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Author: Dare

Exploring Pendulum Passage

The team rigging the Crevasse, two days before our trip. (C) Taina Nyman, 2017

Even though writers are all notorious liars, the following is something resembling a true account of a caving trip I took on my New Year vacation. This is the kind of stuff that inspires my caving-related fiction.


Ogof Ffynnon Ddu: Top Entrance to the Crevasse

Shortly after noon Duncan, Tor and I crawl in through the top entrance hatch of OFD. Tor is tasked with navigation at first; I’ll back him up should he need it. We clamber over the boulders making up the first part of the cave, and in ten minutes we have reached the point, where a blocky climb called the Corkscrew heads down. Instead of down, we go up – up a slippery, muddy set of steps that’s almost unnoticeable if you go the way people usually go. The climb is unsecured and scary – a harbinger of what to expect today.