Tunnocks - Surface Features
Martin Jahnke
Comedy of Errors appears to be above the level on the Tunnock's entrance shaft, giving continued ??? to the hope that we will be able to find a new entrance to the cave. I got location data for the different avens in Stone Monkey relative to the entrance from survex and we tried to locate surface features with the help of a GPS. It didn't work. Very frustrating.
Instead we started to come across numerous untagged entrances northeast of Tunnocks and started cave hunting on a ??? sunny day. Frank entered a small passage at the side of the hill and climbed down 5m. After some digging he forced himself through mud and gravel into a small non-drafting chamber - the ways on were choked. Frank emerged covered in mud - but he wouldn't have fitted through with an oversuit :) The cave was surveyed and called Afenjagdhöhle - Hunting Monkeys Cave.
IN a depression at the foldline northeast of Tunnocks, several snowfields can be found in late summer. In that area I spotted an entrance between boulders that had just been freed by the thaw. We entered and found a pitch head (covered in frost shattered loose rock). Rigging from two trusty naturals (oh dear!) I could see a large chamber with ice plug below. This was called Schneehuhnhöhle (Snow Partridge Cave) after a bird we saw nearby that day, and as a reference to the snowfields. The cave was verified later.
We continued our investigations and came across a number of places that deserve further investigation. Finally we entered a cave in the slopes of the hill which was quite drafty and ended in a boulder slope. This cave might terminate somewhere close to Tunnock's but we will need a surface survey to determine it's exact position. This cave has the skeleton of a medium sized mammal in it but without its scull [evil laughter]... hence Kopflose-Gemse-höhle (Headless Gemse Cave). A very successful trip. Seeing Frank diging out caves made me think that some of the terminal chokes in Tunnock's might not be that terminal afterall.
T/U 3 hrs