Really pleased and proud that my eldest daughter, Emma, has become a qualified cave leader (in addition to her mountain leader). She only started doing outdoor activities in her 40s, despite all my previous efforts.

My other daughter Claire was her assistant in the assessment making sure clients were clipped on properly for belays. Well done to her too.

Shows if you put your mind to something and enjoy it, anything is possible. Inspiring!

#outdoors #caving #hiking #walking #inspirational

Gaping Gill main shaft, a ~100m deep open cave shaft on Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales was climbed yesterday (probably for only the second time) by a friend's son's friend - Josh Jardine.

#caves #climbing #yorkshiredales #caving

Last week, I put away all my #caving and underground vertical gear that we used in the cave rescue course, then pulled out #hiking, #climbing, #paddling, and hotel travel stuff for that week's adventures.
This past Monday, I packed climbing, #backpacking, #rappelling, and car #camping gear for *this* week's adventures.
I'm tempted to go #biking tomorrow, just so I will have touched basically every piece of non-snow-related outdoor gear I own within three weeks! 😁

Also I keep meaning to post about this stuff, but we are too busy *doing* it (and packing for it, and unpacking / cleaning gear from it) for me to sit down and write about it. Maybe next week... 😇

A day late but happy international bat day!

A small early cluster of Gray Bats in a recent cave. Gray Bats are endangered as they have very specific needs and roost together in the tens of thousands or more. This means they are reliant on just a couple of very specific caves, and also susceptible to disease because of the tight clustering in large numbers. Luckily, they have been generally resistant to the fungus that causes White Nose Syndrome.

(Photographed with permission, using low light, during a period when they are not hibernating or nursing young)

#bat #bats #nature #cave #caves #caving #biology #BatAppreciationDay #Baturday

In the 2nd Talk of the day - Andrew Northall taked about Caving (he really does that for fun!?) and how he collects and analyzes accident reports into structured data. One problem was the specificity of Data - he solved that by adding Treebeard to have a hierarchy of data that can be searched.

#DjangoCon #ai #caving