North Wales Trip - Day 1: Croesor to Rhosydd through trip

Sam Lieberman, Alex Anderson, Becka Lawson, Dave Thompson, Mike Hale, Aaron Smith, Geoff Haywood + 2 friends.

The day started warm and sunny, we met in the car park where Slug got kitted up for the hot walk ahead, he looked magnificent, dressed in wellies and shorts with his bare white legs glistening like pearls in the sunlight. We walked up into the hills for about an hour to the Croesor mine workings, kitted up and entered the long adit. After a short steep walk up the incline, a bit of huffing and puffing, we arrived at the first abseil of about 24m overlooking a colossal chamber with gigantic blocks littering the floor. We checked the in-situ rope and descended to the chamber floor.

We tip-toed quietly across the chamber, as rock falls have occurred with noisy parties - one report was that a van sized block fell from the roof some 30m above because the group made too much noise, no one was hurt but they had to be rescued as they were stunned from the shell shock! On safely reaching the other side of the chamber we had the second abseil of 20m to descend, and after checking the in-situ rope I decided to remove it and replace it with new rope I had in my bag. We descended the rope and arrived in the 1st lake chamber with the zip line over it, the old cable had snapped and been replaced with a rope Tyrolean which sagged in the middle just enough to give you a slight dunking, the larger members of the team had a nice bath.

Sam crossing the first lake on Becka Lawson negotiating the One of the Daylight chambers.

a rope Tyrolean. monkey bridge.

After crossing the lake with various degrees of screams and obscenities we were faced with the suspension bridge over the second lake. (Mel- see other member photos). Safely over the suspension bridge we made our way through the interesting and stable workings consisting of adits and chambers to arrive at the first bridge of three, well they are no longer bridges as the timbers have rotted and collapsed into the dark waters below.
After safely traversing the 3 bridge chambers we were faced with the Chamber of Horrors, which is a lake of about 50m long with a kayak in for safe passage. This involved a 5m abseil into the kayak and using the tow lines, we pulled ourselves across the lake with dubious timbers looming overhead.

On reaching the other side we climbed a rope 5m into an adit the end of the adit had a wall with bars bent over, this is the connection with Rhosydd mine.

We made our way into the Rhosydd workings and climbed up a few levels into a colossal collapse chamber with openings to daylight. From here we continued through the Rhosydd workings with no further obstacles and onto the main incline that led us down to the 1km long No9 adit and safely out onto the warm and sunny hillside.

Day 2 of this trip to the North Wales Mines will appear in the next Newsletter.

James Hutchins - photos: James Hutchins and Sam Lieberman

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Engineering at it's best! ....