Trip to High Pasture Cave -- 9th Apr 2007

Unlike the first trip the weather was up to the Skye standard, wet and misty, as we parked up and changed into caving gear. We headed up to the dig and had a quick look around before opening the hatch and heading down the passage.

It didn't take long to get to the low watery crawl, Paul rapidly slid through followed by Dennis who then got stuck on the rockbank in the middle. He started to excavate the pebbles to widen the gap so he could fit through, but after 10 minutes messing about he resigned himself to the fact that the extra pounds put on since last year meant this was now another 'cave too far'. At this point Roger also got cold feet about trying the water and so the two of them left to get changed and do something else. Mary and Dave slid through to join Paul.

We continued along the passage to a small chamber with nice formations and then headed along to the waterfall which flows over a dyke.

An easy climb down the side of the waterfall led to the rift passage which ends in the terminal chamber. A lot of the limestone has been altered by igneous intrusions which gives the rock quite a distinctive appearance and provides plenty of little edges to catch on oversuits, hands etc.

The rift is split in places into an upper and lower section and we explored both which led to the discovery of a pristine little column in the upper section - something we missed on the previous trip.

We climbed back up the waterfall and back along to the wallow and thence the entrance ladder.

The weather had not improved during the time we were down and we spent a fairly fruitless hour with a GPS looking for the 'cave of the seed' amongst the trees of Coille Gaireallach before changing and heading to the pub.