204 - Steinbrückenhöhle
Anthony Day
TU 10 hrs'''
Dunks and Mick had rigged to the pushing front the day before, so we planned to push the big pitch lead at the bottom of Ariston. Bombed down the Ariston Series, which is very nice apart from the last pitch which is loose and nasty. There are two holes at the bottom which connect to the same shaft. Dunks dropped one of these last year to land on a soggy ledge overlooking a 10m diameter shaft with a 3s drop. Plan was to bolt the other hole in the hope of missing the ledge. Much wibbling at the exposure, and eventually Mick got kitted up with the drill. 1½ holes later the battery packed in. I banged in a hand bolt and descended to a place for a hang bolt. From here we were obviously going to land on a ledge ~20m down - almost certainly the same ledge Dunks reached by the other route last year. Hand bolting on a wet exposed ledge not being our idea of fun, we pulled the rope out and went to look at the other pitch lead at the bottom of Ariston which looked much more friendly. Pitch starts as a narrowish hading rift, and stones lobbed down rattled a bit - we estimated it at 20m. Rigged off a couple of naturals and headed down a little way to where the pitch becomes more vertical. Rocks lobbed down from here seemed to go further than 20m. Mick went down and found the least shit bit of rock for a bolt, went further down and put another one in, then Dunks had a go. By the time we packed in Dunks had descended about 30m, could see a further ~30m of pitch to a ledge with a big black hole in. Could be quite a big one, but is fairly friendly in that it doesn't feel exposed.