Ogof Daren Cilau Epocalypse Chokes and St. David's Streamway trips 22/11/2023, 26/03/2024 and 01/04/2024
The first was a visit to Busman's Holiday. The second was a standard through trip from Ogof Daren Cilau to Ogof Cnwc, but we took the opportunity to visit some very significant side passages. Epocalypse Way in particular proved to be a very worthy detour. The third was a trip to the lake before St. David's Sump. I have photographed both routes extensively in the past, so this gallery concentrates on the parts of the routes that were new to me, and the bits that demand photographs in spite of repeated visits. These were Steph's first trip into Daren, and the entrance was taken suitably gently.
Unless otherwise stated, camera, setups, lighting, edits and gallery effects by Tarquin. Modelling and lighting at various points will be Steph Andrews.
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Autumn in the Usk Valley, in front of Gaer (427 metres), Sugar Loaf (596 metres) and The Skirrid (486 metres).
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Mynydd Llangorse (515 metres), Mynydd Troed (609 metres), Pen Allt-mawr (719 metres), Pen Cerrig-calch (701 metres), Pen Twyn Mawr (658 metres), Crug Mawr (550 metres), the Sugar Loaf and The Skirrid.
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The entrance to Ogof Pen Eryr.
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The Vice, often the most feared part of the entrance series, but actually not the tightest or most awkward part. Despite looking good in videos and pictures, it is actually fairly easy, and over quite quickly.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Exiting The Vice. This is the hardest part of it, bending backwards to exit.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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This is actually the smallest part of the entrance series; the Calcite Squeezes. Though not tight, it is very narrow, and requires both hands to be forward, which is quite unnatural. The white wire is the rescue telephone line.
Modelling by Steph and hints of Tarquin, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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End of the entrance series, 1 hour, 10 minutes. Not setting any records. On the second trip, we took it down to a more normal 58 minutes in, and 1 hour 26 minutes out.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The dry crystal pool, formerly known as The Cascade.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The white powder is the debris from thousands of sunken calcite rafts.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The climb down from Old Main Rift into Jigsaw Passage. This was the 1984 breakthrough point, that opened up the entire mountain.
Modelling by Steph's legs, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The right passage of Loop Route, a major passage leading off from Big Chamber Nowhere Near The Entrance. This is full of large boulders, many of which are somewhat unstable, and the boulder hopping takes a lot of concentration.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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A visible arachnid walking over the boulders. At first, we thought it was an odd spider, but it turned out to be a long-legged bat tick, Ixodes vespertilionis. This is an adult female, before she has drunk any blood. They feed only on bat blood, and do not bite humans.
Modelling by Vladislava, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The size of them is absolutely ridiculous, with a body length of 5 mm, doubling when full of blood, and a leg span of 12 mm. For a tick, that is massive, considering that a typical tick that bites people is about 3 mm long (11 mm when full of blood), has a leg span of just 6 mm. 12 mm is about the size of a lesser horseshoe bat's face, so these are literally like the face huggers from Alien, equivalent to you being bitten by a tick the size of your hand! It drinks so much blood that it is equivalent to about a half pint (300 ml) for a human. Poor bats.
Modelling by Vladislava and Steph's finger, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Start of the left passage of Loop Route, made from a mix of dolomite beds and shale.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Dolomite domes in the left passage of Loop Route. The passages both choke beneath the floor of St. Valentine's Chamber, but a small route next to the chokes links them.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Helictites with pom-poms, high on the wall of White Passage near the boulder pile. These are high enough up that it is very hard to photograph them well, but this picture shows them off very well.
Lighting by Steph
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Time Machine, the largest passage in Britain.
Modelling by Steph and Steph, lighting by Tarquin, Steph and Steph
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Monmouthshire sign in Bonsai Streamway, as you cross the county border.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The Powys sign in the opposite direction.
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Purple tinted stal, caused by translucent stal forming on a manganese stain.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Immediately upstream of the downstream sump. The warning sign is stolen from a cave in Florida, and tries to dissuade scuba divers who have no caving experience or cave diving training from diving in caves. Perhaps it will be useful for the time that a scuba diver with no caving experience makes it this far into the toughest cave in Wales, with diving gear, to try to dive one of the longest sumps in the country.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The White Company, one of the highlights of the through trip.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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One of the most iconic formations in The White Company.
Lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The main part of The White Company.
lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The White Company continues for some distance down the passage, with many admirable helictites.
Lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Anthodites.
Lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Textured stalagmite.
Lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Helictites.
Lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Small anthodites.
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Anthodites.
Lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Large anthodites.
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Anthodites.
Lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Anthodites and helictites.
