CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2024

A complex plan emerged over breakfast. Team keen (Dave + Becka) would go in and do some more surveying; team fester (Olly + Earl) would bolt the pitch; and team artistic (Pete) would take some photos. At 11.30 team science (Dour) would shout down surface hole 2002-02 so we could check if it connected to the daylight aven in the main Hauchhöhle trunk. At 5pm the underground teams would meet up; Olly, Pete and I would bugger off down the hill and Earl + Becka would keep on caving.

This complex plan worked surprisingly well. 2002-02 does connect. Pete got his photos. Becka + I surveyed some existing stuff; Becka found a bypass to Tacklesack Blues via a roof tube. Then Becka spotted a traverse over the head of one of our pitches. After a quick detour to collect the rope, and using a sling larks-footed around my belt as an improvised cowstail, we were across. Hey presto, yet more passage! (Sweet Sight passage.) Stomp stomp stomp for 150m or so. Walked down the hill with 28 legs more survey in my pocket, in addition to the previous day.

[Continuation in Becka's handwriting] Earl kept rigging the pitch but the drill battery ran out after the pitch-head + deviation bolts (part way through a Y-hang ~20m down from the pitch-head – probably another 15m drop beyond here). We then went back to Sweet Sight passage + went up the left-hand roof tube QM just after the drippy aven with the bat skeleton. We surveyed 8 legs up there, past a tight thrutch into an aven with water coming in and a too tight rift off. Out + home.