Club Meets
1932.—After the February Meet at Chapel-le-Dale the next was at Easter, at Strands near the foot of Wastwater. The place was found to be quite suitable and the weather was not quite so indifferent as in North Wales.
May was a wet month and Whitsuntide very early. 15th May. We were extremely fortunate in suffering no interruption at Gaping Ghyll, though there was forty-eight hours rain in the district finishing on Friday morning. The ground was never dry, and after the severe storm before dinner on Sunday and again all night, the working area on Monday was trampled into horrible mud. The nights were singularly warm and still.
The mysterious expedition of the Stockton group the previous week-end was explained, when Fred Booth, the first down, was found to be returning, but was recognised as Sale. What Booth fancied was a phosphorescent corpse had turned out to be a light in a tent occupied by Sale and Crowe, who had come in with a supporting party by the Flood Entrance and had been waiting since 8 a.m.
Some Wayfarers were in camp with us and one party went to the end of the Flood Pot Branch, making also the second visit to Sa1e’s passage. Booth, Armstrong, Yates and Marshall put in a night-shift trying in vain to dig out Booth’s new passage in the first aven beyond the Floot Pot, and were raised in the early hours by C.E.Burrow and Hilton.
A better sketch of the topography of Stream Chamber was made; Nelstrop and Watts resurveyed the West Chamber ; two separate surveys were carried into the South Passage to the Pool Chamber, the results showing that what stands in the plan must be a sketch, 28 years old! Parsons’ route into Mud Pot was rediscovered.
The beck ran high on Monday, and operations were limited to recovering the Flood Pot ladders, and to a journey along the East Passage by the President’s party. The gear was left in position for descents the following week-end by the Rucksack Club, and I am told that the Rucksackers displayed remarkable efficiency in taking it all down.
The unusual expedition to Flarnborough (Thornwick Hotel), 4th-5th June had quite sunny weather with a decidedly cool wind. The main body spent Sunday with Sam Leng; ten men were lowered down Bempton Cliff and attempted to gather seabirds’ eggs. The work of Leng’s gang was a treat for well-drilled pot-holers to watch. Contrary to the usual story the method is the sound one of hand line and body line, a method once often used in pot-holes, but found frequently unsuitable.
Two men studied the coast line from High Stack, south of the Lighthouse, to far along Speeton Cliffs. North of the Lighthouse there appear to be no possible descents, except the three bays, until a point is reached approaching Speeton Top. The only caves which could be reached without a boat were Common Hole (Sel’icks Bay); two caves east of North Landing and one to the west. Hundreds of dying sea-birds littered the coast, giving the lie to interested statements that oil discharge is harmless to-day.
The Meet with the Derbyshire Pennine Club at Braida Garth, Kingsdale, 9-10th July, had as its aim a descent of Rowten Pot. It was found to be too wet on Saturday night, and so fifteen men on Sunday went down Marble Steps as far as the long straight passage.
I have no news of the August camp at Heathwaite Farm, Coniston, but a dozen men gathered at Kirkby Stephen, 10-11th September. Davidson, Hilton, Bristol and H. Booth went to High Cup Nick and against a terrific wind on to Crossfell. Five others also climbed Crossfell, of whom H. Buckley went on south until he reached High Force, after the waiting car had departed. He returned over Mickle Fell, next day.
To Buckden, 22nd to 23rd October, thirty men came up on a wonderfully clear afternoon through gorgeously coloured woodlands. A new cave was noticed, and in wretched weather on Sunday ten or eleven men swept the Bishopdale limestone platform for more until all hope ceased, finding four. A crowd went over to see High Waldendale and many men did Buckden Pike.
1933.—Owing to frosty nights and a reluctant thaw a small snowfall lay all down the east of England for a fortnight, in the last days of which, 28-29th January, hopeful ski-ers attended the Hill Inn Meet with their implements, to no purpose. There was no doubt about the bitterness of the south-east wind, and the President’s party enjoyed some hours of skating on Greensett Tarn. Some forty men sat down to dinner, and were livened up afterwards by a treasure hunt, and guyed in the performances of the ” Stockton Players.”
In the lovely weather of February, the idea of ski-ing up Teesdale passed into a joke. However there was a real fall of snow in Leeds on the 19th, but during the next few days one read with amazement of daily falls all down the east coast from Durham to London. To the sceptical who regard ski as a certain insurance against snow, the heavy fall of Thursday night was merely an interference with motoring. Only two men, however, Fred Booth and the Editor, left Leeds on the morning of the 25th for Weardale by train. At Darlington was a rapid thaw, but they detrained at St. John’s Chapel in a storm which continued without ceasing till Sunday night. Although the Midland main line was blocked, the snow did not extend to the stretch from Settle to Dumfries.
