Competition Winners and Staff Credits 2024

This web page is part of the archive of Hidden Earth events that used to be online at hidden-earth.org.uk. That web site has now been decommissioned and so, at present (October 2024), only a few of the archived lists are available online. See Competition Winners and Staff Credits.

Competition Results 2024

Prize Winners

* Speleo Olympics There is no formal category for Under-18 Pairs. Small competitors have a natural advantage, but this pair deserve a special mention.

Merits and Distinctions

For the Photo Salon we award Merits and Distinction as well as an outright winner. The other Salon competitions – Art, Video and Survey – might use the terms Highly Commended or Second Prize instead.

* YP – Young Photographer. The YP section of the photo salon is judged separately and has its own prizes. However, all the photos are automatically entered into the main competition and, should they be awarded a merit or distinction, they receive an additional prize for being in the YP class.

* Certificates. We usually announce that certificates will be sent to winners of the Salon competitions but, due to a lack of volunteer effort, this has not happened in recent years. We are hoping to be able to rectify this in the aftermath of Hidden Earth 2024.

Sponsors

General Sponsorship

As well as the sponsors of the competition prizes and the awards, we would like to mention two general sponsors of this year's event.

Competition Prizes

Sponsors of competition prizes are listed in the tables above, and summarised in the list below. [This list is automatically extracted from the data source for the above tables].

Caving Club Bednights

There were many donations of bed-nights by caving clubs this year. We thank them all for their support, which provides opportunities for cavers to meet other cavers across the country. This year the bednight winners got to choose from the range of donations, enabling them to visit a club hut in the caving region of their choice. Bednights were donated by ...

Other Prizes

Badge Draw

We ask everyone to return their badges, so we can re-use them next year. The winner, drawn out of the box and announced at the closing ceremony was Chris Densham who wins free entry to next year's Hidden Earth.

Judges' Remarks on the Competitions

Art Salon

The judges commented on one of the Highly Commended winners, UK Caving Topos (tapestry) by Kai Trusson. A fantastic group effort involving 22 people showing that communal art is important, with everyone taking an equal share under the leadership of one enthusiast.

Photo Salon

This year, we decided to keep to the simplified structure of the Photo Salon that we used last year. We awarded the Premier Trophy for the best portfolio of five images, and we awarded one prize in the print and projection classes; as well as merits and distinctions. (The monochrome and colour print classes were merged into one, again, this year).

This year, we introduced a new competition for Young Photographers, defined as being under 22 years of age on the day of the competition. This competition used a separate organising team, with separate judges, and the team sought their own cash sponsorship for the additional prizes. The proviso was that the competition entries all had to be entered in the main photo salon as well, and had to use the main salon display boards. This worked well, and seemed a good way to balance the available volunteer effort with the presentation of a 'seamless' competition. As it happened one of the YP winners did also win a merit in the main competition!

Once again, there was no Cave Life or Cave Science category. Additional competition categories such as these make the organisation much more difficult, all the way from the entry form, through to organising the labelling of the displays, the judging and the prize allocation. Our current view is that if there is a demand for additional special categories such as Cave Life or Cave Science than someone must step forward to organise the category along similar lines to the our Young Photographer category, that is, they must provide a team to do it.

Survey Salon

Video Media Salon

Best Club Stand

Judges feedback: This was an excellent club stand that hung together well. We obtained a good impression of how the club works – welcome pack, training (skills, first aid) and trips undertaken. Complemented by annotated surveys, photos and videos.

National Awards

Fraser Simpson Award for Innovation in video

This annual award is given by the Hidden Earth Team for recognition of excellence in underground video creation. Nominations, with reasons and examples of work are welcomed by the Hidden Earth conference manager in advance of the event. The work does not have to feature in the Video Salon. The award consists of a prize of £100, donated by Hidden Earth, and an engraved stone to keep for a year. Further information is at hidden.earth/salons/video/.

Fraser Simpson died in 2017. He was an audio-visual technical expert at Fife College, an accomplished caver and a key member of Grampian Speleological Group. Fraser was also a valued member of the Hidden Earth team, due to his extensive AV knowledge and expertise. His film-making skills were considerable and the Hidden Earth Team and BCRA Council have agreed to set up an annual award to commemorate him and his contributions.

