Hon. Sec: A.R. Thomas. Allens House, Townsend, Priddy,
Wells,

Somerset.
Hon. Editor: – S.J. Collins, Lavender Cottage, Bishop Sutton,

Bristol

Editorial

Mail Box Matters

The B.B. mail box in the Belfry has at last yielded some
letters.  Unfortunately almost all its
contents to date have not been suitable for publication and the writers (and
others) may well want to know why.

There were two complaints by visitors about the state of the
Belfry.  Now, anonymous letters
traditionally belong in the dustbin, which has been thoughtfully placed just
underneath the mail box – and that’s where they went.  By all means complain, and by all means use a
pen name if you wish to remain anonymous if published.  Call yourself ‘Stirrer’ or some thing like that,
but LET US ALSO HAVE YOUR PROPER NAME. Apart from the general principle that any bloke ought to have the
courage of his convictions, there is the more practical point that the club
committee may well want to investigate a complaint and wish to know who made it
in the first place.

In any case, complaints about the state of the Belfry,
however justified – and unfortunately they usually are – get us no further
unless they are accompanied by some suggestion as to how the state of affairs
might be improved.  Ever since the first
Belfry was built, people have been complaining about it, and almost any
constructive suggestion will be examined by the Hut Warden and the Committee –
but vague general complaints are no use.

Other letters ‘knocked’ members of the club.  Again, by all means do this if you feel it is
justified, helpful or useful – but don’t expect the B.B. to publish a letter
calling another member something derogatory. It may well be fair comment to say “we would be more impressed by X’s
argument if we saw him down a cave more often” for example, but it is NOT fair
comment to call X a useless loud mouthed twit. State the fact, and leave any judgement to the readers.

One last letter was short and to the point.  The writer complained that the siting of the
mail box just above the dustbin caused him to bang his head on the sharp
corners of the mail; box whenever he put things into the dustbin or emptied
it.  Although he did not give his name,
at least he deserves a pat on the back for using and emptying the dustbin.  Let us hope that the bangs on the head which
he gets may act as a constant reminder for him to write to the B.B.

“Alfie”

Barbecue 19th June

Get in touch with Pete Franklin for details.  TICKETS will be issued and possession of one
will ensure GRUB and BOOZE.  Don’t forget
the date and don’t forget your ticket.

Letter To the Editor, Belfry Bulletin

14461 D Redhill Ave.
Tustin,
California, 92680
U.S.A.

7th March 1971

Dear Alfie,

When I made my short visit to

England last Christmas, the current
topic of conversation seemed to be the removal of fixed tackle from St.
Cuthbert’s Swallet.  This subject is an
annual event, and perhaps rightly so. Times have changed somewhat since its installation in the cave – better
techniques and equipment may have put some of the arguments for its
installation out of date, and an annual discussion of the requirements is
essential.  Not being able to attend the
proposed Leader’s Meeting, I would like to put some suggestions forward.  There is certainly a lot of tackle in the
cave – should it come out?  I have
personally felt for some time that certain items could well be removed from the
cave without any problems.  In fact, the
Leader’s Meeting of 1967 decided that the maypole tackle should come out.  This involves only the Maypole Pitch ladder
which is to be replaced with a system similar to that used on Pulley
Pitch.  This was ratified by the club committee
at the time and, to my knowledge, this still stands.  As the bug hunting up there revealed nothing
to date, the tackle could be removed. That really ends the problem of Maypole. If, however, the leaders want to get rid of the chains and Pulley Pitch
attachments, then this is another issue – and one with which I could not
agree.  For the remainder of the cave,
there are many items which could be removed which will not cause any undue
problems except to make the trips a little longer.  I have always felt that the only reason that
St. Cuthbert’s has been relatively free of accidents has been because of the
fixed items in the Old Route – mainly the ladders on the Arête and Ledge
Pitches and the ladder and chain at the bottom of the Wire Rift over Waterfall
Pitch.  The reminder of the tackle on the

Old Route
serves no purpose at all – that is, the Mud Hall Pitch and the three-runged
ladder near Pillar Chamber.  The upper
parts of the

Old Route
– Wire Rift to Arête – really want the tackle kept in as this is where most of
the weaker tourist parties meet trouble. It is mainly a mental attitude on their part, I’ve no doubt, but the
struggle up the Wire Rift with the thought of climbing back up the entrance
rift on a first trip can be very considerable. Many leaders are quite aware of this problem I’ve no doubt.

