Mapping Inutty Putty Cave: A Field Guide
Inutty Putty Cave sits on the south side of the Pennines, near Hawes in the Yorkshire Dales. It is a limestone cave system that has been mapped extensively by members of the Yorkshire Ramblers' Club and local caving groups over several decades. The cave is notable for its clay-filled passages, siphons, and some genuinely tricky terrain that requires patience rather than speed. John Jones is one of the cavers whose name appears on many of the surveyed legs in this system. He has spent years working through the lower and middle levels, dealing with the kind of issues that only show up when you are actually down there in the dark with a tape measure and a compass. The cave maps you will find online or in print are mostly his work or done by people who worked alongside him. Here is how the mapping process actually works in practice. You enter through the main intake, which is a low entry requiring a crawl through clay. Once inside, the passage opens into a series of linked chambers and narrow fissures. You set up your survey station at the first clear point, take a bearing with a Suunto or Silva compass, measure the distance along the passage floor with a 50-meter tape, and record the inclination with an inclinometer. Then you move to the next station and repeat until you hit a bottleneck you cannot pass through without abandoning the line.
The map shows three main branches. The North Branch leads to a sump that has never been fully investigated. The Central Passage connects to a climb-up section that gives access to the upper level. The Southern Fissure is a narrow squeeze that drops steeply into what the map labels as the Downstream Gallery. Each of these branches has been partially surveyed, but gaps remain because the terrain gets progressively worse the further you go. I spent two days there last October doing a re-survey of the Central Passage. The original map was drawn from observations made in 1987, and the passage had changed significantly since then. A section of ceiling collapse had blocked about eight meters of the original route, forcing a detour through a newly opened fissure that was not on any of the published maps. I had to establish a new survey line around it, which took most of the second day because the entrance to the new fissure was only 30 centimeters wide and required me to lie on my front and pull the tape through by hand while the other person held the compass at the far end. The workaround was simple but annoying. I brought a section of 10-millimeter kernmantle rope, threaded it through the new fissure, tied a carabiner to the end, and had my partner pull it through. Then I attached the tape to the rope and dragged it through. It added about 40 minutes to the leg but saved me from having to abandon the survey altogether. You should always carry extra rope for situations like this.
One thing beginners miss with cave mapping is that magnetic deviation in limestone terrain is not always obvious. Inutty Putty Cave sits on carboniferous limestone, and while the deviation is generally small compared to basaltic caves, there are localized anomalies near ironstone concretions and mineralized fault lines. I noticed a three-degree deflection on one of my shots near the entrance to the Southern Fissure. The compass needle was stable but consistently offset from where it should have been. The fix was to take a back-sight on the previous station and correct for the rather than ignoring it. If you do not account for this, your entire downstream survey line will drift and eventually close poorly. Another counter-intuitive point: the clay in this cave is not just an annoyance, it is a data source. The clay bands contain fossil debris and sedimentary layers that can help you correlate different parts of the cave when the passage geometry alone is ambiguous. I spent a morning cataloging the fossil content of the clay near Station 14, and it turned out to match material found in a different branch that had been surveyed independently. This correlation helped confirm that the two branches were at the same stratigraphic level, which resolved a longstanding question about whether they were connected or separate systems at that horizon. There are limitations to what the current maps can tell you. The northern sump has never been dived, and the water level varies significantly with rainfall. In dry summers, the sump may drop enough to reveal passage that is otherwise submerged, but in wet conditions the entrance can be completely blocked. The maps do not reflect real-time water levels, so you should check with the local caving club before attempting anything near the sump area. There is also a risk of flash flooding from the surface sinkhole, and I have seen conditions change from passable to dangerous in under an hour after heavy rain upstream.
Get the Full Details
If you want the maps, the most complete versions are available through the British Cave Research Association library and the Yorkshire Ramblers' Club archive. Some copies are held at the Hardraw Cave Centre. Online versions exist on cave mapping forums, but they are often scanned from paper originals and can be difficult to read in the lower passages. I would recommend printing your own copy at full scale rather than relying on a phone screen underground. The cave is accessible year-round but requires a headlamp, a helmet, and basic caving gear. The entrance is unmarked from the road, and you need to follow the established track from the car park near Ingleton. The crawl entry means you should be comfortable with confined spaces. There is no through-route for the full length of the cave, and turning back is always an option if conditions deteriorate. Do not attempt this alone. The mapping of Inutty Putty Cave is far from complete. John Jones and others have done solid work, but there are still gaps, especially in the deeper sections and the sump passages. The cave rewards careful, methodical surveying and punishes haste. If you go down there, bring your own tape, check the weather forecast, and be prepared to spend more time than you expect on the simpler-looking sections.
