The Quiet of the Morning

Harvey Lomas

The sound of the phone ringing roused me from my sleep. A voice on the other end asked me if I would answer an incident at Ease Gill. I vaguely remember saying “Yes.” It was about six o’clock one moniing early in May, 1988.

The caller said that three cavers were overdue in the Ease Gill system and had not been seen since the previous day when a colleague, feeling unwell, had left them to return to the surface.

I gathered my equipment. Then driving up to Bull Pot my thoughts were “Where could they possibly be? Missing all night and still not found.” Calling in at the Clapham CRO depot I half expected them to have been found but they were not. Even stopping off at Inglesport yielded little more irrformation. It was still ‘just another incident’. The realisation that all was not normal had not yet dawned on me. As events unfolded I was soon to realise that this was a day I was hardly likely to forget …. ever.

Ease Gill is a vast system connecting Lancaster Hole and Lost John’s cave systems to make the longest system in the country. There are many inlets and series branching off at different levels from the main passage which leads from Top Sink down to the main down-stream sump in Lancaster Hole. Search teams had been in the cave all night and had found nothing. Were the missing cavers lost up one of those many inlets, marooned with exhausted lights? Assuming that this was the situation I arrived at Bull Pot Farm.

The situation of Bull Pot Farm is, in my opinion, second to none. The colours of the fells across that panoramic sweep of Crag Hill, Great Coum and Gregareth are a splendid greeting as you drive the narrow road contouring high above Casterton Fell before descending to the isolated farmstead. This valley of Ease Gill is where old Westmoreland joins Lancashire… and was the place where on this day three people were still lost.

The CRO ‘Control Room’ was in the back room of the Red Rose Pothole Hut at Bull Pot. Tired looking controllers were musing over suiveys and light poured through a window illuminating the cigarette smoke. A bleak message came over the radio “Two cavers found. Condition green.” meaning that they were dead.

One of the search party in an area down in the stream below Assembly Hall near Easter Grotto had discovered signs of a rock fall. She thought she could see another searcher squeezing through boulders but found on closer inspection that it was one of the unfortunate cavers wedged high on the lip of the passage. The roof-fall had wedged him to the cave wall with a piece of rock the size of a Transit van.

There was a split second of stillness as the news came through and we realised the implications. Then the mood changed. I accompanied a senior controller despatched to make an on-the-spot assessment of the situation.

A warm breeze blew through the heather and clouds hung over Gregareth as we walked in silence to the cave entrance of County Pot. In Ease Gill itself we quickly broke the stillness and serenity as we bombed along familiar passages. It was not long before we approached the site of the accident with that feeling of dread welling up inside when you know full-well that you are about to experience something unpleasant. Whether or not I would be able to keep my nerve exercised my mind and there was temptation to find an excuse. This had to be dismissed and like the rest, I just had to keep my nerve despite the sound of boulders being moved.

We met one of the rescuers and I was given a phone to set up in the Assembly Hall though this was soon to be abandoned as an alternative location was found. Alone I moved towards the sounds of the rescue, climbing down into the stream then following it upstream to a crawl with an oxbow on the left. Almost there, rising up into the passage, I nearly stepped on a bundle, it was a body bound up in a bag.

Now part of the throng I slowly moved over the litter of gear, ropes, bags and tools to the focus of the attention, the second unfortunate caver who was being placed in a bag. There was then a pause, before the attempt to extract the third, while drills and shoring made their long journey from the surface. I cast my eyes across the great boulder collapse in search of the casualty. There, to the left, just above the lip of the roof where it met the collapse, was the body badly compressed by the sheer weight of rock. Facial features were unrecognisable. I managed to compose myself to cope with this situation while we all waited. Some talked, some were silent, some took the chance to eat and drink for there was still much to be done.

When the gear arrived we stabilised the larger rocks, by wedging them with smaller ones, so that drilling then plug-and-feathering could be used to split them. The shoring was used to prevent the boulders moving sideways. In contrast to the quiet morming on the fellside above, here the stream roared beneath the collapse while hammers rang out, drills rattled and we all pulled on ropes, pushed and levered with iron bars to manoeuvre the boulders. While extracting the leg of the casualty from being pinned between rocks a final pull released it suddenly and I was rewarded with a firm blow on the head from the released booted foot.

He was finally released from his place of grief by being gently slid away by a pull on his lamp belt. I turned him round and laid his stiffened corpse on the cave floor. Others placed him in a bag, prepared a stretcher and secured him in it. I now became aware of just how much backup was in place as another team was there ready to start the long, difficult carry to the surface. The other two were already well on their way out.

I gathered up gear and took some of the boxes away passing the stretcher-team. It is a quite easy trip with sporting climbs out to Eureka Junction and through County Pot with its Poetic justice… but not with a stretcher. The repeated pulling, jamming, releasing and lifting would take a lot of time, patience and effort for the team in contrast to the carefree pleasure of those who explore the caverns of Ease Gill.

I made my exit from the cave to find groups of people milling about watching the emerging cavers sorting themselves out. A kindly walker gave me a drink from his flask then I walked slowly over to Bull Pot where the full rescue circus was in full swing. Away from the flying commands and counter commands a girl, doing her bit away from the crowd, asked me if I would like some food and drink. It was pleasant to hear a soft, warm, un-commanding voice.

Like, I suppose, most of the others that night, I slept unquietly.