The other items of tackle in the cave are quite easily dealt
with.  Those which serve no useful
purpose are the chain in Rabbit Warren Extension; the chain on Water Shute
(take a rope if necessary) and Stal Pitch chain (which has already been removed
about 1966).  On the other hand, the
chains on the Great Gour and Pyrolusite really ought to stay as these climbs
are fairly difficult.  For me, the
Pyrolusite climb would be impossible, as it would for most people if they are
honest with themselves.

Whilst on the subject of tackle and general ‘upkeep’ of the
cave, what about removing the steel ladder from the entrance shaft itself?  What about the repair and cleaning of the
flood pipes by the entrance?  The pipes
have worked well over the last five years, and only on a handful occasions has
the cave been closed due to flooding in the depression.  Before the laying down of the pipes, the
closing of the cave was a regular winter feature.

See you at the end of April, I hope.

                        “Wig”

Editor’s
Note:    Apart from it being most welcome
to receive a letter from ‘Wig’; this is the sort of subject which could well be
aired more in the B.B.  By putting points
of view on controversial subjects such as this one, members can not only make
sure that their views become known to the club in general, but those who have
the decisions to take obtain a much better view of member’s feelings.  Has anyone a different set of ideas about the
Cuthbert’s tackle?  Is the subject of
gating and restriction of entry to caves still one which arouses strong
feelings?  How about the Belfry?  The committee?  The Annual Dinner?  The A.G.M.? The B.B.?  These are a number of
subjects on which your views could be of interest.  Drop us a line.  S.J. Collins, Lavender Cottage, Bishop Sutton,
Nr.

Bristol, is
the address.

Measuring thre Aggressiveness of Water to Calcium Carbonate

A Background Article….

by Roger Stenner

The Cave Research Group of

Great Britain has recently
published two papers which I wrote on the measurement of the aggressiveness of
water to calcium carbonate.  The term
‘aggressiveness’ refers to the quantity of calcium carbonate which water will
either dissolve or deposit.

Many B.E.C. members helped in the collection of samples, and
some have asked if I could explain what I was doing without going intro a lot
of chemistry.  This is what I will try to
do in this article, at the same time explaining how the project started.

Back in 1965, I started measuring calcium and magnesium
concentrations to find out more about the streams flowing through St Cuthbert’s
Swallet; in particular trying to find out if variations in hardness coincided
with the temperature variations, that had been discovered.  As is the unfortunate way in which science
work, the work uncovered more problems than it solved.  I wanted to add the measurement of
aggressiveness to the properties being measured.  By the end on 1966, I was able to start
measuring aggressiveness by there different methods.  One was by measuring the dissolved carbon
dioxide and calculating the aggressive carbon dioxide.  The second was by calculation form the
acidity of the water (pH value) as it changed when the water was shaken with
calcium carbonate.  The third was to
measure the increase in hardness when the water is shaken in calcium carbonate
– the direct measurement.  Calcium
carbonate is the major component of limestone. When it dissolves in water, caves form. When it is deposited by water, cave formations grow – so the measurement
should be useful in many kinds of studies in caves.

The three methods measure the same thing, so the results
should have agreed with each other.  By
the summer of 1967, it became clear that they didn’t.  They worked very well in laboratories, but
laboratories and caves like Cuthbert’s are not exactly mutually
compatible.  I had an idea of trying to
get a method which would be reliable in places like Cuthbert’s, described as
‘in the field’ since this phase is normally used to describe work done outside
the laboratory – and in any case Cuthbert’s is in a field.

