CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2023

[From blog post dated 19th August.]
Next morning the poo drum was nearing capacity, Mike and I both had a need to seek improved medical attention and the Jape was missing his friends in the Creche so we decided to head straight out, Luke and Mike even declining a final coffee to ensure the shit drum didn’t overflow. The journey out was uneventful and my eyes really struggled to adjust to the glorious sunshine at the entrance. I began the stagger back to Top Camp, meeting Amelia, Joel and Eric heading in the other direction [This was on Tuesday 9 August] to finally connect FF and Happy Butterfly (see earlier report). At times my bad eye gave up completely and I had to shut them and sit down to let them calm down – not looking good, especially given that my new GHIC card hadn’t arrived before I left for expo (you can get an emergency letter which covers you, but I really couldn't be arsed to talk to a government employee on the phone explaining my situation).

En route back to base camp we stopped at a pharmacy to get some eye drops for me, however while I was applying these at base camp my glasses fell off my head and broke at the bridge into two pieces! Having no spare pair we constructed a frame to hold the pieces together while they glued back together and I settled for simply hearing what was going on ( think not seeing was quite a good break for my eyes actually). Mike’s hand smelt bad but overall seemed no worse and not (yet) badly infected, so to celebrate we walked into town where a summer festival was going on, with lots of oompa bands and direct involvement from the audience via short bursts of clapping in a sort of call and response with the brass instruments. Back at the Potato Hut Mike and I proceeded to get quite pissed until 5am. Awakening at 10am I discovered that my eye was cured – the healing properties of Gosser know no bounds!

So, camp was pretty successful, tying up plenty of leads and leaving some great new ones to go at on future trips, while also proving that camping in FF is a very good option with abundant resources and facilities along with a good CaveLink connection. In the final instalment, hear about what we found at the bottom of the big pitch Luke dropped, which we named ‘Clap My Pitch Up’ not only in honour of the Prodigy song (which I liked to play as an antidote to the terrible music favoured by the Creche), but also in homage to the great musical traditions of Bad Aussee as observed at the summer festival.