CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2024

Spent the morning (in the freezing fog) getting help to fettle my carbide. The tube and the pipe in the generator were completely packed with soggy 'bide. Brian fixed this by whipping it against the ground & probing the generator with a fork prong. Mike TA had poked in Regurge some years ago with Tina and found no way on, so was curious. (I had found way on with Mark Sh. last year, but it was not properly pushed). The lead goes out of the chamber behind a rock opposite the pitch through a scrotty hole which drops you straddling over a deep rift. In spite of its free-climbability I was out-voted and they put a handline along it and used the 2 bolts already there to rig the pitch. Halfway down you step into a rift, follow it into a tight squeeze and drop into another streamway rift where the climb down caused more complaints. Mike put a rope in while I followed upstream along the floor (as I'd done the previous year when lost & following Becka's howls at the pitch in Roomination) into a void underneath the boulders of Regurge where there were a couple of loose boulders. I pulled some of them down and climbed round to the bottom of Room. pitch and brought Becka in by that route. We scooted along the stream to a tight bit in the water which Mike didn't fit through. We backed up and traversed higher through the rift and climbed down to the same spot (on the other side of the tight bit) and reached a pitch. One natural and one bolt by me while they surveyed a bit got us to a ledge below, then a crap bolt used as a deviation over a sharp rock into a wet v. drippy aven. Mike freeclimbed down and up while I bolted (the deviation) and said a rope would help. Very splashy. Round the corner another pitch in narrow rift where I sat and bunged in two bolts either side while the others surveyed out. The perch of my bum on the cold rock nearly caused a spontaneous shit. As it was I managed to hold it in only until the end of Mohr-im-Hemd. Becka whinged about 'Black Suspender' [Editor's note - this is not actually the place called Black Suspender - some confusion by the authors] but was getting used to it. The rain had completely cleared outside so Mike decided to leave his gear at the entrance and come back tomorrow. But he washed his hair and left in the middle of the night to _walk_ back down to base camp because somebody had smelly feet in the tent. My other electric failed too. And I ripped a huge hole in the bum of my oversuit.