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Photograph of the volcano formation in Witches II Cave

Wade's Entrance - A Description

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This article is mainly based on "Bar Pot and Flood Entrance Pot" written by Phil Johnstone and Colin Boothroyd, and published by the Lancaster University Speleological Society in 1978. It also contains information from an article by John Cordingley published in the CPC Record 20, October 1990.

Wade's Entrance is a small hole in the ground some 28 m from Flood Entrance Pot towards Gaping Gill Main Shaft (see surface survey). It leads to a 2 m climb down and a short passage to the top of a long narrow rift. From here, a 23 m pitch drops down the rift (cross section) and into Flood Entrance Passage just below the Portcullis. The rift, in fact, is the same one that contains the first two pitches of Flood Entrance Pot (survey).

Nine metres down it is possible to get off the ladder on to a ledge of jammed rocks and enter a parallel aven, with much flowstone on the walls and water entering at the top. It can be free-climbed for some 8 m, to where the water emerges from a passage which rapidly becomes too immature to follow.