CUCC Expo Prospecting Handbook

Non-CUCC caves, and CUCC cock-ups

These are all in area 1623.

Caves with the following numbers were not explored by CUCC, though those we have come across and can find again are recorded in the "known caves" table.

1-40, 42-60, 72-75, 77-79'Austrian' caves.
41Austrian discovery pushed by a German group, but main exploration by CUCC, so included as "one of ours".
88a 'German' cave - except see below
116-130'German' caves
131-134'Austrian' caves, out near Wildensee
166-170not our numbers
202, 203, 206used for ARGE finds
211-213, 221not our numbers
236 onwardsnumbers not yet allocated (as of summer 2003)

Cock-ups

The following caves have, for one reason or another, been misnumbered by CUCC members over the years. We make no claims that these are the only cock-ups that may have occurred.

88Numbered in red, but didn't go. Number reused by Austrians (for a significant cave explored by a German group). Allegedly this number was changed to 87A or 87B, but in fact this is not the case and this number needs to be removed. [In 2018 the number has faded so badly that you can only just see that it once said "88".]
106This was a number which we were entitled to use, and which we applied to Eislufthöhle, an early significant find. However, the cave was written up in a non-CUCC publication which went to the Austrians, who allocated this cave their own number (76) since our number wasn't mentioned. This makes a lot of CUCC documentation confusing, but the net result is that 106 is probably not our number anymore. We believe that the Austrians have not reused it, and in fact it appears they still refer to Eislufthöhle as 106 in places.
141,142 These were incorrectly labelled 131 and 132 (respectively) in paint. 142 has since been corrected, but it seems 141 may still be marked 131.
114 This cave was completely missing! (found in 1980, but no record was published - the logbook is missing). Identified as being same as cave found in 2018 and explored to 20m conclusion in 2019.
185Apart from 2 Year Gestation Höhle (on the col en route to 161a) which is correctly numbered 185, there may have been two other caves erroneously numbered "185". One of these is really 186, whose marking was corrected on 1997-08-13. The other is the undocumented 90/15 - the only reference to this is in a 1990 log book write-up listing a number of caves which had been painted during the expedition, so it seems most likely that 90/15 was a typo and never actually existed, let alone got 185 painted on it. To add to this mess, the real 185 was originally marked 183!
232 - 238

After the switch over to the new system whereby caves are given official numbers only on receipt of a form and survey, the numbers 232-5 were used for caves in the vicinity of Eishöhle, after Robert Seebacher told us we'd be allocated these numbers so long as we got the forms to him promptly. However, the forms were mistakenly posted to AERW instead of the Austrians, so Robert not unreasonably allocated the numbers to other caves.

This led to some discrepancies between the Austrian's numbering and ours; these were resolved by an allocation of new numbers in 2004, detailed here. Some old documents and survey notes may be rather confusing on this point!