CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2024

The usual early start got us underground by ~1pm with only mild wittering on the entrance rebelay. Things went rather more smoothly than on Tuesday, rerigging Point Five Gully with a 36m rope, thus freeing the 53m rope for Sprucy Wind. Further success on the 14m pitch led us on to the Opera House where Mike found a missing bolt. Purple Pit was as magnificent as ever (Mike didn't appreciate the Bowers rebelay). Muesli Crawl was located and Sprucy Wind rigged... The squeeze at the pitch head gave Andy some trouble but the main trouble was the Union of Bullshitting Spastic Speleologists rope protector of which more later... Pitches rigged with minimal slack (one with tension between the bolts, much to Mike's chagrin - but the rope only just reached the next rebelay anyway). At least one bolt on the next section wasn't located, leaving a ~35m section with a couple of rubs :- must fix this next time. Needless to say - the rope was too short on the wet part and Andy had a brief spell of pitch rigging by braille and ended with a knot to pass at the final ledge. Then.... the bottom.

The chamber at the pitch bottom quickly became littered with bolts, hangers and solid rubber trussing gear as yopur intrepid speleos prepared to face ... THE SQUEEZE. Urgh ! Gnnuk ! Pop ! Into the Crematorium and the near silence of a dry chamber. Tripping over drystone walls as they went, the heroes, now over a thousand feet below the black hell of Schwarzmooskogel in the remote Austrian Alps .. What ? Oh, sorry - facts only. We looked briefly at some climbs and then shinned down into the narrow rift found by Tony's carbide lamp in 1980. More thrutching noises, grunts, groans and sundry curses accompanied desperate slow, woofta-ripping progress along a crawling rift over a four inch stream slot among muddy, sharp crumbly rock. This led for ages down tiny hading climbs to a micro-stream. More awkward climbs with lobbing lumps of rock dropped to Andy's limit of 1980 - the promising ongoing passage was huge ! after removing stones it was almost 4" (10cm) wide with a half-body-sized cavity beyond. We extended it about 2ft (60cm) horizontally and even less depth. SO much for top entrances to Stellerweg ! Turning round and getting out took less than an hour or so, only slightly shredded. I don't think Mike really appreciated being taken down here at all.

So ... OUT ! Re-assuringly steady progress up the pitches interrupted only by the crappy UBSS protector falling down the rope and landing on Andy. Don't they have croc clips in Bristol ? Sardines at Muesli Crawl galvanised the team to upward progress at almost exactly the same speed as before, slowing as the boulders became oppressive at the Opera House. Not far to go now chaps ! Just the thrutchy boulder and the loose scree and the glassy ice slope and the endless upward slogging entrance pitch and the bolt and the blasted bouncy bunde blocking bludering blacked-out bleary-eyed (insert a plural word meaning cavers but beginning with 'B'), from their rightful place on the outside skin of the sphere we laughingly call the earth, or something. End Delirium.

We walked back in the dark and missed the pub.

8½ hours