Winnats Head Cave, Derbyshire
Grade 5 Cave
Winnats Head Cave has a reputation for ultra-violence and the famous
mobile boulder chokes are the stuff of legend. The Eldon Pothole
Club have a long association with the cave and Eldon exploration activity
continues. Col and I fancied a Derbyshire tourist trip and since he's just
returned from a big SRT-fest in Spain, wanted a change from carrying loads
of rope. Winnats Head was perfect!
The entrance to the cave is a hole amongst boulders at the bottom of a
small quarried outcrop. We slid in forwards to a soil-floored
passage which leads downhill becoming gradually tighter as it descends. In
1976 this dig was pushed to a small chamber. From the chamber we descended
a hole in the floor to arrive in the large Main Chamber. This must have
been an incredible place to find. The floor of the chamber is one huge
boulder choke and the way on is through it. The route through is fairly
well-worn but you need to take lots of care in here. Once through the choke, a large passage (Cornwall Avenue) took us down to
the huge Fox Chamber. Again, the floor is a jumble of boulders and the way
on is straight down. A climb down a tight slot leads to a small chamber with
a very small hole in the floor. This was the site of the 1988 Eldon dig to
a solid-walled chamber with steeply sloping roof and floor. At the end of
the chamber is a sump which has been dived to 12m. The way on for us was round to
the left where the water coming through the boulder choke flows into a
narrow and low passage known as 'The Sewer'. The last few feet of this
passage is exactly body-sized and there's not much room for manoevre. Once
out of that a short section of rift passage leads to the bottom of an aven
where the cave changes direction and starts going up on fixed ropes.
The last time I was here was 12 months ago. Whilst putting on our SRT
kits at the bottom of the aven I found a couple of my maillons just
sitting on the floor. I suppose that's an indication of the amount of
traffic that this cave gets. With SRT kits on we prussiked up the first
section of rope and onto a rock bridge. This leads to a low piece of
passage and finally into the bottom of another aven. Water falls out of
the roof of this aven and on down a pitch. There's a fixed rope hanging
down out of the roof of this aven and we prussiked carefully up it. The
fixed equipment isn't too old but it's history is pretty vague and none of
it was installed or maintained by DCA. In Winnats Head you takes your
chances!
A number of these fixed ropes take you up towards the top of the cave
towards 'Wigwam Aven' where you can't go up any more. We had a brief poke
around in here to see if we could miraculously break through underneath
the cattle grid at the top of Winnats Pass but we didn't make any
progress.
The return journey was uneventful and we exited the cave at around 2pm
after a great trip. Winnats Head is a nice trip for experienced cavers who
are used to making careful progress through boulder chokes. You've got to
be prepared to tread lightly and the route-finding isn't always
straight-forward. There are some pretty tight slots to post yourself
through so try to go streamlined. Rescue from anywhere in Winnats Head
would be extremely difficult so if you do go down there don't have an
accident!
|