To establish a reliable method for measuring aggressiveness
in the field, the reasons for the errors in the three methods already used
would have to be found, and one of them would have to be adapted to avoid the
errors.  I would then have to prove that
the adapted method worked.  The previous
two years experience gave me a pretty good idea where the errors were coming
from, and how to side-step them – but a load of statistics would be needed for
the proof.  This could be done by
studying the streams in G.B. cave for a year, sampling weekly.  Temperature and discharge (stream size)
measurements taken at the time of sampling could be expected to give a great
deal of information about hydrology of the system at the same time as the
necessary data for evaluating the aggressiveness measurement procedure was
being collected.

Why take measurements in G.B. rather that in St. Cuthbert’s
where so much of the early work done? G.B. has a fairly straight forward steam system, easily covered
comprehensively in a short time, and a feasibility study of St. Cuthbert’s
ruled out this cave on each of the three fundamental criteria.  To explain this in more detail is beyond the
scope of an article such as this, and interested readers will be able to find
out more about this in an the appropriate Cuthbert’s Report.

The fate of the project now depended on being able to obtain
£200 for apparatus and chemicals.  An
application to the Scientific Research in Schools Committee of the Royal
Society was successful, and, in addition to the money, I now had two
enthusiastic chemists from the

University of
Bristol to supervise
the work – Professor Everett, Dean of the faculty of Science, and Dr. Nickless,
who teaches advanced chemistry.  I was
completely astounded to find that I had free use to tens of thousands of pounds
worth of the latest equipment.  I took
advantage of this to extend the original scope of the work to include an
investigation into changes in trace element concentrations when pure calcium
carbonate is added.  These results might
be useful outside the limited scope of the aggressiveness measurement.  The results form the basis of another paper
to the C.R.G. which is not yet published.

The U.B.S.S. very kindly gave permission for the work to be
carried out in G.B. cave, and 1968 became an endless sequence of sampling and
analysis, with the odd surveying trips in Cuthbert’s to prove that a change is
good as a rest.  A prep room in school was
littered with polythene bottles, automatic burettes, ion exchange columns and
all sorts of reagents and apparatus, including an extremely pretty crucible and
lid made of platinum.  Any free periods
and dinner breaks were spent making sure that one set of samples were finished
before the next load were collected. Thirty hours a week were added to the normal teaching load, and holidays
spent in the university labs.  After the
July floods there were less samples to analyse, but more time was spent on the trace
element analysis, so the work load stayed the same.  After the flood it was not possible to stick
to regular weekly sampling, and after eleven months, a bout of flu gave me an
excuse to call a halt.  1969 was spent
tabulating, computing and evaluating results, writing up the work and using
X-ray fluorescent spectrometry for the trace element work.

The results established a procedure based on the direct
measurement, with the welcome advantage of very great simplicity.  The method and its limitations are explained
in a C.R.G. paper.  From G.B., several
facts about limestone solution have been discovered by the use of this
method.  It is also being used by several
other people, who are finding it worth while to measure aggressiveness.

My own work is continuing in two directions.  First, I am measuring aggressiveness using
natural limestones of known composition, finding the effects of minor
components in the rock and water – particularly magnesium.  Secondly, I am using the new computer at the
university to complete the analysis of the results from G.B.

What is the use of all this work to cavers?  Indirectly, it will lead to a better
understanding of the process which create and decorate caves which will surely
help cavers in the future, particularly as the more obvious sites to dig get
fewer.  Also, the results so far obtained
may encourage the Bristol Waterworks Company to fight quarrying concerns when
they want to expand into caving areas. The major risings have particular characteristics which make them
particularly vulnerable to the Bristol Waterworks.  They posses for instance, a marked
attenuation of discharge response to rainfall. These characteristics depend largely on the slowly evolved limestone
surfaces which are therefore very much in the interests of the waterworks to
preserve.

