Titan and White River Series, Peak Cavern, Derbyshire
Grade 5 SRT Trip
The discovery of Titan in 1999 by leading Derbyshire cave explorers
Dave Nixon and Shaun Puckering was one of the most exciting UK cave
discoveries of recent times. Titan is 141m high making it the biggest underground shaft in the country and
was discovered by digging through a boulder choke in the
Far Sump Extension area of Peak Cavern. This boulder choke is a major
feature of the Far Sump Extension and had been known about since 1981 when
cave divers passed Peak Cavern's 380m-long Far Sump. Whilst cavers speculated
about the new passage that might be found on the other side of this
boulder choke, the length and seriousness of the dive and difficulty in
transporting equipment made proper exploration of the choke impossible.
Serious exploration of the choke would require a dry route into the Far Sump Extensions and
J.H., an abandoned
lead mine shaft in a field above Castleton, proved to be the key.
By 1993 the position of J.H. above the far reaches of the
Peak-Speedwell system had aroused the interest of exploratory cavers. An
vertical shaft was explored but since the mine closed over a century before, many of
the passages had collapsed. Progress to remove these blockages was hard and
dangerous but made nevertheless and finally the diggers broke through into
a huge cylindical shaft - Leviathan. Leviathan was a major find and
surveying showed that the bottom of the Leviathan shaft was very close to
Speedwell's Boulder Piles. In 1995 the diggers connected J.H. with the Speedwell
Streamway and part of the jigsaw was completed. With the Speedwell
connection at one side of the big J.H. shaft, attention then turned to the
passage at the other side. Surveying revealed that the diggers were close
to the Far Sump Extensions in Peak Cavern and digging commenced to gain
dry access to the Far Sump Extensions. After much hard work, the bottom of J.H. was
connected to the Far Sump Extensions and a dry route to the Far Sump
Extensions was forged. These were exciting times for the digging team with
much speculation about the wealth of exploration opportunity that the Far Sump Extensions
offered. The most obvious target for progress was a huge boulder choke
which has subsequently become known as the 'Titan Choke'. Finally, on
the 1st of January 1999 the diggers broke through the Titan Choke and
entered the bottom of a huge shaft that they named Titan. Unable to see
the top of the shaft, even with powerful lights, the team spent a number
of days bolting and pegging their way up it. After 65 metres of climbing
they arrived at a sloping ledge which has since been named The Event
Horizon. The shaft continued to soar upwards above their heads. A further
80m of climbing reached the top of the shaft and revealed a passage going
off at the top, a huge sloping gully and a stream entering high in the
wall. At this stage Titan had no connection with the surface but
exploration of the ground above showed that there were shakeholes that
must connect with Titan itself. A massive surface digging project took
place to dig an entrance shaft down into the top of Titan and in 2002 this
was completed. Today it is possible to abseil into Titan from the surface
and head off from there to explore the rest of the Peak-Speedwell system.
We rattled across the field to Hurdlow in an old Landrover -
vehicle of choice for the serious cave exploration enthusiast. The idea
was to drop down Titan, traverse a significant part of the Peak-Speedwell
system to arrive at the White River Series - one of the best decorated
pieces of cave in Derbyshire. The Titan
entrance shaft sits in a field on Hurdlow, one of the highest hills in
this part of the Peak District. There's a fence around it with
a metal gate and off to one side is a scaffold tripod with a bunch of
wooden sleepers covering a metal lid. We got changed, opened the lid, tied a rope to
the tripod and abseiled down the Titan Entrance Shaft with it's huge
fiberglass supporting rings. Soon we were into the short
passage that connects the Entrance Shaft with Titan itself. Suddenly,
arriving at the end of the passage, the floor disappears.
Looking out, there's a black hole in front with seemingly
no ceiling, walls or floor. Even a high-powered caving light struggles to
illuminate anything at all out there. Standing looking out is the closest
thing to deep space that I've ever seen and no matter how much time I
spend in Titan I don't think I'll ever cease to be shocked by the enormity
of the thing. The ropes had already been rigged so we
abseiled straight down the first eighty metre pitch to the 'Event
Horizon'. This is a sloping ledge that runs around this side of the shaft
and where a rebelay begins the next part of the descent. From here it's
sixty five metres to the floor. The floor of this immense shaft is strewn
with boulders and a slope leads up to a cone of debris where you
can sit and watch the action as others descend behind.
The route from here
climbs down through the 'Titan Choke' into the Far Sump Extension. We
passed through 'Stemple Highway' and climbed up some fixed ladders to
arrive at the bottom of J.H.'s Leviathan shaft. We kept moving across the
bottom of Leviathan and up a boulder slope on the other side to arrive at
the lidded passage that leads down through Speedwell's Boulder Piles to
emerge in the Speedwell Streamway. We splashed downstream with the water
sometimes waist-deep to arrive at The Bung. The Bung is an opening in the
side of the passage that the Speedwell Streamway rushes down. There's a
fixed metal ladder right in the water here and we climbed down the ladder
getting thoroughly soaked as we did so. From the bung it's just a short
splash downstream to emerge at the bottom of Block Hall. Block Hall is a
series of avens with fixed ropes and a technically tricky
one hundred metre prussik ends at a low crawl in the roof. Flat-out and
hands-and-knees crawling finally leads into The Kingdom section of Peak Cavern's White
River Series. From here we looked at the amazing calcite pools in the
floor of the White River. This really is one of the most beautiful (and
sensitive) pieces of cave passage in Derbyshire and we moved very
carefully through it being careful not to drop mud on any formations.
After an hour or so looking around the White River we made our way back
down Block Hall, through the Speedwell Streamway, through the bottom of
J.H. and finally through the Titan Choke to stand in the bottom of Titan
itself.
We set off up the ropes on the prussik out of
Titan. In some ways Titan is more impressive on the way out because you're
likely to spend some time resting on the rope and looking around. All
around is darkness and as I looked up all I could really see was the thin
rope connecting me to the bolts above. The prussik seems endless but
eventually we made it to the top and out into Hurdlow's cold evening air.
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