The caving was at the end of the week, to start the week were dealing with buying a flat and selling a house, and all the financial planning that comes with that. I had a call with Jeffs, my brother and Steph’s cousin. It was good to talk to them in both cases. My brother seemed to be doing well, and his suggestions made me think about the power that individuals have related to governments. Then Jeff and Patty gave us great advice on selling our house, and I’m pretty happy with where we are in the process now.

On Wednesday I didn’t get the rush tickets to SIX like I was hoping, but Grace and Carla did. I’ll be trying again, as it is always fun to have the grab bag of options when looking at last minute tickets. I instead went to Steph’s talk on regulators at dive club, and I think people were impressed by her knowledge. They definitely went away with a better understanding of the functions of the regulators. A few were hoping to learn how to take apart and service theirs, and she dashed their hopes when telling them about the required tools to service regs.

Thursday was a lot of calls and meetings, then Friday we headed to Wessex Cave Club in the Medips. We stopped off in south Bristol at a place called Wake the Tiger. It was an amazing immersive experience. I really enjoyed the varied and interesting sets we wandered through. There wasn’t much of a story, but the whole place was fascinating.

We got to the hut as it was starting to snow, and in the morning we woke to a small amount sticking. This meant the caves would be full of the snow melt water, at least in the upper portions.

We went into Swildon’s Hole, a cave within easy walking distance from the hut. It had a lot of water flow, and many amazing waterfalls to climb through. We got to sump 1, a small area of water where you have to pull yourself through on a rope. I was using my training from Mexico where you just ensure that the line is in your hand and then move on your own, but the loose rocks made moving really tough, so I got pushed through by Simon, and pulled by John. The water was 4C so just putting my head in made me really disorientated and shocked. It was a good experience to do my first sump. Steph and Kaz then set up their dive gear and started their dive out to sump 12. I got video of them disappearing into the water of sump 2. We made our way back through sump 1 and I didn’t have issues this time, but still was a little disorientated from cold water plunge. On the way back I twisted my ankle. Thankfully it was right after the really hard part. The group was amazing, with Simon and John immediately changing from recreational mode to cave extraction mode. Simon talked me through the initial pain, and John went ahead to tell the others. I took a few minutes and then we started climbing out. I was going very slow, and needed to be pulled through a few of the trickier spots. I was able to climb the ladder with one foot, being assisted by Simon and John. Alex was new to caving, but he was still helpful on a few of the waterfall climbs that were hard to start. We made it out as another group was heading down. The walk back was so much worse than the climbing, as I didn’t have any way to easily use my arms to take the weight off. I was helped along with my arm over John’s then Ben’s shoulders, but it still hurt a ton to walk through the soft muddy fields.

I raised and iced my foot while Steph was still out of contact diving to sump 12. I hung out with people at the hut and got to talk to Simon, John, and Alex a lot more. Sunday Steph went down to carry out her gear from Saturday. It is pretty normal after a long trip like she did to leave the gear for extraction the next day. After she got back we drove back to London and the kitties.

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