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Anthodite with water droplets, either an anemone or an inverted tree in the rain.
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Covered in anthodites.
Lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Anthodites.
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Anthodites and helictites above the entrance to Urchin Oxbow.
Lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Anthodites and helictites above the entrance to Urchin Oxbow.
Lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Urchin Oxbow contains a very fine set of anthodites.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Urchin Oxbow.
Lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Urchin Oxbow.
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Urchin Oxbow.
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Helictites in Urchin Oxbow.
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Last of the formations in Urchin Oxbow. While it is possible to continue into Antler Passage, it is not worth the risk to the formations, which need to be crawled past.
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Anthodites in an undercut. These are quite a distance away, and hard to photograph, but for once, I think we managed to get an acceptable picture.
Lighting by Steph
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Large selenite crystals in Epocalypse Way.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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After the junction with Antler Passage, Epocalypse Way runs through a large collapse zone. The end of Locksmiths Passage connects to a crawl in the left wall here.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Cryostal in the collapse zone.
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Cryostal detail.
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The passage then becomes a hands and knees crawl for some distance, with these unusual formations on the ceiling.
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These formations can be seen for a large part of Epocalypse Way. They seem to be dried flood scum, or at least, that is the only thing that they look like they might be. Often they are scattered over the floor, after falling from the walls.
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Epocalypse Way then suddenly enlarges, and becomes this gorgeous, curvy phreatic canyon. There is a rope on the boulder ahead, which is used to climb into Locksmiths Passage.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Start of Locksmiths Passage, a high level keyhole passage, leading back along Epocalypse Way.
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The tall canyon of Epocalypse Way.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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A very old ladder, that has completely rusted through, and snapped. The carabiners also show significant corrosion, and the sling looks ancient. This ladder probably dates from the 1980s.
lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The ladder has been replaced with a handline, dropping down a 6 metre pitch into the Lower Streamway. It heads in both directions, with the upstream end choking back below the collapse zone of Epocalypse Way, and carrying the Antler Passage water from The Kitchen.
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Junction of the two routes to Epocalypse Chokes, with the second passage to the right.
Modelling by Steph (not peeing, honest), lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The left passage.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The right passage.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Favosites coral fossil in the right passage.
Modelling by Steph's pointy thing, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Where the passages rejoin is a gaping crater, which seems to disappear off into the darkness. It is very hard to get an idea of the scale here, but the hole is over 10 metres across.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Despite looking almost endless, the crater is a 13 metre pitch into the Lower Streamway, shortly before it chokes. The mud soaks up the light, making it look much further.
Lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The big passage to the left at the crater, which briefly lowers to a crawl.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Anthodites in the left passage. One of them is happy to see you.
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Curvaceous end of the left passage, and my favourite picture from the entire trip. In the distance is one of the Epocalypse Chokes, which has a short passage above.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The passage to the right of the crater starts of easy enough.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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However, it then passes over a keyhole traverse, and the floor of the traverse disappears to a ridiculous depth.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The traverse has almost no holds, and a mistake would mean falling all the way down into the Lower Streamway immediately before its choke, so we left it alone, with this view of the other Epocalypse Choke. Apparently, there is a small chamber to one side of it.
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Climb down into Antler Passage, which is deceptively hard at the bottom, and absolutely needs the rope.
Modelling by Steph
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Anthodites at the start of The Antlers.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Detail of the anthodites.
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The Antlers, which the passage is named after.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The Antlers are aragonite helictites, surrounded by smaller calcite helictites.
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Helictites at The Antlers, probably calcite.
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The first of several ladder climbs in Antler Passage. This is the tallest of them, and deserves a lifeline, even though the ladder is high quality, and very easy to climb.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Bridge Chamber, one of the dramatic parts of Busman's Holiday. Normally, the route is beneath this, and you only look at it from this angle if you have gone wrong, but we were intentionally visiting a side passage, which starts up a rope climb from the camera's position.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The rope climb gives access to an upper level, which chokes. However, a climb through a central tube gives access to a parallel balcony, with a yawning hole dropping all the way back to the floor.
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A side passage from the balcony heads away from everything else, and at the time of our visit, had only just been found and surveyed. The floor still had the pristine mud, with only a couple of visitors before us.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The side passage.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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The walking passage abruptly ends, and it continues for a long way as a miserable crawl, pointing towards Ogof Pen Eryr.
Modelling by Steph, lighting by Tarquin and Steph
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Line of mushrooms, which appear to be blewits.
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Mushrooms with a close relationship.
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Scarlet hood waxcaps.
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Scarlet hoods.
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Scarlet hood.
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Blewit fairy ring, near Ogof Pen Eryr.