CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2023

Joel, Lizzie and Philip fettled the tarp (where some water had pooled overnight) whilst I had a go at attaching the big Daren drum (filled with the solar panels and cables) to my rucksack, ready to carry from top camp to Garlic Cave.

After minimal faff, we set off west. We reached Fishface in ~40 minutes and Joel dropped off some metalwork ready for rigging. We continued to Homecoming and Joeal and Lizzie put reflectors down for the route from Fishface to Homecoming.

We reached Homecoming, had a flapjack and water break, then went off in search of the Hunter's track whislt Joel et al. went to reflect the last part of the route and Philip had a siesta.

I found the Hunter's path by heading NE past Homecoming (i.e. skirting past the entrance on a little path to the RHS), through a clearing in the Bunde, turn left, then climb down ~1m onto some limestone slabs. Turn left and follow the limestone along, past a snow plug. You hit the Hunter's path just before a cliff - you'll see cairns and white and green painted stripes.

Having successfully found the Hunter's path, I returned to Homecoming, and we decided we didn't have time to scope out Garlic Cave. I left the solar panel stuff near the entrance and we began scoping out a route across the plateau towards the col.

The route was a mixture of actually quite pleasant slabs to walk across and some grim bits (hopefully can be bypassed as rhe route gets finessed). We found a few holes to return to with gear and rope on a later day, including a particularly promising one (big entrance, goes briefly vertical, but then horizontal (I scrambled down as far as my comfort zone would allow to have a peak around the corner), with a big-looking passage. Excited to return.

Overall, progress was a bit slow - it took ~3 hours to get back to the col, hope we can get it down.

Rest of the walk was atmospheric, with lots of gusts and rolling, ominous clouds. We had just gotten back to the car when it started raining.