CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2023

TU 5½ hrs

Aim:- to bolt up at Moomintroll

No problems getting to Moomintroll but the traverse around the right hand side of Zebedee is a bit hairy in that it is horribly loose and all the holds come off in your hand. The climb up is pretty impressive, a good big black space waiting to be explored, but it is not clear whether it just goes up and up.

At any rate we looked at the climb, reckoned that with a bit of bottle and a climbing rope it would be no problem to get up it, but as we had neither we had to start bolting. Put the first bolt in, about 5 ft up. Unfortunately, at this point I dropped the driver down a small crack. Should be able to get it back with a coat hanger.

At this point we decided that it would be much easier with a drill and that it might be a good idea to jack. I made sure the jack was certain by hitting the entry to Hymen Crawl with the hammer & snapping the head off.

As we had only been down the cave 2½ hrs we needed something else to do. So on the way back we climbed up to the left just after the two holes in the floor near the start of Wheelchair Access. There looks to be a roof tube going off at this point but we failed to climb into it. Mike had a look at some other small tubes going off and found some surface debris & bits of skeleton, but it closed down after about 6 ft.

We still had more time to kill so looked down the two holes that you traverse across just before you reach Moth Chamber and the short climb up in Triassic. The two holes connect, lead to a 1.5m climb down to the head of a pitch. Unfortunately, this just drops into Wheelchair Access, and needs surveying.