Now to the direct usefulness to cavers.  It would be useful in the exploration of
sumps from the downstream end, especially at complicated junctions.  Again, it could in certain cases give an
indication of whether or not an inlet stream comes from a major undiscovered
cave system.  As an example, the final
drip in the downstream passage in G.B. could only have come from a stal
decorated passage or chamber, well ventilated, draining into a muddy boulder
ruckle.  Obviously, this is fitted by the
ladder dig extension, but the drip was known long before the ladder dig
discoveries were made, and, had the method been available then, this could have
been deduced from the drip.  Although
these uses are limited they deserve to be applied a good deal more than they
have been at present.

For anyone interested in this, I will be happy to do the
analysis if they are prepared to collect the samples – 60cc bottles don’t take
up much room in a pocket.  I can also
supply sample bottles, so please get in touch with me if you have place where
you think the method could be used.  My
address is, R.D. Stenner,

38
Paultow Road,
Bristol
BS3 4PS.

*****************************************

Scientific articles are always welcome, and go to show that
there are members of the B.E.C. who are engaged in furthering the scientific
study of caves.  Members will be glad to
hear that Roger has just been awarded his M.Sc. for this work.

Christmas Puzzle

Prizes of pints of beer go to ‘Sett’ for being the first to
produce the right answer, which was BOB BAGSHAW and to Alan Kennet for the best
mathematical solution.

Torridon 70

by Steve Grime

After the summer courses with sixty students in each, we
were looking forward to a quiet time in September with just sixteen boys to
cater for.  The course started with a
bang.  A big one – for Tony Cardwell and
myself when we tried to motor through a weegee bus with the land rover.  We were not quite successful.  Tony’s head went through the windscreen, and
he got cut up a bit.  I banged a two inch
deep hole in the glove compartment.  He
ended up in hospital for a week and I was put to bed with orders not to move
for three days.

I was fit for the first expedition – a thirty mile walk
taking three days, and the weather was fine for the first two days.  The main six day expedition was to be in the
Torridon Hills which neither Tony or myself had been before, except for some
low level climbing on wet days.

A fine drizzle accompanied us over our hill and all the way
to Torridon.  We pitched camp down by the
river and, as we were doing so, the cloud cleared slightly and a watery sun
dribbled down on us.  So, after a brew,
it was ‘on P.A.’s’ and away to the crag where we pranced around in manner
supposed to show the boys how to do it.

Sunday didn’t dawn – it just came in with the tide.  Typical west coast weather.  It was bolted down on us with no sign of a
break.  We told the lads to stay in their
sleeping bags for the day, and settled ourselves down to a day of tea and cards
and seeing who could hold on longest before having to brave the weather for a
leak.

The weather did clear for a while in the late afternoon and
Tony and I went for a stroll down to the beach. We saw that the tourist information office was open and so we strolled
in.  We took a few leaflets and paid our
bob to boggle at the stuffed wild life in the natural history section and then
waded back to the camp.

It was from these pamphlets that we read about Coire Mhui
Fhearcher, and the germ of an idea born. It must be obvious that not everyone fancies climbing, and with this
particular bunch of lads, only half of them were really interested, and as we
see no point in pushing people, we decided to concentrate on those that were
keen.  The plan was to take tents and
food up into the coire (two thousand feet) and climb from there.

On the Monday, we set off. Three instructors and four boys. One of the instructors had only just joined us, and he was for the
sailing side and had never seen a hill in his life.  We arrived at the coire at 1 pm and pitched
camp.  Tony said he wanted to have a
closer look at the huge buttresses which rose above us into a cloudless
sky.  These buttresses are a thousand
feet high and are composed of quartzite resting on a sandstone base.  It was along the junction that Tony wished to
traverse, a five to six hundred yards.

I took the boys over to see some small problem stuff – about
ninety feet of vicious climbing, and we enjoyed ourselves for a couple of hours
in the sunshine.  Occasionally we looked
for Tony, but the scale is so vast that a human sized object is lost.

