plateau - Prospecting between Homecoming and Fishface
Merryn Matthews
We started by walking to Unlucky Gamse Cave, mostly following the path to homecoming, as Radost and Honorata had told us there was
an exciting looking entrance around 50m North of it - Rose Blumen Hoehle (2023-hbrw-05). We dismissed their cave as choked by snow, however it
may be worth someone looking again at it later in the expedition when plug has melted. Instead, we pushed a rift a few metres to the East,
which looked like it may have horizontal development. An awkward ~7m freeclimb/crawl down revealed it choked. We then studied Martin's app for
where to go next and ended up walking towards Amphitheatre, poking down some rifts along the way. Joel and Lizzie were disappointed to realise
that this was the cave they had been eyeing up to push since the start of expo. After this we walked back the way we came, and then wandered
over to fish face, looking in more potential entrances and rifts along the way which all choked quickly or became too sketchy, like 2023-JS-03
Gardeners'World.
For some reason, we also spent many hours proving our Japeishness by filming ourselves hiding within teeny holes on the plateau, in whack-a-mole style.
Our last Cave found of the day seemed the most promising, later to become Tempest, a raised cliff entrance overshadowed by a cross/snowmarker,
leading to the first pitch name of 'Tomb of Christ'. Emily and Joel managed one bolt placement before the Plateau Tempest arrived, and we
rushed back to topcamp chased by Bunda and Grikening.
Caves found:
- 2023-JS-01 Sunglasses disapointment
- 2023-JS-02
- 2023-JS-03 Gardeners'World
- 2023-MM-01
- 2023-mm-02 CliffRichards