Jib Tunnel

Professor McKenny Hughes reported that the entrance was blocked with glacial fill until a flood in 1872, when it got washed out. He wriggled round the large boulder and reached the shaft which he estimated as being in excess of 90 m deep. In 1895 Edward Calvert, of the Yorkshire Ramblers' Club, attempted to replicate Edouard Martel's descent of the Main Shaft of a few weeks earlier, but failed to get beyond Birkbeck's Ledge at -60 m because of the quantity of water. Looking up, he could see that the shaft divided behind a curtain. Later in the year he entered Jib Tunnel, and realised that this was the parallel shaft that he had seen, and that a man could be lowered directly to the floor of…

A short wriggle between the shakehole wall and a large boulder leads into the roomy passage. After 5 m this abruptly drops 98 m to the floor of the Main Chamber. Although a direct descent is possible, a considerable waterfall enters from Spout Tunnel 12 m below the lip, so the modern route, known as Dihedral, deviates away from this to land on a ledge some 50 m down. The route then leaves the shaft to drop down the rift above the Main Chamber, before emerging through the roof and dropping the final 30 m to the floor. Spout Tunnel can be entered by swinging in from a rope or ladder. The passage becomes narrow, and after 37 m the main water enters down a 9 m pitch. Above this a further 3 m…