Over the fell road (now converted into a motor road as high as Nenthead, 2,056 ft.) to Langden Beck was quite a struggle, and one glance at the Teesdale highroad, clear 24 hours before, showed that the return via Middleton was going to be no joke. About 7 p.m. James Brown and Lees arrived on ski, having abandoned their car one mile above High Force.
On Sunday the first two miles of drifted road below the Inn were passed by laborious detours in the fields or by staggering along the tops of the badly built walls. The ski-ers had much the best of it, but their car was stuck hopelessly and was not retrieved for a week. The ploughed road of Saturday had taken on two feet of snow, but High Force was reached in two hours. At Newbiggin the plough was met, but before that the foot-sloggers had been heartily thankful for the trench cut by the skis. The party are prepared to sign any amount of certificates that the storm was from the south-east (not the north), and that it was mostly sleet.
The four did not get a train from Middleton till 11 a.m. Monday, Darlington and ten miles south were then clear of snow. The rest of the Stockton party did not get beyond Barnard Castle.
Dunsop Bridge in the Forest of Bowland, but still in Yorkshire, 18-19th March, was almost new ground to all eighteen of us. Mellor Knoll was done on Saturday evening, and on Sunday one party of eight had a very delightful moorland walk up Whitendale, and over Wolf Hole Crag to the highroad at the Trough of Bowland. The drive beyond Skipton was one of the most enjoyable parts of the excursion.
On 2nd April there was much pleasant climbing on Stanage Rocks with the Derbyshire Pennine Club. Exaggerated, and grotesque stories have been related to the Editor of vain wanderings on the previous evening behind our hosts in search of a mythical Trey Cliff Cavern.
Easter gave us hope that we should at last have a fine summer in which all the good weather was not confined to working days. Some fifteen men met at the Waverley Temperance Hotel, Fort William, and had a splendid time. One day, Saturday, was wet, of course, and Monday was cloudy down to 3,000 ft., but the air was so calm it was possible to light a pipe with ease on almost every top, and except for those two days the clouds kept high above the peaks from the 13th to the 23rd April.
On one perfect day six men were on the Tower Ridge, others on the North-East Buttress with the rocks in summer condition, while three more and their friends were on the snow in the Tower Gully.
At Coniston were eight men, who report good weather, excellent catering, and grand climbing on Dow Crags.
The weather seems quite determined that no Meet shall ever do Rowten Pot. Frightful storms on 6th May put it quite out of the question, but nine dauntless people got on to the Bridge on Sunday, and some even to the next ledge, 180 ft. down ; the rain never stopped till we were far on the way home.
One has to go back to 1922 for any Whitsuntide to match the gorgeous sun and heat of June 2nd to 6th at Gaping Ghyll. After the last party came into camp towards 11 p.m. on Friday, declaring that they had driven from Leeds in heavy rain and had come up through the woods in a hot stuffy drizzle, there was no further thought of anything going wrong. The boards for the dam were never placed in position; the waterfalls inside shrank and one could contemplate the Main Shaft as something only 340 ft. high; people went up and down without oilskins, and breakfasted and worked in airy costumes. Loafing was a delight.
Ladders were put over for any who desired to go that way, but to the disgust of Tom Booth, in a degenerate modern fashion, one length to the Ledge, and another length below on long ropes. There was an air of finality about the proceedings. ” Do you know anywhere else where there is a possibility? ” J. D. Brown was lowered into the Lower Letterbox rift and brought up by a dead haul of 30 ft. ; two parties on separate days combed the left hand area beyond the Sand Cavern to the Mud Pot in vain, but found that it was far more intricate than had been suspected ; anyone could go and hunt where he wanted. So it came about that excursions were made over the moor to Nick Pot and to the new pitch of Marble Pot, while the scientists demanded that each should toil for a minimum time at digging in the floor of the Great Chamber.
Only two members attended each of the next two fixtures, the 7th July with the Wayfarers at the Robertson Lamb Hut, and Bank Holiday at the Tal-y-Braich Hut of the Rucksackers.
The Roman Wall Meet, 16-17th September, being after the holiday season, tempted nineteen to undertake the hundred mile drive. It is thirty years since the Club had a Meet there.
Rosedale, 22nd October, and Malham, 3rd December were both very enjoyable Meets which the writer was compelled to miss owing to the call of official duties, public and Club. E.E.R.