Date: 2008-04-09. Tags: brighton, ninjas, srt, storage tunnel, uk

Present: Jondoe, Loops, Otter, Alias, Little Elvis, dsankt

With a name like Colossus of the South the preconceptions are a little hard to shake. Like Gargantua in Toronto the name alone demands your attention. COTS is a multilevel stormwater/storage system built under scenic Brighton. While the children frollick above a trickle of water flows inside the 6m lower storage tunnel far below. Come hell and highwater the collected rain runs from upper COTS just below street level and drops the 100 odd feet down into lower COTS. Colossus is certainly the right word.

There are plugholes of various sizes which join the upper and lower systems together, one of which tonight we planned to abseil. The specific plughole on the agenda was roughly 80ft tall. It's not a long drop but promised to be fun. Below an unremarkable manhole is a small balcony overlooking a 20ft tall cavity into which part of upper COTS discharges. This circular cavity is known as Eddies Vortex by way of the worker graffiti. In the floor of the cavity is a smaller diameter shaft of ~20ft which drops another 80ft into lower COTS. There are no ladders leading to the vortex but we'd brought 2 ropes and a bunch of hardware.

Neither of our ropes were long enough for the entire drop so my 80ft rope anchored above the balcony to reach the vortex, then the offical Sub-urban Confluence rope was set for the second pitch down the shaft. Two large metal I-beams protruding from the concrete above provided fine anchors even if they were coated in a mysterious substance looking similar to xenomorph blood, minus the hissing of course. The join in the ropes was positioned at the vortex with a spare cowstail as a safety while the user stood at the vortex and changed ropes. This would be Zero's first descent since highschool and the drop alone was more than enough of a deep end to hurl him into without throwing change-overs into the mix.

I descended to the vortex level to slightly reposition the rope join and evaluate the amount of water swirling around the vortex and into the shaft. A small inaccuracy in the stacking of the concrete rings which make up the shaft produced a lip which sprayed the waterfall out. Even on the 'dry' side we'd be getting soaked tonight.



Wrapped in a ropebag cloak near impermeable to the elements I dangled my legs into the shaft, wiggled my ass to the very edge of the rounded lip and popped in. The rope stretched and I dropped about a foot then bobbed around in Eddie's plughole vapors. I love these moments of freedom just dangling above the drop, slowly taking in the view. SRT has become a significant component of these adventure opening access to things we'd never have imagined in the past. Confluence, NASA, Mineral King... some of my favourite adventures have been built on the backbone of this fragile lifeline.

The abseil was pretty straight forward: cruise down the side until you reach the saturation section, hit the turbo button then scoot to the bottom, lastly jump between the churn blocks out of the downpour. I dropped into what Alias humorously referred to as the 'Bowels of Brighton', easy compared to the likes of Mineral King . Afterwards the Otter dropped in nervously, jerked his way down and reached the bottom. Lucky for him the ropebag-cloak of prot is +1 vs Waterfalls.



Stoop was unable to join us on this trip his excuse being "I've already had a shower". Jd not to be excluded took a shower of his own. From above he shot down quickly through the water, then curiously pushed right out into thick spray just metres from the ground to dangle squarely under the waterfall. It's only water right?

We derigged and stowed the sodden ropes about 4am, piled out of the manhole and began the 45 minute hike back to the vehicle. I vaguely remember arriving home about 7am, waking up Gremlin and rolling into bed. Don't doubt my respect for clean bed linen and personal hygiene I was clean as could be. I just showered in Brighton's finest.

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