Eden Sike Cave facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Eden Sike Cave |
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The Resurgence for Eden Sike Cave
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| Location | Mallerstang, Cumbria, UK |
| OS grid | SD 7822 9701 |
| Length | 772 metres (2,533 ft) |
| Elevation | 397 metres (1,302 ft) |
| Geology | Carboniferous limestone |
| Entrances | 1 |
| Difficulty | II |
| Cave survey | Northern Pennine Club 1960 |
Eden Sike Cave is a small but exciting cave found in Mallerstang, a scenic area in the Eden valley of Cumbria, England. It's located about 400 meters (or 437 yards) north of a place called Hell Gill. This cave is a great example of how water shapes the land over many years.
Exploring Eden Sike Cave
The entrance to Eden Sike Cave is about 391 meters (or 428 yards) northwest of a place where water comes out of the ground, called a resurgence. You'll find the entrance in a small dip in the ground known as a shakehole. A shakehole is a bowl-shaped hollow often found in areas where limestone is common.
What's Inside the Cave?
Once you enter, you'll find a passage. One way leads you on a wet crawl downstream towards the resurgence. This means you'll be moving on your hands and knees through water. The other way goes upstream into a more open passage.
The upstream passage soon becomes a bit trickier to move through. It eventually leads to a small, challenging climb. This climb takes you into a side passage on your right. The main passage continues to a sump. A sump is a part of a cave passage that is completely filled with water. This particular sump is about 9 meters (or 30 feet) long. Explorers have managed to go another 15 meters (or 49 feet) past it before the passage became too narrow to continue.
The right-hand passage has a section with sharp, steeply angled rock. This part is sometimes called the "Bacon Slicer Rift" because of how sharp the rocks are! After this, you reach a chamber. To go further, you have to squeeze through a tight, wet passage where there's very little space above the water.
Who Explored Eden Sike Cave?
The first people to explore Eden Sike Cave were members of the Northern Pennine Club in 1960. They were the first to map out parts of the cave. Later, in 1982, the cave was made even longer by two explorers named Ian Broadhurst and Dave Lamont. They found new sections that hadn't been explored before.
The sump, the underwater part of the cave, was explored by divers. Members of the Cave Diving Group bravely dived into the sump in 1975. This showed how dedicated and skilled these cave explorers are!
