CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2025

[Never written up - what else is missing from the 2015 logbook? Elaine's song for a start. Needs a thorough checking over. Ed.]

Having made it up the hill in 1h20min the night before, Elaine and Elliot were keen for some caving. Sadly, everybody else wanted to head down the hill, so we decided to have our own caving trip, with blackjack and hookers.

Ben's half-bolted pitch was in need of being finished, so we decided upon that as our destination. After an accidental diversion to Sponge Maiden Passage, we found the right spot.

Ben and Pete were not joking about it being muddy :-(

We had better luck with batteries, though, and Elliott didn't take long in putting in the rest of the Y-hang and a deviation. We descended the 10-15m pitch and found two possible ways on.

Elliott had a quick look at the C lead and decided it probably crapped out. We decided to leave most of our things at the foot of the pitch and take a look at the A lead. Some sandy-floored vadose passage led to a slight squeeze into an aven with a boulder floor. Upwards looked potentially climbable (probably wants ropes really) with a couple of good leads going off. Downwards led to an awkward wriggle to a short but awkward climb. Here was another aven with significant drips, and pools on the bottom (following several dry days).

To the right, a passage led to another aven with splendid acoustics, so we had a sing-song. the floor of that passage had a small slit running along it, which in places was wide enough to see down into another level around 15-20m below with more pools and running water. At the end of the passage was a climb down into a rift - a potential way on, but we didn't look at it.

We decided to survey back from there to the pitch. Elliott went to get the instruments. Coming back he fell off the climb into the drippy aven. he was fine, though a little shaken. We marked our first station and prepared the notebook. The instruments then proceeded not to work. JOY.

We thus decided to name teh third aven (good acoustics) "Freude" (as we had also done a good rendition of "An die freude" (ode to joy) in it earlier. The first aven was named Blackjack and the drippy one was named Hookers.

Knowing we didn't have working instruments, we decided not to push any further and headed out.

The muddy pitch/climb proved very adept at using up lots of our excess energy and we gave our thumbs a good work-out trying to make the jammers not slip.

Out in time for a leisurely walk back to top camp with dinner in the sun.