1999-01 - Norden Alpen Schacht - Rigging the surface shaft that Brian found on 25/7/99
Sun 25 Jul 1999
Becka LawsonSurface shaft provisionally named Norden Alpen Schacht.
Brian rigged the smaller of 2 holes down the obvious fault line (the lower, larger hole just above the snow field had an ice/snow plug at the bottom). Meanwhile I traversed around the hill (~30m) to a narrow ledge over a cliff where there's a low q strongly drafting hole. It went to a flat out crawl in mud (the top of a filled-in phreatic q large tube) with a blocked left + then a left view into the bottom of the snow at the larger hole (voice connection to Brian bolting at the top) + passage to the right (still low) with another window to a chamber a few metres below & then a crawl over + down into a tube which dropped into a small passage with boulders + leads on down - I then backtracked to Brian.
IMAGE: Sketch
Brian had rigged the pitch off naturals + a bolt. Down to chamber + fortunately the rope was also ~good for the hole in the floor of it through loose choss to small passage with bouldery floor down (chamber) which led to base of ice plug at bottom of larger hole (we traversed to the far side of this + it blocked fairly convincingly). However I'd dug out stones at the base at the right as it was drafting nicely. A couple of metres of flat out over rocks + into nice walking old stream passage. This went round the corner + a little water entered + then it dropped down what looked about a 10m pitch. Brian clambered to the left of this etc. Then we surveyed everything (~70m all told).
Becka Lawson
Brian rigged the smaller of 2 holes down the obvious fault line (the lower, larger hole just above the snow field had an ice/snow plug at the bottom). Meanwhile I traversed around the hill (~30m) to a narrow ledge over a cliff where there's a low q strongly drafting hole. It went to a flat out crawl in mud (the top of a filled-in phreatic q large tube) with a blocked left + then a left view into the bottom of the snow at the larger hole (voice connection to Brian bolting at the top) + passage to the right (still low) with another window to a chamber a few metres below & then a crawl over + down into a tube which dropped into a small passage with boulders + leads on down - I then backtracked to Brian.
Brian had rigged the pitch off naturals + a bolt. Down to chamber + fortunately the rope was also ~good for the hole in the floor of it through loose choss to small passage with bouldery floor down (chamber) which led to base of ice plug at bottom of larger hole (we traversed to the far side of this + it blocked fairly convincingly). However I'd dug out stones at the base at the right as it was drafting nicely. A couple of metres of flat out over rocks + into nice walking old stream passage. This went round the corner + a little water entered + then it dropped down what looked about a 10m pitch. Brian clambered to the left of this etc. Then we surveyed everything (~70m all told).