South Wales Caves

Pant Mawr Pot Description

Pant Mawr Pot is located on the moors about a 4 km walk from the South Wales Caving Club. The cave is on private Cnewr Estate land and a permit to visit the cave should be obtained and carried with you on your approach to the cave (see Cambrian Caving Council for details). The entrance shaft is located in a deep shakehole and can be difficult to spot in poor weather conditions (map). A steel stake allows for the rigging of a rope to descend the steep sided shakehole to a large ledge at the top of the shaft, where a ladder or rope descent for the 15m pitch can be rigged from the four available P hangers, a large jammed boulder at the top of the pitch makes this quite easy. The pitch drops you into a section of very large passage with the main stream coming in from the north and the main passage descending to the south. Following the water upstream leads to a passage of smaller proportions, which has fine phreatic shelving, this leads to a waterfall that can be climbed to reach a bedding plane passage that becomes too tight. Downstream the passage is generally very large and descends over large boulder collapses until after 120m the first boulder choke is reached, the route through being on the right. Above the second boulder choke is Straw Chamber and from here the choke can be bypassed by taking an oxbow on the right. You now enter one of the finest sections of streamway, the large passage being adorned with straws and stalactites including the Sabre that lends its name to this section of passage. From here the third boulder choke is encountered and can be passed by climbing up through into the Great Hall. Here to the right a passage - The Graveyard, that leads to climbs up to the Vestry and the Organ Loft. Back in the Great Hall the mud and boulder covered floor gently descends in this impressive chamber leading back down to a point where the stream is met. The stream is soon regained and the Fire Hydrant inlet adds to the flow of water, a small hole 2m up in the wall above it leads to 80m of very unpleasant crawling. Going Downstream on the left the Dead End can be reached by climbing up the mud bank, this short passage terminates in a series of digs. Continuing downstream the passage becomes smaller and smaller in size and is now covered with mud deposits from when the sump backs up. The last 50m are in a rift like passage, where the roof gradually lowers until the sump is met.