Charterhouse Cave - Wed 21 Jun 2023

David Cooke, Lawrence Wilson, Will Puddy

All met up at the Gruffy field gateway at 19:30 in glorious, longest day sunshine, Andy, Rachel, Yvette and Chris Castle were all parked there ready to go down GB.

After a relatively short descent the cave starts getting tight in a series of rifts, squeezes and wallows although well decorated in parts, particularly the aptly named Curly Wurly Stal.

Finally the main stream passage was gained and old miner activity was noted in Splatter Chamber. A short climb up found us in the hugely impressive void of The Citadel which is somewhat reminiscent of The Gorge in GB, which is only about 30m away.

After retracing our steps we followed the steam underneath The Citadel then through a wet flat out crawl to emerge in the Grotto of the Singing Stal.

From here the boulder choke starts, a formidable barrier that apparently took 26 years to dig through (I’m not surprised!) it seemed endless. Finally bigger and beautifully decorated passage was entered with large helictites and false floors. After a couple of down climbs the start of The Narrows was reached which seemed a good point to turn around as it was 21:05.

We retraced our steps through endless squeezes and climbs with an appropriate diversion to Mid Summer Chamber before exiting the cave at 22:00 where we met the others, still in daylight.

Somewhat bruised and battered a swift pint was enjoyed at the Woodborough. A fantastic cave that I have only scratched the surface of, a big thanks to Cookie for leading us

— Lawrence Wilson 25/06/2023

Last modified: 25 Jun 2023 20:23