David Cooke, Euan Goodland, Gary Powell, Seán Tidey, Will Puddy, Yvette Mayo

Paul Stockal

The grand Sludgepit round trip! This has been the cumulation of all the clubs digging efforts over the last couple of years and plenty of individual work by Andy. The team congregated at the Wessex and set off to the cave at just after 7.30pm, with Cookie catching us up. Everyone was in full SRT kit apart from Garry who was going for the minimalist belt, sling and ascender. Yvette rigged the entrance pitch and led us down into the cave. Once Yvette, Seán, Paul and Euan were down we decided to set off into two groups. We were trying to complete the new round trip Andy has made, therefore we had to find 15 laminated numbers placed around the cave. After leaving the entrance chamber we found number 1 and set off. 1-4 was some really tight squeezy bits, that we had not visited much, if at all before (as it was not on the way to the dig). Some challenging traversing in a rift led us to the second crossroads, which went into skeleton passage / series and eventually to a simple traverse line and into the dig chamber. Passing more ChCC info signs telling other cavers the name and dates of the dig we slid down the new knotted handline going through Fusion passage to the top of Avon Pitch. The slow progress through the squeezes before the dig chamber meant Will, Cookie and Garry were not far behind. Euan led us down Avon pitch to the streamway, and we headed up to Link pitch and Yvette started making her way up followed by Euan and Paul. Seán skipped it out by heading to 13 and climbing through the roof to meet the others at the top. Will and Cookie were still behind with Garry taking his own route in places and getting lots of good photos. We all made it through the now spacious Link and soon found ourselves at the new travers, none of us had done this before. Using our cows tails we slowly made it across a really fab travers that everyone should try. Garry was below us taking photos. This led us back to the streamway via a small abseil at the end. Then we headed down to 12 & 13 where we climbed up into the ceiling, very close to the top of Link pitch. We headed away from the pitch through some very high level passages to 14 which took us out into an area with a very neat wall from a previous dig, and various passages we had to explore until we decided that they were all dead ends. Turns out 15 involved doing a 180 above our heads. After finding 15 we had no idea where to go but soon started to hear and see voices and feet that we headed towards and popped out under the entrance pitch rope having completed the SPH round trip! We climbed / ascended out the pitch ambled back to the Wessex and then to the Hunters. A really fantastic trip with almost everything, SRT, traverses, squeezes and some fun route finding. Fun had by all.

— Seán Tidey 7/09/2024