A wind with a cutting edge like Sheffield steel greeted me as I left the shelter of Trow Gill and followed a boot-scored path towards Ingleborough Hill, which was powdered white with snow.

The fellside was a cheerless place. Below my feet was an underworld of natural shafts and galleries, where the temperature varies little throughout the year.

An old-time visitor to Ingleborough who was looking for Gaping Gill, the mightiest of the potholes, realised a shocking reality. He was actually standing on part of a snow cornice above the 340ft shaft.

Ingleborough is not devoid of life, even in the bleak mid-winter. Apart from the sheep, the occasional flock of snow buntings, a merry throng of refugees from the far north, passes with jingling voices. These buntings are of predominantly white plumage and in flight resemble snow-flakes.

They are partial to the seeds of moorland grasses which usually keep their heads above the snow. A well-known Yorkshire naturalist, John Armitage, studied them on the Southern Pennines, where he found they dined largely on molinia.

The gruff voice of a raven sometimes breaks the stillness of Ingleborough. A few pairs of ravens nest in the dale-country. Ravens, which pair for life, nonetheless still go through a courtship routine early in the year, celebrating the new season with aerobatics and occasionally flicking over on to their backs, then back again, as though through the sheer joy of living.

At Gaping Gill I kept well away from the shaft and, indeed, from the banks of Fell Beck, which were crusted with ice. Some of the ancients believed that potholes were the vents through which the water poured at the time when Noah built an ark. The vents remain in case God wishes to flood the earth again.

An early attempt at descending the main shaft of Gaping Gill was made by John Birkbeck, of Anley, at Settle. Birkbeck belonged to a distinguished family, one of which founded the Mechanics Institute movement. A Birkbeck was a founder of the Craven Bank, which made a bid for the loyalty of the farming community by printing an engraving of the Craven Heifer, a famous beast, on its bank notes.

John Birkbeck, in collaboration with William Metcalfe of Weathercote House, Chapel-le-Dale, attempted a rope descent of GG in about 1842. A textile manufacturer was later to descend using a ladder of cotton instead of hemp. When the time came for him to return, he had not reckoned with the elasticity of cotton and trod on many a rung before he was able to ascend.

While enjoying a 'butty stop' beside an ice-sheathed GG, I found it pleasant to think of summer days and descents by bosun's chair into the void of the main chamber, which, grey, with tapering walls, has the grand scale and appearance of a cathedral.

Each year, at bank holidays, winch and bosun's chair are installed at the head of Gaping Gill and anyone who wishes might enjoy the sensation of a controlled descent, with the explorer feeling rather like a spider on a thread.

My first descent was with the Bradford club, at a time when they were not making a charge for a descent. It would cost me 10s if I wished to return to the surface.

I was with some members of the Austwick Field Club. One of them was the daughter of W K Mattinson, who as a lad in 1895 had watched Martel, a French speleologist, make the first descent, using rope and rope ladder.

Martel descended with a lantern fastened on his arm, and with a packet containing candles, magnesium and a flash of rum, sealed with watertight wax cloth and fastened to a wooden bar, on which the Frenchman sat.

On my first trip I became aware of the ramifications of the Gaping Gill system, and especially the East passage, bedecked with calcite formations. I even managed a descent into Mud Hole.

The photograph I took in the passage shows a potholer in old-time garb, namely a metal helmet, overalls over old clothes and boots. This young man carried an ordinary torch.

The odd thing about GG is its lack of legends and traditions. The only fantastic story known to me was that published in a periodical called The Lamp in 1892.

It relates to a man who fell down the shaft, miraculously survived and met a man who had been down there for two years, living off fish caught in the underground water. As an old friend says: "They'll say owt!"

Sir John Hunt, leader of the successful British expedition to the summit of Everest, came here in 1958 as the guest of the YRC. He reached the main chamber via an alternative route known as Bar Pot.

Standing on the shingle in the immense chamber, Sir John said he was thrilled by the experience. He added: "It was difficult to appreciate its vastness. Gaping Gill was everything I had been told it was going to be."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.