System News

This was orginally posted on UK Caving.com by Pete Knight, and with his permisson, this has been posted on this site. All pictures by Pete.

I just thought some of you might be interested in this observation about the water levels in Peak. A few of us had a visit to the Cavern today (5th April 2018) with a vague hope of going up Victoria Aven and taking some pics. 

Walking up on the surface, the river was about 4-5 inches over the usual step and distinctly brown as expected. As we entered the gorge, the water from Peak Resurgence was running high but was nearly clear. The water from Slop Moll and Russet was high and brown. To me this indicated the flood from Peak was well on the way down but the slightly delayed Speedwell watercourse was still at higher levels, all be it probably also dropping now.

The water levels in the Peak showcave had dropped sufficiently since the Cavern had to curtail the tours 2 days previously (3rd), although the staff were still clearing up a bit of mud from Lumbago that had appeared overnight. Apparently Speedwell had been flooded at the Bottomless Pit yesterday (4th) and that water probably came through overnight and topped up the pool at Lumbago. I'd heard from John that cavers had been turned back by water levels at the Whirlpool in Speedwell this morning.

We dropped in past the gate and down to the very quiet Halfway House at around 11am today and found the water was ponded wall to wall, about 8 feet deep possibly at the point the stream usually runs.

Realising the Victoria Aven trip was not on, we headed out and Irene kindly allowed us to pop up into the Krypton Series while Jarvis Cocker's crew were setting up his gig. A couple of hours later and we'd convinced ourselves to go back to the streamway and swim up to see what state the Wallows were in. Kind of a case of lets have a look as we might not get the chance again. After a rapid return to the vehicles and the addition of some neoprene, we were back up at the Halfway House for 2pm, 3 hours after the first photos.

As you can see the water has dropped somewhere between 1.5 and 2 feet over the 3 hours. In the hour we were further upstream we noticed a further drop of another half a foot at this point and the roof of the Halfway House passage was almost visible at water height. Between 2pm and 3pm we were up at Buxton Water taking some pictures. The water levels at the dam end were well flowing but not anything dramatic. The second half of the Five Arches walking upstream was mainly as it usually is all be it with about 6 inches of flowing water. I must admit that we took the opportunity to have a swim at the Halfway House before leaving as an alternative to the usual scrub down. Who knew when we'd get the chance again!

So no great surprises or insightful observations, it was just nice to see this process happening today and I thought it was worth sharing.