Eventually, we heard shouts coming from the cliff, and there
was our sailing instructor on his first climb doing his first tension traverse
and seemingly suitably impressed.  As
dusk closed in, our two ‘hard men’ arrived at the tents, one radiant – the other
ashen.  Living conditions were cramped
and soon humour had the upper hand as sweaty feet vied with pipes for the most
persuasive odour, each one gaining points for its strength and the owner of the
top scorer being threatened with eviction.

As the moon came up, we stepped out of the tent to look at
the cliff above us.  The setting was
superb, the triple buttress soaring into the velvet darkness of the night sky –
utter quiet but for the distant sigh of the wind on the ridge eleven hundred
feet above us.  The site of the camp
itself nestled in a hollow by the side of the loch with the moon reflected in
its mirror-like surface.

The following morning we were up bright and early.  The sun was not yet over the ridge and the
air smelt crisp and clean.  The sky was
pale blue with a wisp of frontal cloud drifting across it with promise of a
good day.  As we were but prospecting the
area, we decided to split up into two parties and climb up gullies of five
hundred feet or so to get a better look and the arêtes.  To the east there was a beautiful wall about
four hundred and fifty feet high that was as smooth as the proverbial bum.  It even had the cheeky bulge halfway up and
the rest was quite vertical.

Leaving the tents, my lads and I climbed our gully at a
reasonable speed but were thankful for our helmets as the rock is not all that
sound and the odd boulder jumped out at us. On reaching the top of the Ben Eighe ridge, we struck off east to look
for the others.  We stood at the top of
their gully and shouted.  Their answer
was lost in the echoes.  Looking down, I
could see that a descent for two hundred feet or so was quite practicable do
taking two ropes; I set off down the thing. It was fortunate that I did as the rock was even worse than in our gully
and Tony could hardly move without bombarding his rope with young
boulders.  However, a fixed top rope
sorted that problem out and soon we were all at the top.  We then decided to do the ridge and a
wonderful day.  Of course, we met at the
usual bumbly in shoes who told us that one of the pinnacles was ‘quite
severe’.  Rubbish!  From the final cairn, we struck of down
beautiful scree to the northeast and the road, where we were picked up by the
bods who had stayed behind.

We spent the night in our base camp and the next morning set
off for the coire again with another bunch of lads.  The agenda was much the same but that day we
did some further pushing of the arêtes. The guide book is out of print at the moment, so for us it was real
exploration work and all the more enjoyable for that.

The coire itself is fantastic and well worth camping in for
a week.  There are good sites for tents
at the southwest edge of the loch and the scenery is pure joy on its own, the
climbing adding that final touch that makes it Utopia.

One bad note.  It
takes two hours to reach the road, and the nearest boozer is nine miles away.

Those Spelaeodes

Having become rather tired of announcing that copies of the
Spelaeodes ‘will shortly be available’, we have kept quiet until there is
absolutely no doubt about it.  You can
now buy them in a 91 page printed booklet with a glossy colour cover, printed
by the Cheddar Valley Press and published by Barton Productions at a discount
price of 55p (11/-) which is 5p (1/-) less that that charged by bookshops
etc.  Get in touch with Alfie (S.J.
Collins, Lavender Cottage, Bishop Sutton.

Bristol.)

The drawings – by ‘Jok’ Orr – are really fist class and are
alone worth the price of the book.

The Western Dailey Press says:

‘If you know all about bedding
planes, rifts and boulder piles and what it is like to be life lined on a
pitch, these vigorous and highly grotesque tales of underworld characters will
undoubtedly amuse.’

The Wessex Journal writes:

‘Should be in every caver’s
pocket for the moments when life gets tedious.’

Profits after all printing and publishing expenses have been
paid ARE GOING TO THE B.E.C.

