Lost John’s Cave: Jack, Fay, Denis, Phil (15th November 2017).
“A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order”. Unfortunately I followed Jean-Luc Goddard’s system when packing the tackle bags for the Dome Route which Denis and Phil were going to rig. Because we’d originally intended to do Little Hull (too wet) I’d got the 2 big ropes (pitches 3 and 4) in one bag. It seemed simple, therefore, to put the short ropes (pitches 1, 2 and 5) in the other…
… which was why, after an hour or more, Fay and I were sitting at Dome Junction waiting for D & P to appear from Dome … when along comes Denis from Centipede!
“The rope for the 3rd pitch was too short.” Valiantly, Denis had gone back up, and had come down Centipede to tell us the good news while Phil de-rigged Dome. Somehow my creative tackle bag filling method had not made itself apparent to Denis and he’d assumed rope 3 followed ropes 1 and 2.
So we just took photos of each other and went back out to a pleasant change on Leck Fell (that’s not a phrase you’ll read very often). An entertaining trip.
The White Rose Pothole Club 