CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2023

After a morning of grim rain delayed the campers from camping, myself and Luke became bored of shit-talking and card games and headed to off into Balcony in the mist to see what could be found. In quickly and soon I was bolting one of the three pots that me and George found in "Lets be Appalling" last time in. After a wee while, and one rogue bolt which decided to fall out along with some of the wall while I was setting it, we were down. It was pretty draughty and seemed quite promising. We could see a shit looking immature rift in the floor below where we had hopped off the rope with some water in it. Not so promising. An upper continuation of the rift with a big draft into ran left - I believe it links in with the most northerly pitch of the 3 we found in "Lets be Appalling". To the south of the pitch was a significant warren of nice sandy floored passage ramping down - great leads! After a quick scoop, we got on with surveying as much as we could. We pushed some large passage to a pitch head which we left for another team to probe. We then headed south to find the dripping most southerly pitch in "Lets be Appalling" - traverse across still to be done but not as promising as the pitch from earlier. At the bottom a small streamway flowed out, culminating in a too tight passage with what appeared to be a mud sump at the end. We then went uphill on the ramp rather than downhill and found a promising horizontal B lead - continuation of the ramp - and a climb up a phreatic tube in which the sound of water could be heard. Exciting stuff, and judging by the survey heading off in an as yet unexplored direction - an excellent prospect for next year!