A trip to see ‘all of Bakers’
Group: Will, Charlie, Mike and I.
Duration: About 2 and a half hours I think.
Our plan was to go around all of Baker’s Pit, including Crystal Corridor and the end of the streamway which I hadn’t seen before. We also planned to do the Plymouth Climb and maybe have a look at the extentions if everyone made it up the climb. Charlie was also determined to show that he was KEEN. You may remember Charlie as one half of the Cavers Who Don’t Like Caving from this entry. He took exception to my suggestion that he wasn’t always keen or enthusiastic and has been desperately trying to prove me wrong!
We went in the usual route, past the cave pearls and went down Crystal Corridor which I think should be renamed “exceptionally average corridor”. No crystals at all – very disappointing! Me, Mike and Charlie did the Cat Crawl which was fun – the climb down was interesting! It’s a climb up into a small tube that bends around to the left. Eventually, you pop out basically where you were before but instead of being up a nice simple climb, you’re 7ft up in the air, looking out of a slippery hole in the ceiling with no useful things to climb down on. Big Mike stood on Will and Charlie to get down, I had the privilege of being lifted down (benefits of caving with your boyfriend!), while Charlie did some kind of slow motion pirouette to the opposite wall and ended up kind of lying across the drop before collapsing onto Will and Mike. Very graceful.
We followed this up with a trip to the Green Lake, which was well received, and then went off to Judge where we looked at the Plymouth Climb. I hadn’t been up in months but made it with only a small amount of cursing. Our trip to Judge did involve going down the Rock Of Terror (possibly not its real name), which is a largish overhanging rock that no one else seems to find terrifying. Just me then.
Finally, we went past the Bridge of Death (again, possibly not the official name) and climbed up into what Will claimed was the way to the alternate, disused entrance. It was definitely getting colder and breezier as we got the sign about the hibernating bats but eventually Mike and Charlie got keened out and went back to wait so we headed out.
Mike lead the way out (with a few…clues) the usual way up Dutch Oven and out! A very good trip even if we didn’t do *quite* all of Bakers.
Oh, one final note. The next person of a male persuasion who repeatedly tells me to ‘man up’ in a cave for absolutely no reason, I am going to kick in the balls and tell to ‘woman up’ when they complain 🙂
Flos Caves 