Video is rapidly becoming the recording medium of choice for many people. Taking underground video, although challenging and complex, is more possible than ever before and (judging from the number of TV-based underground documentaries) of great public interest. The pace of innovation has become bewildering in amateur film making too and there are opportunities to involve new ideas, equipment, concepts, projects and audiences, to harness the potential of ‘filming’ underground. Thus, the Award can acknowledge any aspect of excellence in video, but focussing on the artistic, technical and aesthetic qualities, and particularly on innovation in those fields. It is hoped that the award will be an incentive for people to experiment in this most exciting and flexible creative art.

For 2024 the Frazer Simpson award is given to Keith Edwards for his film Return to Aquamole, which won the 2024 Hidden Earth Video Salon.

BCRA's Arthur Butcher Award

BCRA awards the Arthur Butcher prize for outstanding and innovative contributions to cave surveying. The judges consider projects brought to their attention during the year, as well as all surveying work that is on display at the Hidden Earth conference. The award judges are now following a guideline that this award shall only be made in years where an exceptional contribution to cave surveying is identified.

This year, the award was given to Julian Todd for, over many years, pushing the boundaries of Cave Surveying. Julian wins £100 from the British Cave Research Association

Citation by Wookey, on behalf of the judges: Awaiting citation

BCRA's Tratman Award

The Tratman Award is presented annually to the best caving-related, paper-based publication in memory of E.K. Tratman, to recognise excellence in writing and presentation, encompassing aspects such as the subject's importance, readability, the quality of the photographs and surveys, the printing and binding and - in short - any aspect that the judges consider applicable. This also includes 'improvement' where, for example, long-established journals that have already received a commendation for their standard in previous years would need to show a higher standard again to attain a mention.

The judging team for 2022 and 2023 (these two years allowing the award to catch up to the present) comprised Joe Duxbury, Chris Howes, Alan Jeffreys, Martin Mills and Linda Wilson, who make their decision independently of BCRA, the award's sponsor. The judges all read widely within caving literature and therefore form a shortlist before winnowing this to a shorter set of titles that finally produces the commendations and a winner. Coming to a decision across these two years was especially challenging because several judges were involved with different publications in some way or other, and recused themselves from different parts of the process to leave the remaining judges to come to a decision. Finding a consensus was difficult given the high-quality found across the board.

It should also be noted that under the Tratman rules, the judges may consider publications that perhaps were published late in the preceding year and thus escaped immediate attention, which applies to two of the following commendations for 2022:

Journal of York CC and North York Moors CC (3) edited by Gary Douthwaite and Matt Ewles
Caves of Assynt edited by Tim Lawson and Peter Dowswell
Caves of Southern Ireland compiled and edited by Graham Mullan
Digging Bath Stone by David Pollard
Hidden Worlds by Robbie Shone
Somerset Underground Vol 3, Central and South Mendip, by Rob Taviner
MSG 14 by multiple Moldywarps SG authors

We also have two fine articles published in Descent

'The Smithy Rescue' by multiple authors concerning the major rescue in Ogof Ffynnon Ddu in issue (284)
'Into Dante's Inferno' by Tanguy Racine about exploration by Imperial College CC in Slovenia's Sistem Migovec in issue (286)

For 2023 a similar pattern emerged - the judges faced huge difficulties in whittling down a longer list to the final commendations

Exploring the Karst and Caves of the Gower Peninsula edited by John S. Cooper
Hidden Realms by Martyn Farr
Hidden Inside the Highlands by Alan L. Jeffreys
Scotland Beneath the Surface by L. Bruce Keith
Aberllefeni Slate Quarry by Jon Knowles
Weekend Explorers by Harry Long
Pioneers Beneath the Peak by Martin Wright

Plus, again, articles from Descent

'A Return to the Deepest Cave in Thailand' in issue (292) (four authors)
'The Aquamole is Back' in issue (294) (three authors)

Any author or publisher should be proud to have gained a commendation and appear here. From within the listings, the judges' discussions were lengthy and while there had to be a single winner for each year, it was a close call.

