With Tom in Spain and Phil not caving because "no one else wants to", a rather diminished team set off for Rumbling Hole. Many TNC members have tried on many occasions to get to the bottom of Rumbling, but to date none had succeeded. This was going to be the night.
With the rope securely belayed on a fence post we descended the steep grass slope to the edge of the open pitch and the first of the p-hangers. As I began to rig the first of the Y-hangs on an undercut ledge John dropped down to the first bolt and turned on his lamp.
Unfortunately no light was forthcoming from the main bulb but all was not lost as the back up lamp did work. To make life brighter John decided to swap the back up bulb into the centre of the reflector, but turning the bezel resulted in a tinkling noise as the rotating reflector decapitated the one good bulb. Carrying a knife is regarded as a neccessity on SRT trips but we didn't relaise that this was to enable you to unscrew the remanents of a bulb from your lamp.
A ledge next to the traverse line served as a handy work bench for John as he tried all possible combinations of bulbs we had spare and switch settings but to no avail. Feeling there was no need to go in seach of an epic trip we erred on the side of caution and made our way back to the van, for once dry and warm. Once again Rumbling had repelled the TNC.
With the rope securely belayed on a fence post we descended the steep grass slope to the edge of the open pitch and the first of the p-hangers. As I began to rig the first of the Y-hangs on an undercut ledge John dropped down to the first bolt and turned on his lamp.
Unfortunately no light was forthcoming from the main bulb but all was not lost as the back up lamp did work. To make life brighter John decided to swap the back up bulb into the centre of the reflector, but turning the bezel resulted in a tinkling noise as the rotating reflector decapitated the one good bulb. Carrying a knife is regarded as a neccessity on SRT trips but we didn't relaise that this was to enable you to unscrew the remanents of a bulb from your lamp.
A ledge next to the traverse line served as a handy work bench for John as he tried all possible combinations of bulbs we had spare and switch settings but to no avail. Feeling there was no need to go in seach of an epic trip we erred on the side of caution and made our way back to the van, for once dry and warm. Once again Rumbling had repelled the TNC.
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