Since 1976, CUCC have been visiting the Loser Plateau near Bad Aussee, Austria, to explore the Schwarzmooskogelhohle cave system. As of 2016, the cave is now over 120km long and over 1000m deep, making it one of the largest in Europe. The expedition is one of the largest and longest running student expeditions in the UK, and is one of the leading training grounds for students new to alpine caving to learn how to explore new alpine caves safely and scientifically.
Frank Tully striding heroically towards Top Camp, with the Loser Plateau and Braunenzinkel in the background looking out towards the Dachstein Plateau in the far distance. Photo: Chris Densham.
There are a huge number of known entrances to the system, but there are four which stand out as key to understanding the history of exploration. The first major breakthrough came in 1983, when an entrance called Stellerweg (or entrance number 115/201) was pushed deep to find a sump close to the altitude of the resurgence in Alt Aussee lake, suggesting little potential for further exploration at this depth. Therefore, exploration began to focus on finding higher entrances to the cave system. In 1988, Kaninchenhoehle (161) was found and thus began extensive horizontal discoveries along with vertical gain, suggesting that connecting up entrances across the system was a viable exploratory goal. After potential from 161 began to wane, a new entrance was duly found: Steinbruckenhoehle (204), in 1999. In 2001 a new deep level called the Subway was pushed to find a streamway called Razordance ? a rarity in this cave system. In that year, we also established our current top camp bivvy site beneath a natural stone bridge next to one of the entrances to 204. Five years later in 2006, the entrance 258 was found, which led to a cave now known as Tunnocksschacht. This cave has been described as the ?corporation of Schwarzmooskogel? because it keeps absorbing the smaller caves around it and has so far been key to unlocking a number of phreatic levels in the system.
One of these caves was Balkonhoehle, which was re-discovered in 2014 and has been a focus of exploration alongside Tunnocks ever since (it was connected to Tunnocks in 2015). Recent exploration in Tunnocks has been focused on going to deeper phreatic levels in the cave, along a nylon highway of ropes down pitches such as String Theory, Procrastination, Number of the Beast, Inferno and Kraken, which have all been discovered in the last 5 years. In 2015, exploration of leads at the bottom of Kraken was becoming a bit much with 15?20 hour trips required if going on the bounce. Therefore, in 2016 it was decided that we would erect a camp in an excellent sandy site close to some water at the base of Kraken pitch (around ?650m). From here, exploration of deep phreatic levels proved extremely successful, with over 3.5km being found over the course of 7 camping trips (typically lasting 48 hours, though one ended up lasting longer than intended after an incident dubbed ?Indian Rope Trick?). One of these discoveries was an unprecedentedly large river passage ramping steeply down to a depth of -903m, and which is still not fully explored. Students made up a contingent of every camping trip.
Wob Rotson, Katey Bender and Chris Densham at Underground Camp. Photo: Ian Peachey.
The plan for this year
2017 holds a lot of promise for extensive vertical and horizontal discoveries in the cave system, and will run for 6 weeks from 9th July?20th August. We have a roughly triple-headed plan of attack for this year:
?Go back to Camp Kraken and push the deep leads. This is the main objective of the expedition, as we left the camp fully rigged from the year before and after this year it seems unlikely that we will return there. There is around another 200m of depth potential in this area before hitting the level of the sump in Stellerweg. In 2016, the camp was set up for 3 weeks, with a team always underground on a rota. We would aim to do the same again this year.
?Head into blank space in Balkonhohle. This cave is an excellent place for novice alpine cavers to explore: it is not a long trip to most of the pushing fronts, the caving is very pleasant but the exploration still feels challenging and exciting. In 2016, an area of Balkonhohle called ?Hilti-a-Plenty? yielded excellent potential for big discoveries, with a vast black chamber, ?Galactica?, being discovered on a final push-and-derig trip.
?Return to Organhohle. This cave was explored in the 1980s and 1990s over 2 trips by UBSS (who form a substantial exped contingent along with ULSA) and is in a different part of the plateau to Tunnocks. It is close to the Schoenberg system which is explored by German cavers annually. The deepest phreatic level explored here seems to offer potential for similar phreatic development to Tunnocks. The cave is more testing by most accounts than the other two objectives, and will require a separate camp near the entrance (less walking and also less strain on top camp), along with a sustained rebolting effort. Improvements in lighting and a focus on horizontal exploration this time should yield exciting discoveries.
The long-term plan for exploration
The discovery of water at such great depths in Tunnocks has prompted a renewed interest in the streamways found in other parts of the system, namely in Stellerweg and Razordance/the Subway. In 2018, there is a tentative plan to return to the Subway, which will require some considered planning as it is quite deep in the cave. There has also been discussion of returning to 115 to rebolt and explore the cave again, as it is now a long time since it was visited with comparatively primitive kit. However, this will require quite a lot of resources and a willing team. Deep leads in other parts of Tunnocks, namely Champagne on Ice and Clayton?s Cock-up, would also merit further exploration to see if we can push them to a satisfactory conclusion, though this will require a lot of rope as both leads go to around -500m.
Katey Bender in Das Lieden von der Erde (Song of the Earth), a huge river passage found last year. A full report of this trip is available here. Photo: Ian Peachey.
Why would CUCC?s expo benefit from the rope?
As can be seen, a lot of the current leads in this cave require vast amounts of string to rig them. Last year, a de-rigging team using the paella (Pulling An Extremely Long Length Altogether) technique removed well in excess of 1km of rope from Tunnocks alone in one trip. The expedition is also a focal point for novice university cavers to learn alpine caving techniques: this year, there are around 10 student cavers attending the expedition who have no prior alpine caving experience. To ensure the expedition is successful in both finding new cave and training new cavers, we would really benefit from additional resources so that a number of leads can be explored simultaneously and easily. Currently, the expedition has somewhere in the region of 1500m of rope, but another kilometre or so is likely to be required to fully achieve our objectives. As such, an additional 300m would be immensely beneficial. The amount of use and muddy conditions in these caves also mean that rope in this system wears particularly quickly, so we need to replace rope at a faster rate than, for example, when caving in the UK.
Peachey and Katey with a pile of rope for just one of the 8 monster pitches which are required to reach Camp Kraken. Photo: Fleur Loveridge.
What will we offer?
Our base camp in Bad Aussee has extensive computer facilities, with ?the Potato Hut? offering the opportunity for blogging throughout the expedition (though the survey geeks will be unhappy at further time not spent drawing up!). Members have written blogs in the past (eg https://daysyearoff.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/the-kraken-wakes/) and we have some quite budding photographers on the team. We hope you will consider us for sponsorship and look forward to hearing from you.
Website: http://expo.survex.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cucc_expo