EASTER CAMP

Meanwhile the others had gone into Thackray's passage. At first they tried to traverse on the ledges above the smooth swift-flowing canal. Before long they all plopped in, like otters sliding into a millpond, and splashed along rather more than knee deep beside the flood-abraded dripstone curtains. Presently, a stalactite barrier forced them to take to the higher level. It was sad to see muddy footprints on these calcite floors. With care they avoided the main pools, where thin sheets of 'cave-ice' and underwater crystals lay everywhere. A curiously fungoid type of dripstone covered the clayey walls, sometimes orange, sometimes dirty white. Squeezing through a tight stalagmite-guarded letterbox, they slid down a muddy bank into the canal. Sometimes edging along a narrow rift, sometimes crouching beneath a flat roof, they splashed on upstream. Soon they realised that the water-passage was not all. Peeping up out of the rift they saw straw stalactities 4 or 5ft long dropping down from the heights. Through lateral openings they caught sight of massive wall ornaments dripping down onto immaculate crystal cascades. They sidled past lovely white curtains 10ft high and a score of yards long, and stepped carefully under a 5ft stalagmite growing from an unsupported foot-plate a yard across, stuck onto the wall by one edge as if by magic. These things were incidents only in the general display of underground wonders. However the explorers had not escaped entirely from the world above, for right up to the boulder-choke in the final sandy chambers the stream was running bright green with fluorescein. They surveyed back to Holbeck Junction before coming out.

Easter Sunday, by all accounts, was a depressing day, with rain followed by snow. Gemmell, Dunnington and Taylor became interested in a sink in the Leck Fell side valley just above Cow Dub. According to the survey, this sink might lead down into Broadway of Oxford Pot. It was given the name 'Innominate'.

On Easter Monday we went across the moor in a blinding snowstorm, somewhat warmer than the one of February 4th, but still unpleasant. We were determined to settle once and for all the water-drainage of the Slit Sinks, down which we again put dye. We also coloured the new Innominate sink above Cow Dub. Bradshaw and Ashworth had a fine time down below, first of all following the green water up Broadway towards the far aven, then finding more at Eureka Junction. There were still coloured pools in the canal of Thackray's passage (from Saturday's testing) but the new flow came down Green and Smelly Passage. They followed the colour right up to the inlet which had become green when the Borehole water had been tested on December 19th. (Incidentally, Wretched Rabbit Passage showed no green, although an air-connection had been shown likely when the smell put down the Slit Sinks on Saturday had been noticed at Eureka Junction). Bradshaw led on up Thackray's passage. In the first boulder chamber he suddenly decided to climb up through unstable earth-covered boulders into a roof-system of slimy chambers. Climbing still further, he and Ashworth came to a wonderfully adorned chamber, full of milk-white stumps and yard-high stalagmite columns rising from both sides of a central declivity 50ft and more long. Beneath a crystal calcite crust, previously flooded pools were red with ochreous deposits. Nests of cave pearls were everywhere. Myriads of opalescent stalactites hung from the roof, with remarkable horn-like outgrowths, whiskery eccentrics, and all manner of academic curiosities such as Prinz's calcite bells. There were strange ochre beehives, a foot long and six inches wide, overgrown on calcite 'carrots' attached to the roof by slender stems. Unfortunately, the pristine beauty of caverns such as this 'Easter Grotto' can be preserved only in the precious memories of the first explorers. No-one can traverse these places without damaging the crystal floors or roof ornaments. It is no good locking them up, as some would, and saying that no-one else is to be trusted in places like this; that is an ostrich-like form of conceit. Without delving into the depths of philosophy, one can see that the full glories of these places have a real existence only in the memories of those who have seen them. Reluctantly one must admit that much of that which today held Bradshaw and Ashworth spellbound will ultimately be destroyed by those who pass through the Easter Grotto.

Bradshaw and Ashworth returned on April 1st. From the head of the climb up, they traversed out of the chamber by bridging a narrow crevasse, and soon entered a narrow passage leading to a huge incredibly shattered chamber 20 or 30ft wide with a flat roof quite 60ft above. With memories of Boundary Pot's Hiroshima Cavern, they decided to call it Nagasaki Cavern. They scrambled on over the sandy boulder-strewn floor, hearing the sound of water far below through occasional holes. At an elevation, they had to crawl under an immense cleft block called the Rock of Ages. After nearly 50 yards, the passage narrowed. They found that they had to traverse again, this time on undercut and apparently unsupported ledges of glacial fill (the Bridge of Sighs). Beyond the next corner, a comfortable-sized passage led steadily down to a spot where two streams unite (Limerick Junction). Two brand-new passages lay ahead, but today the explorers had seen enough. They turned back and came out of the system.