In the end, for 2022 both the Journal of York CC and North York Moors CC (3) and Caves of Assynt are Highly Commended while Digging Bath Stone by David Pollard published by Lightmoor Press gains the year's Tratman Award. This immensely well-researched work is richly illustrated with historical images and, though the author made no such claims, it will be treated as the definitive history for the area. Sadly, David died in 2017 before the book was published.

For 2023 the judges were presented with so much fine work there was much dissent over which title should gain the final accolade. As one of the judges commented of the winner: 'this is an excellent book, informative, lively, well-presented, thoroughly engrossing and extremely enjoyable, with a commendable layout, production values and image reproduction.' The accolade goes to Pioneers Beneath the Peak by Martin Wright.

Any caver or mining enthusiast who is not familiar with any of these titles is encouraged to seek them out. The award itself is a fine, specially crafted sculpture representing the winning title that is created by Ceris Jones and retained by the author. Congratulations to those gaining the awards and indeed to all those with Highly Commended and Commended notations.

Citation by Chris Howes, on behalf of the judges: Joe Duxbury, Chris Howes, Alan Jeffreys, Martin Mills and Linda Wilson

Further info at tratman-citations and tratman-winners

Giles Barker Award

The Giles Barker Award is presented to any person connected with any aspect of cave photography in recognition of excellence or contributions to the field; it has a wide remit to allow consideration of many areas of image creation. The award has been running since 1993 in memory of Giles, a keen cave photographer who died while caving in Spain in 1992. Giles was a member of the Red Rose CPC and Morgannwg CC, which together fund the special trophy which beautifully crafted annually by Ceris Jones.

For 2024 the winner is Richard 'Roo' Walters for his outstanding work in 3D laser scanning, with which he has generated superb visual representations of caves from around the world as well as in the UK. The results of his fastidious and time-consuming computer processing have included virtual fly-throughs and even models constructed from the data, along with stunningly realistic 2D 'photographs' - these lack colour, but this can be added artificially by the program or by using accurate tones from traditional photos. They are so detailed that it can be impossible to tell the difference between the image and a real photograph of the same scene. Having amassed a huge body of quality work, Roo is truly at the top of his field and thoroughly deserves this recognition.

Congratulations go to Roo for this 29th award in the series. Previous award winners and further information can be found at: tinyurl.com/GilesBarker.

Citation by Chris Howes, on behalf of the judges: Morgannwg CC and Red Rose CPC.

Conference Team Credits

Thanks also to the lecturers and the session chairs, and also to the traders, sponsors, and to all delegates from the UK and overseas, who all contributed to making the event a success

Data for Staff Use

Some parts of this page are generated from data files, which you can also access. However, please note that the data might contain unused columns or strange notes that do not appear to make sense; or strange delimiters for some of the data. It might not be any more use that what you can get by pasting the HTML tables into Textpad (or similar) to cleanse them of markup.

Note to self: The Competition Results file, named winners.20**.txp, is generated from the "write array" data in a PHP program. However, the staff credits PHP file does not require any processing as it used directly.

British Cave Research Association (UK registered charity 267828) and British Caving Association.
The Old Methodist Chapel, Great Hucklow, BUXTON, SK17 8RG
This page, http://forms.hidden.earth/he/history/winners.2024.html was last modified on Fri, 08 Nov 2024 10:55:06 +0000
(Running on britiac4.british-caving.org.uk (31.25.186.126) at 06:47:18 Thu 21-Nov-2024 +00:00) (.user: Failed)

