CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2024

Plan was to push pitch found by Nick & Paul on dinner day which Nick thought was probably not a goer, and then survey out... Except by the time I arrived, Nick had found another ~20m pitch. This quickly led (via some typical expo rigging) to another ~20m pitch rigged off a stonking natural. This in turn led to an eyehole onto a 20m pitch into a largish chamber. A narrow rift off joins a rift at right angles to it with a stream in the bottom. Upstream leads to a small chamber with a desperate looking 8m climb up a waterfall, downstream leads to a genuinely pretty bit beyond which the rift gets too tight. There is another tube which doubles back on the original entrance rift and continues for some distance (30m ?) until became too tight for us to push today. If there are any remaining leads down here, they're all pretty grim, and this is definitely not the place to be in a thunderstorm.

Happy with our day's work, we pissed off out. On the second pitch on the way out, there was a serious case of BELOW. Twice. Yours truly only got hit once though, as he cowered at the bottom. Shortly after, there was a reassuring call of "It's OK now.... Part of the natural we rigged the pitch off fell off." Apparently Nick got to within 5m of the pitch head when bits of it started raining on him. By the time I made it to the top of the pitch (prussiking very carefully), Nick was hanging onto the natural apparently holding it in place. Next time we intend to twat it with a hammer until we're sure it's safe & put another bolt in.

Thereafter, we exited without incident, apart from me having a miserable time at three of the tight bits. I suppose we'll have to survey it now (hooray...)

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