Daren Cilau, South Wales - February 2011 - Trip Report

I’d heard about Daren Cilau from other university cavers. It was made out to be a test piece of British caving. Naturally I wanted a go.

The uni caving club was in a relatively strong position at the time. We had a lot of members, and a lot of fit men and women who were competent cavers. We assembled our finest crew and, after some over precautionary planning, 6 of us left Kent and headed off to South Wales.

This was about where things stopped going well. We’d left Kent late and so arrived at the cave late. Running that starting caving at midnight, which would mean we’d get into camp by around 5 or 6am by my reckoning (which didn’t seem unreasonable for students who were often up partying to that time anyway), we started at around 2 or 3am. It then emerged that Kent’s finest, whether through sanity, tiredness or despair at the situation, weren’t quite up to Cardiff University Caving Club’s wriggly speologists. We had heavy tacklesacks (everyone was carrying sleeping bags) but the entrance crawl took 5hrs, a big overshoot from the 1hr I’d anticipated.

The rest of the journey to Hard Rock Café went slowly but smoothly. There were a couple of navigational hiccups, with me trying to remember the route from my previous foray with Jinni, but nothing that caused significant delays.

Eventually, many hours later, we finally stumbled exhausted into camp. We’d intended to have a nice long rest here but given the length of our inward journey we knew we’d need a similar amount of time for the return – our break was drastically shortened. To make matters worse two of the sleeping bags were soaking wet, the waterproofing methods presumably not surviving the 5hr horror that was the entrance crawl. I lent my sleeping bag to someone else and then spent the night shivering in an old down jacket. James, who had the other sodden sleeping bag, was wrapped in a survival shelter for a few hours kip. We knew there were additional sleeping bags stored at camp but weren’t clear on the etiquette of using them – we certainly didn’t want to put anyone else out later.

So, cold and tired we started on our return leg. Nothing really changed except the entrance crawl took 6 hours on the way out. Bogdan and I had generally moved a bit faster than the rest of the group so we gave them a 2hr head start for the crawl; we still overtook them on the way out which enabled us to go back to the hut, shower and prepare warm food and dry clothes for the rest of the group when they emerged.

I was concerned about the state the rest of the group would be in after such a long time moving slowly in a cold and damp environment and as such went back to meet them at the entrance. I emerged to a strange sight; James wandering around the hills covering his eyes. He’d been the next one out of the cave but, upon exiting, his eyes had reacted badly to the sudden light and he had seemingly gone temporarily blind. I helped guide him back to the minibus and fortunately, within a few minutes of being sat down, he regained his composure and his sight returned.

The others soon followed from the cave’s mouth, pleased to be free from its damp enclosures. Returning to the hut there was even time for a brief nap for me whilst the others showered and ate – well received given the 5hr minibus drive I still had ahead of me!