136 - Steinschlagschacht CONNECTION Trip!
Becka Lawson
T/U 7 hours
Everyone was nursing non-existent post-dinner hangovers in the rain, but Julian + I + Adam, being mugs, headed up the hill. Clag + drizzle. Oh well, we'll walk to top camp, brew up, and psyche ourselves up. I climb into my soaking Alpinex, after my last 136 trip, I was trying to dry it, ended up just making myself miserable, but a good dose of Tom Yam noodles soon sorted us out. Tootled up to 136, bombed on down - gone 2pm! round the Eyehole route to the top of the pitch series into the big chamber. Julian gets the drill out + sweats + strains over a nightmare traverse over a great slab of chossy 80( rock, 50m above the deck. I get cold. Occasionally I make helpful comments like "Do you really need another bolt? Can't you just swing over from there?" and rack my brain for conciliatory phrases after the traverse goes nowhere, "Well at least we know how many bolts the drill does now," "It was a fine view anyway", "Good practice for the real thing" etc. etc.
Eventually Julian disappears over the edge, swings over to another rock bridge, and I can footle over. I'm frozen + Julian is shagged so I get to do a loose 6m hang off a dodgy natural down to a chossy mud slope. Julian is enthusiastic about a vague shadow on the far wall. I try not to get too pessimistic. I get down, the 'way on' looks like a loosely bouldered alcove. I start screeching, at Julian, "Look, look!" "What?" "Look!" I've spotted a _huge_ CM13, we've made the 161 connection to the Forbidden land, yelp. I go hollering off down the next chamber whilst Julian whacked in a couple more bolts for the final pitch, then we both went off for a tourist. We headed towards Elin Algor, but it got v. loose boulder choke. Then we played around down Tirolia Werke as far as the pitch + poked around some QMs. Then we surveyed from the QM13 to Anthony's last point, as we were good bods! Then we went home, prussik, prussik, prussik. Thought there wouldn't be anyone at Top Camp to brag to, but no, every tent was stuffed to the gills so we kept up all the Off-To-The-Far-End-At-6.30AM-Tomorrow-Morning Team up as we pigged out on tortellini again. A fine trip on a dreary day - KH over 500m + a new entrance!!!