On Saturday 24th June 1967 at two o’clock in the afternoon, a group of ten cavers entered
Mossdale Caverns near Grassington. They split into two separate groups before going into the
cave. The first group into the cave comprised of Dave Adamson, Geoff Boireau, Bill Frakes, John
Ogden, Michael Ryan and Colin Vickers, with the intention of going to the extreme end of the
known cave and to attempt to remove a blockage that had prevented further progress for a number
of years.
The second group, Jim Cunningham, Morag Forbes, John Shepherd, and Collette Lord, intended only
to go as far as Rough Chamber, an underground journey taking about forty minutes, and then
return to the surface.
Bob Gillibrand was a member of Ken Pearce’s 1963 Gouffre Berger Expedition. At that time the cave was the deepest known cave in the world. Viewing a recent video on YouTube has stirred these memories for Bob.
Browsing on YouTube recently I came across the video ”Gouffre Berger 2014 V5 congre's"The video starts at the first sump (Syphon). The diver finds in the sump a "Tadpole" cylinder from the 1963 British Expedition. As he moves the cylinder you can make out rusting piano wire binding before the disturbed silt obscures the view. This brought back many memories from the 1963 expedition.
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by Frank Barnes
It was spring time 1964, a few caving friends and I were walking through Kingsdale in the Yorkshire Dales near to the cave resurgence of Keld Head, when we saw two men, one was sat on the grass bank grinning and the other running completely naked along the bank in big circles as though it was his way of drying himself off after diving in the cave rising, he was a huge man for a caver.
I remember saying to my friends, who the hell are they? One of them thought the big man was Ken Pearce and the other was Mike Boon, both cave explorers of renown.
I am one of the five; I have been through Langstroth sumps (one and two!) I did not want to, but
our C.D.G. members are very vain, and decided that they wanted photographs of themselves at the
other side. I was the only available fool with a caving camera and diving experience. Of course
they couldn't tell me, or I wouldn't have gone, so they carefully made arrangements to dive Dale
Barn, suggesting that I take photographs in the new passages before the sump. This was, of
course, to make me bring my camera, and also explain the presence of their diving gear. 
under the tutelage of
Jim Cunningham, an experienced caver and Wanderers member at the time. Graham Proudlove and I
were at school together where Jim was a physics teacher. We'd read a couple of caving books
borrowed from the local library and decided that a life of adventure underground was for us. Our
geography teacher, David Pack (a man of the finest calibre on whom I could write a book!)
organised youth hostelling visits to the Dales and Jim was one of the staff who used to give up
his free time to help out