Competition	Category	Level	Winner	Title/Time	Prize Won	HE photo ref.
Speleo Olympics	—	Special Mention *	Sarah and Daniel Hall, age 7 and 9	1:01	—
	Under-18	Winner	Philip Roberts	1:07	Ticket for 4 to visit Ingleborough Cave, and a Ceris Jones artwork
	Male Solo	Winner	Brendan Hall	0:46	A pair of Warmbac knee pads, and a choice of caving club bednights
	Female Solo	Winner	Ellie Davis	1:02	A pair of Warmbac knee pads, and a choice of caving club bednights
	Pairs	Winner	Jonty Pine and Brendan Hall	1:16	Speleo Olympics trophy to keep for a year, and two pairs of Warmbac Wetsuit Socks
SRT Races	Assault Course (F)	Winner	Paulina Poterlowicz	3:00	Starless River harness, a Ceris Jones artwork, and a choice of caving club bednights
	Assault Course (M)	Winner	Richard Hudson	1:48	Starless River harness, a Ceris Jones artwork, and a choice of caving club bednights
	40m Prusik (M)	Winner	Jean Luc Heath	2:34	50m rope donated by Spanset, and an artwork by Robin Gray
	40m prusik (F)	Winner	Paulina Poterlowicz	3:02	50m rope donated by Spanset, and an artwork by Robin Gray
	50m Tackle Bag stuffing	Winner	Dave Cowley	0:41	Action Stash tackle bag, and a Ceris Jones artwork
	Ladder Coiling	Winner	Pete Hall	1:18	Action Stash tackle bag, and a Ceris Jones artwork
	Knot Tying	Winner	Kieran A	0:48	A mug from Handknitted Pottery, and a Ceris Jones artwork
	Combined Times	Overall Winner	Rob Middleton	—	A 7-hour Ultimate Extreme underground trip in Snowdonia from Go Below, and a Wookey Hole artwork from Mendip Cave Rescue Organisation
	Combined Times	Runner-Up (very close!)	Paulina Poterlowicz	—	—
Best Club Stand	Judged	Winner	United Cavers Exploration Team		50m rope from UK Caving, a selection of Red Rose Cave and Pothole Club journals and surveys, a selection of items from Moore Books and, from Grampian Speleology Group, the book Caves of Assynt	clubstand
Survey Salon	Judged Surveys	Winner	Mark Tringham	Survey of Wet Sink	Disto laser distance measurer from Leica, a Robin Gray (triptych) artwork, and a choice of caving club bednights	wetsink
Survey Salon	BCRA's Arthur Butcher Award	Winner	Julian Todd	...for, over many years, pushing the boundaries of Cave Surveying	�100 from British Cave Research Association
Art Salon	Judged Art	First Prize	Sarah Garlick	Hang in there, Nora (felting techniques)	�50 voucher from Inglesport, a Descent box of goodies, and a choice of caving club bednights	nora
Video Salon	Judged Videos	Winner	Keith Edwards	Return to Aquamole	Aventure Verticale 45 litre Transport Bag with zip, a 50 metre rope donated by UK Caving, and a choice of caving club bednights
Photo Salon	Projection (YP*)	Winner	Cerys Williams	Shadow Puppets in OFD	�60 from Hidden Earth, family ticket to Dan Yr Ogof Show Cave from National Showcaves Centre for Wales	d1041
	Print (YP*)	Winner	Lara Bartleet	Straws in Manchester Bypass	�60 from Hidden Earth, family ticket to Dan Yr Ogof Show Cave from National Showcaves Centre for Wales	c1081
	Projection	Winner	Martyn Farr	Xe Bang Fai Balcony View	50m rope from UK Caving, the Cave Diving Group's book on Wookey Hole, choice of caving club bednights	d1351
	Print	Winner	Bartek Biela	Racer snake, Mulu	50m rope from UK Caving, the Cave Diving Group's book on Wookey Hole, choice of caving club bednights	c1096
	Portfolio (Premier Trophy)	Winner	Chris Howes	Estramos-barlang, Hungary	�100 from British Cave Research Association and the Premier Trophy to keep for a year	c1101
		Winner	Chris Howes	Beke-barlang, Hungary		c1102
		Winner	Chris Howes	Beke streamway, Hungary		c1103
		Winner	Chris Howes	Kossuth-barlang traverse on wire		c1104
		Winner	Chris Howes	Kossuth-barlang, Hungary		c1105

