.
Of course we hadn’t gone out, we’d carried on. Eventually we found ourselves at the top of a 60 foot pitch with no ladders, only two lengths of lifeline and one set of SRT (Single Rope Technique - abseiling) gear. Ud proceeded to teach us one-by-one how to abseil, and sent us off down the pitch. The rope didn’t reach the bottom. We ended up huddled on a ledge about 10 feet from the bottom, only to see Ud, last down, abseil past us to the floor. What he knew and we didn’t (being novices) is that lifeline stretches.
When we got down we went on to the bottom entrance of the cave. This comes out in Ling Gill (a nature reserve that we shouldn’t have been in). We couldn’t find a way up out of the gill, and had to climb several waterfalls before we could get out.
As we made our way down the track towards the minibus we met a group of very worried cavers from our club coming to find us, to see if we needed rescuing (because we had been a very long time). When they heard what we’d done, one of them said to another “I didn’t think they’d be able to do that!”.
Next morning I had a 9 o’clock lecture, which I failed to make because my body ached so much that getting out of bed was too unpleasant. And the following day I had a doctor’s appointment - why the doctor never said anything, I don’t know, because in my underwear I looked like a human dalmatian. I bruise easily. And I had bruises in places where it would be hard to imagine a kosher reason for being bruised.
But. When our would-be rescuer said “I didn’t think they’d be able to do that!”, my first reaction was one of fierce exultation (no other words for that feeling): “But we did!”. And that was it. Hooked. Totally. A fallen woman from that moment onwards.
An interesting footnote here is that, of the six novices on that trip, 5 of us went on to become very keen cavers (it often seems that people who become keen have some slight epic as an early experience of the sport). And I’m still in touch with these people, they’re still the sort of friends where I feel I could turn up on their doorstep at 2 a.m. and they would take me in, no questions asked, and look after me. As I would them. All those shared experiences count for something.