CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2023

A fairly enthusiastic crack of noon start, 1h45 to the camp and picked up the pushing gear then set off down the ominously wet-sounding Perseid Showers. I got to where Hannah had turned back yesterday. It was splattery but OK. The ledge below with Gwen's rebelay on the far right took you far from the water which exited as a clean spout down the next section. I was worried this would get too wet but the right wall rig was OK and I got to the Y hang hangers that I placed on my previous trip with Gwen but hadn't had the rope to descend on. I rigged them with the ~70m and dropped cleanly about 30m to a large ledge. Fortunately, the main water spout disappeared into a hole behind the ledge so it was quite dry. The drop to the right had crap rock and looked to connect to the drop to the left so I put a bolt in mid-ledge then three to traverse to better rock on the wall then descended ~15m to another substantial ledge. I dangled my remaining rope down and sadly it didn't the tantalisingly close (~20m down?) boulder floor ... though this looked like it might only extend around 30m before reaching another drop (I tried to throw rocks down but it was too far and the water meant it was hard loud to hear). From my ledge water entered at either end and further upstream. We started the survey and, 4 legs, had tied in to mine and Gwen's survey and I derigged the 70m then prussiked up with the kit whilst Jono derigged. We then spend around 2 hours taking knots and metalware out of the Perseid Showers rope and leaving it at camp. Then we prussiked out with the excess metalware, drill, etc. En route I derigged the 4th pitch (so the rope could be cleaned) and I pulled up the third pitch and removed the metalware and left it coiled at the top. I derigged completely the first and second pitch with Jono ferrying back and forth taking bags off me. We set off from camp at 9pm and emerged at 2pm, shattered, so we left 3 bags for Nat and Hannah in the morning and headed back for 3am curries.