Saturday, 19th October, 2019
Only Andy and myself for this trip. We met at Inglesport for our usual breakfasts before heading off to Kingsdale. We parked in a lay-by 2 spots on from the usual Valley Entrance spot. I'd got the kit sorted a few nights earlier so once we'd got changed we set off walking up to Aquamole Pot.
The entrance was already rigged, but the cobweb just under the grill indicated that the rope had been there for some time, (and a notice on the next Y hang told us that it was rigged for an active diving project). As I had carried the bag with the 1st pitch I started rigging off the scaffold pole and down the man-made shaft.
I was nearly at the bottom of the first pitch when I heard Andy overhead talking to some other cavers. Andy had taken over rigging for the 2nd pitch when the other cavers caught up with us. They were from YSS and they'd been given permission to use the in-situ ropes by the owner as one of the YSS members 'had paid their dues by hauling bottles [for the diving project]'. We let them overtake us as they were going to investigate & rig a new area of Aquamole.
We soon got to the 40m 3rd (last) pitch and saw our YSS friends ascending a short pitch. This was after the first bit of the main pitch but instead of doing the main drop, they'd got off before the rebelay and got on an in-situ rope.
Andy and I carried on our way to the bottom and found the sump together with a small collection of air tanks, diving belts and flippers (clearly the active diving project was still quite active!). We were soon joined by the YSS collective who suggested we go up their ropes and they would go up the main pitch on ours. There was more passages to explore, including somewhere which had a voice connection to Jingling Pot I didn't need asking twice and quickly took them up on their kind offer (ascending the main pitch wasn't something I was looking forward to!)
After ascending the YSS ropes, we explored the new-to-us section. Initially we crawled along a very muddy section, with Andy leading. He only went a few minutes before we turned around, the way on becoming very unpalatable. Upon returning to the top of the YSS rigged pitch, one of the YSS crew had ascended and pointed us in a different direction (get to the muddy part, then turn left, on your back, up a letterbox opening in the roof. An interesting 15 minutes of exploring this area included finding the bottom of another rigged pitch (our collective view was best avoid it as we couldn't see the state of the rigging at the top).
After the exploring, we ventured out collecting the rope which was in the kit bag waiting for us at the top of the last pitch.
After getting changed we went for a brew in the Marton Arms before heading home. Another good days caving