Occasional Writings of the Climbing Section

by Roy Marshall

The rapidly expanding climbing section frequently holds
meets in ‘foreign’ parts.  These are
usually North Wales or

Cornwall.  The Lakes and

Scotland are occasionally graced by
our presence.  I use the term ‘Climbing
Section’ to include all those whose main interest is climbing rather than
caving.  Just as we cave, there are many
of the caving section who climb.

As we are a relatively small group, we carry out most of our
activities as a group.  One such meeting
took place in December in
North Wales.  On the Friday night we pitched out tents
under a cloudy sky.  It does not seem
right to dismiss pitching tents in one sentence.  Anyone who has camped in the

Llanberis
Pass knows of the strong winds that blow
up the pass at night, and the Welsh trick of placing rocks just where you want
to place your tent peg.  To compensate
for this, one places boulders on the guy ropes to stop the pegs pulling
out.  This results in a primitive walled
encampment on the lee side of any hill.

That is, it always used to be the lee side.  After we had all gone to sleep, the wind,
contrary to its usual custom, blew DOWN the pass.  One was awakened by curses and the wild
flapping of canvas.  One fly sheet almost
took off, nearly taking the tent with it. The fly sheet was ruined, thus allowing the tent to leak.

In the morning, we surveyed the damage and made what repairs
we could.  The damaged tent was collapsed
and weighted down with rocks. This was the Saturday morning.  Due to alarming foresight, someone had booked
our breakfasts at the Pen-y-Pas.  We
arrived to finds our tables marked ‘Reserved for the bat-men.’  I suppose some acknowledgement of this
characterisation was indicated, but at nine thirty in the morning, enthusiasm
was rather lacking.

The weather was what the weather men call ‘changeable’ –
raining most of the time and drizzling the rest.  We drove out of the rain to Ogwen, walking
from there to Idwal Slabs.  I was immediately
reminded of an article in a previous B.B. – Sell’s Baptism.  This was more of a confirmation.  We were all at various stages of routes on
the slabs when it began raining.  The
skies emptied.  Rivers ran down the face
only to be blown back up to repeat their misery by the high winds.  An experience of this sort either confirms or
breaks any mountaineering spirit.  In a
small way, I think we all felt this was real mountaineering.  Many will disagree that it was, but what is
the difference between rock climbing and mountaineering?

A slight misunderstanding between certain members and a
barman ended a quiet crib game and Saturday evening.

A peaceful night gave way to a fine Sunday.  After breakfast, we moved off together toward
Cern Las.  The whole party finally
reached the bottom of Cern Las, it was decided to climb up to
Snowdon.  Skirting Cern Las, we climbed up the marshy
ground towards the Snowdon Ridge.  As we
climbed up into the clouds, our visibility decreased, the gully got steeper and
steeper.  Eventually we were bridging up
a narrow gully on friable rock.  It was
in this gully that we found our only snow – a four foot cube.

We at last emerged exhausted into the freezing wind at the
top of the ridge.  With hands deep in
pockets we moved across the frosty ridge towards zig-zags to go down to the Pyg
Track.  As we all knew the way along the
Pyg track, we were again straggled out under
Snowdon.  One by one we staggered into Pen-y-Pas.  Pints of hot ribena rounded off our meet
before we started to make our way back to

Bristol.

Monthly Crossword – Number 10.

Across:

1. Pulls on rope to two
directions. (4)
4. Rude and Crude song. (1,1,1,1)
8. Swildons way. (3)
9. This ground for caving. (5)
10. You could be wedged in this like the last part! (7)
14. Cuthbert’s boulders. (5)
16. Comes but once a year (1,1,1)
17. Caver’s route. (4)
14. Part of 7 down (4)

Down:

1. 1 across ends in opposite
direction. (4)
2. Wet R.A. underground. (5)
5. A Swildons sump (3)
6. Change race and take this underground. (4)
7. 18 across is a part of these. (7)
11. Stony in Stoke. (5)
12. Pitch in stranded rope? (4)
13. Traditional last word? (2)
15. Needing gut? (2)

Solution To Last Month’s Crossword

Stencils 28.4.71