CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2023

Went on a trip with ARGE ( Arndt Karger) to see their new cave, Reutner-Express, which has the pleasing characteristics of a) being a 20min walk from the car-park & b) only being about 60m deep.
[Why is Arndt's name not being recognised by parsers/people.py ? ]

This sounded short enough that Philip decided he'd come caving (and had his gear at base - I'd carried mine down specifically after a whole one trip at top camp).

Arndt had a lead from the day before, off 'Schwarze Biest' chamber that needed surveying.

To get to the cave take the usual path to part where the split between loser alm/plateau and eizhohle/(illegible) is & turn right (!) off the path up a few meters into a gully in front of an obvious wall a few m high on the left. Except this morning it wasn't obvious at all as it was thoroughtly misty & we could only see about 20m. We found the rope up the cliff that the (illegible) had installed & then the (illegible). Cave starts with short tight pitch then a couple of bigger ones leading to a tricky up-pitch.

The lead we had to survey turned out to be quite small. AC6 into a twisty passage to the right & an even smaller one to the left. Philip huffed & pulled round a couple of corners & tight bits before deciding that pressing the '(illegible)' was not wise, and retreated back to the chamber. Wook & Aradt continued to the pitch it pops out into, then went back & surveyed the left passage. This rapidly degraded to comedy person-sized surveying but with a flat floor it wasn't quite miserable enough to give up so we surveyed for about an hour (& 50m). I went another 10m but it got awkward in the same vein.

Back in the chamber, Philip had finally cooled down to a reasonable temp (his furry was too warm). We set off to traverse the system & do the the through-trip to the Windloch (031*) entrance. This was very pleasant with a few short pitches & an entertaining mud sump, which was apparently full of water 2 years ago, but now is just a friction-free U-bend.

Met the other ARGE group on the way out. Still foggy but we managed to get back to our gear & return after very civilized trip.

[Editor note 1 - 031 is named as Elchole in cave list. 032 is Windloch. Should this be corrected? (Gwen Tawy)
Editor note 2 - This Windloch is apparently Windloch am Stogerweg, not the other one - and our cave description is very out of date. Elchhöhle was visited by CUCC in 1978. (Philip Sargent)]