Okay,Firstly thankyou to the services who were called after an alarm being raised and a collection is being made to donate and whether a rescue was or wasnt made it makes no difference because all preparations for a rescue swung into action and we were and are still very grateful so thankyou very much.
my name is all over this and I will just post here an explanation of what happened as I got it from the police and hopefully it will stop this thread degenerating into a slanging match. also just so people know that one lad in the group had not been underground before, everyone else had. the thread on 28dayslater is still there as far as I am aware but you will probably have to register to see it.
I will answer any sensible questions that anyone wants to ask totally honestly and to the best of my abilty.
Here is what I posted on 28dayslater as being my account of what happened.
WELL FOLKS, it was interesting to say the least and we had a fantastic weekend but for the cause of clarification here is what happened...Before embarking upon the CRTT I had made arrangements with Morrisey to call the cave rescue services if he had not heard from me by 12 midnight on the Sunday, this is common sense and anyone who does mines and caves will tell you the same. On the day we intended to arrive at the Carpark by 8.30 am and set off by 9am to walk the hour plus long walk up to the Rhosydd Adit and go underground before 10am and so giving ourselves 14 hours to complete the trip but as it happens we didnt get there as planned and ended up two hours behind schedule and only leaving ourselves 11.5 hours to complete the trip for 14 people and as we discovered this was not really adequate...Oh for the gift of hindsight.
Just for the record, we had experienced people on the trip who have done the CRTT before and who really had their work cut out having to rig and re-rig setups for all sorts of people of varying physical abilities and believe me when I say that safety was number one priority and no corner was cut at all, wait for the video to see the technical ability and extra work that went far beyond the norm into making it possible and ofcourse this all took more precious time, it would also be worth noting that we had First aiders on the trip along with life vests our own dinghy, maps and more than enough food, drinks, clothing and torches etc to last a small army for a few days, so we were as prepared as we could be to do the CRTT. On the Saturday before the trip Bigjobs ,Shocktictacs, Ojay and Rigsby set up a rope from a rockface at our campsite and gave everyone some instruction about the equipment and how to use it also how to descend and ascend the rope, bigjobs then sorted out gear for everyone for the next day.
The trip once underground went absolutely faultlessly and we all had the most amazing time, we where all safe and well instructed and our only mistake was under estimating the duration of our trip time, this being said our safety net measure kicked in as planned and Morrisey contacted the Services as arranged at midnight and we would like to thank him for being kind enough to do it for us, and so the process began and here are the facts as given to me, The police attended the cwm carpark and found our vehicles still there and the helicopter would have been dispatched if the weather was not so filthy just incase we had exited via the west twill and were lost coming back to the carpark which I believe is frighteningly easy to do although adit 9 was always Bigjobs exit point and never the twill, however in the absence of the Helicopter two members of cave rescue did turn out to the twill just in case we had exited there and were wandering about and almost getting lost themselves in the very bad rain, In the meantime we had made contact and found our way safely back to the carpark were two Policemen were waiting for us, they were very nice and happy that we had returned safely.
So there you have it folks we had a brilliant weekend and we took all precautions that needed to be taken and we cannot be slated for it (no pun intended) we just underestimated the time involved and we were caught in the safety net that we put in place and I am sure that any single person on that trip will tell you that this was preferable to having an incident below ground and having no backup or safety measures in place.
We would also like to say thanks to Morrisey for being our fallback and staying up late for us on a Sunday night and also we would like to thank the North Wales Cave rescue who do this kind of stuff for no pay and in all sorts of weather, I will be messaging the members who attended the trip to cobble together a donation of sorts for the North Wales Cave Rescue because if we really did have an emergency on Sunday then these are the people who would be coming to our rescue.
I hope that this goes some way to explaining what happened and I did get it from the Horses mouth at NW Police.
As I said previously I am happy to answer any serious questions honestly and to the best of my ability just to save any confusion although I am in work presently so it may not be instantly.