Santa's Grotto

After a few lazy days of eating too much over christmas I somehow found myself in Assynt being roped (ho ho) into going down a cave. Not expecting to be doing any outdoor activities I hadn't brought any gear with me so after managing to borrow the bare minimum equipment necessary we set off for the cave. The cave which we were going down was Rana Hole which has slowly been getting deeper and deeper over the past 12 years as cavers attempt to find a 'dry' route to Uamh An Claonaite - the longest cave in Scotland.

The first section of the cave is a massive engineering feat in itself, the entrence to the cave is surrounded by masses of scaffolding, ropes, pulleys and a massive spoil heap. The first couple of sections are pretty much straight down by ladder with a series of safety ropes similar to a via ferrata. After the ladders there's more via ferrata style decent as you traverse across some staples which have been put into the rope, through a small waterfall and down some more ladders. At the bottom of the main pit is where the fun begins.

In recent attempts to find their way through to the bigger cave system a dam has been built to try and reduce the water level in a sump. Unfortunately it was pretty wet, so after a lot of bailing and some ad-hoc adjustments to the wall height the dam was full. If we wanted to keep going we'd need to get a bit wet. After dropping into the cold water and squeezing along the passage you eventually get to small ladder and can climb out of the water. The passages after this were only discovered a couple of months ago and after a bit more squeezing, some crawling up and down over rocks and a final squeeze through the floor you're greeted with a pretty amazing cavern leading down a loose bolder-y slope to the bottom where there are some pretty amazing formations hanging from the roof.

After the large cavern there's another tight squeeze down to a passage which was only discovered the week before on Christmas Eve - the suggested name for this is Santa's Grotto. Not many people have been down into this passage and after squeezing down into it from the chamber I decided to head back up - I wasn't really feeling the need to get stuck somewhere that onlya handful of people had been before. On previous caving trips I've never had a problem with tight squeezes or claustrophobia but for a few seconds I was shitting myself.

After waiting around in the cavern for a little while I decided to head back to the surface and after working my way back through the passages and having another short swim I was back at the dam and the bottom of the main shaft. I eventually got back to the top after finding out that climbing a ladder with wellies full of water is a lot harder than you'd think. On the final ladder I was greeted with a face full of hail every time I looked up but pretty much as soon as I poked my head out the cave it stopped. Everyone else who was at the top of the cave - most people didn't fancy the swim and turned back - had decided to head for shelter when the hail started. Soon enough the others were out and we headed back down to the car park.

Not your usual christmas activity but really good fun none the less.

Quinag

The weather on Sunday was really too nice to do anything except get up a hill, especially seeing as we were up in Elphin, Assynt. I've wanted to take a wander up Quinag for a while so we decided to set off up. We had been warned that the route would be a bit muddy but as the ground was frozen solid and the temperature didn't seem to make it about zero it wasn't a problem. We had a really nice walk in with the frozen landscape being cast a mixture of icey blues and warm reds from the low sun. I've not really been out walking for a few months so it felt good to stretch the legs and get out somewhere, although I was feeling it the next day.