Hidden Earth 2024

Junction Junkies - Connecting Draughting Hole and Missed Pot to make a 7.7 km system

30 minute Lecture|Peter Talling

Abstract

This talk will tell the ongoing story of maze cave exploration on the Stang above Arkengarthdale, with the recent connection(s) of Missed Pot into Draughting Hole. The Draughting-Missed system is now 7,698 m long if you include the mine (865 m) and fragments of cave off the mine (310 m). This makes it something like the 11th longest cave in England, just behind Swildons Hole, and other luminaries (https://www.ukcaves.co.uk/country-england-longest). If you don’t count the mine or caves off the mine then it still comes in 13th place, with a length of 6,523 m. However this maze cave is located within a remarkably small area of just 190 m x 240 m. Each new passage leads to further four-way (or five or six-way) junctions, and new leads multiple like energetic rabbits. There are currently over 50 unexplored leads with question marks around the outer limits of the current survey. Missed Pot and its associated Scargill Mine have also intercepted water from Jingle Pot sink. The water likely resurges about 4.5 km away at Roughton Keld; so this may be a way into the fabled Roughton Keld streamway. The maze system provides highly sporting caving with numerous obstacles and squeezes, such that a feeling of commitment can develop in less than 100 m from the entrance in a straight line. The new through or round trips in this system may pose some of the UK’s hardest route finding challenges.

It is a real privilege to explore new cave passages in the UK, but most new finds are explored in just a few subsequent surveying trips. We are now on our 62nd surveying trip in Draughting Hole and Missed Pot. It now invokes a love-hate relationship, which like the cave is probably never-ending.