Competition	Category	Level	Winner	Title/Time	Prize Won	HE photo ref.
Survey Salon	Judged Surveys	Highly Commended	Thomas Arbenz	Uamh An Claonaite and Rana Hole	Aventure Verticale Tee Shirt, Survey pouch and gear loop; plus a Ceris Jones artwork	rana
Art Salon	Judged Art	Highly Commended	Emma Caspers	Scenes in Matzienzo, Summer 24 (coloured pencil on paper)	Book by Jim Eyres donated by Wild Places Publishing	matienzo
		Highly Commended	Irene Healy	The Swine Hole (painting)	Book by Jim Eyres donated by Wild Places Publishing	healy
		Highly Commended	Anon	Most of the people I have ever caved with (3D artwork)	Handbound Sketch Book donated by Ceris Jones	allpeople
		Highly Commended	Kai Trusson	UK Caving Topos (tapestry)	Handbound Sketch Book donated by Ceris Jones	topo
		Second Prize	Rhian Kendal	Gypsum Flowers (coloured pencil on paper)	Aventure Verticale Tee Shirt, Survey pouch and gear loop	rhian
Video Salon	Judged Video	Merit	Michael Perryman	Bath Swallet/Rods Pot	—
		Merit	Rettika Pithadiga	Caving in the abode of clouds	—
		Merit	Ian Healey	Slaughter Stream Cave	—
		Distinction	Ian Cooper	Moel Fferna; Llangollens last mine	Tackle sack from Safety Aloft, and a choice of caving club bednights
Photo Salon	Print (YP*)	Second Prize	Jess Brock	Always In Motion	�30 from Hidden Earth	d1231
	Projection (YP*)	Second Prize (Joint)	Jess Brock	The Traverse	�30 from Hidden Earth	d1234
	Projection (YP*)	Second Prize (Joint)	Cerys Williams	Mushrooms in Porth yr Ogof	�30 from Hidden Earth	d1045
	Print	Merit	Lara Bartleet	Straws in Manchester Bypass	A copy of Images Below from Wild Places Publishing *	c1081
		Merit	Thomas Arbenz	03_TArbenz_Rapha	Certificate *	c1063
		Merit	Bartek Biela	Boat trip in Zelske jame, Slovenia	Certificate *	c1091
		Merit	Bartek Biela	Classic Clearwater river crossing, Mulu	Certificate *	c1092
		Merit	Bartek Biela	Pozu Tras la Hayada, Picos de Europa	Certificate *	c1095
		Merit	Bill Nix	Refill time_ Pynnah Um Sngad_Meghalaya	Certificate *	c1191
	Projection	Merit	Bartek Biela	Return from the camp, Easter Cave, Mulu	Certificate *	d1094
		Merit	Bartek Biela	Where's Dave	Certificate *	d1096
		Merit	Chris Howes	Gours, Xe Bang Fai River Cave, Laos	Certificate *	d1101
		Merit	Martyn Farr	Terra Ronca The Shower Bath	Certificate *	d1358
	Print	Distinction	Bill Nix	Lancaster hole	Certificate *	c1198
	Print	Distinction	Chris Howes	Cottonwood Cave, New Mexico	Certificate *	c1106
	Projection	Distinction	Martyn Farr	Bacupari Alien Pods	Certificate *	d1354

Conference Manager	Les Williams
Conference Treasurer	David Gough
Conference Secretary	David Gibson
Timetable Manager	Gary Douthwaite
Trade Hall Manager	Badger

Lecture Secretary	Gary Douthwaite
Signposting	Paul and Tiggy Dummer
SRT Events	Mark Wright, Dave Cowley, Jess Burkey
Speleo Olympics	The Roberts Family (Andrea, Philip, Justin, Charlie)
Stomp DJ	Basher
Opening MC	John Gunn
Closing MC	Pete Glanvill
After-Dinner Speaker	Paul Taylor
Closing Script and Projections	Martell Baines, David Gibson

Bookings Manager	David Gibson
Poster and Brochure Design	Tony King
Web Site and Social Media	Gary Douthwaite

Hidden Earth

The UK's National Caving Conference and Exhibition

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