CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2024

Woke up planning to go into Brave New World and begin ticking off QMs, but there was a message on the phone asking Ol to phone home or check mail; we didn't know how urgent it was, so he SMS'ed home + we surface surveyed whilst waiting for a reply. We discovered that the disto isn't worth using above ground on a sunny day. We surveyed from laser 6 to 2005-[blank] to 2004-02 and 2004-01. The phone message turned out to be about our house alarm and therefore not urgent, but Olly wasn't feeling so enthused about 76 any more and time was pressing on. So we re-explored 99 instead. Olly rigged down using the original spits + naturals (rigging shown over the page); there was more cave than last year (because there was almost no ice) but still a fair amount of snow and one hell of a draught. Just as the the 39m rope ran out we got to what had been described in the 1970's as an "impenetrable rift", it was still impenetrable (obviously...) but we could see ~2m away the cairn Ol had built in the Test Tubes in 76 last year, so it had connected, and pretty much where we expected. This is where most of the draught was coming from. Ol continued down, the cave was now much smaller, but less draughty and much less snow. We got to the limit of 1970s exploration, at an undescended ~20m pitch. We had no slings left, or the drill, but found two reasonable threads + Ol went down. The pitch turned out to only be 7m deep, and there the cave ends - may be a good thing as 99 is cold + snowy + nasty! We set off back up, surveying as we went. Olly was very cold as he had to wait at the 76 connection for a while whilst I got the tacklesack + me up the bottom bit. So we postponed surveying the top half of the cave, and left the 39m rope in place. I gave Olly the tacklesack to take out as I had brought it in and some way out, and I thought carrying it would help him warm up. I regretted this most of the way out as I hadn't realised Ol was ill - he kept saying he might be sick and I was lower down the cave. Ol managed to get both himself + the bag out of the cave without being sick, which was nice. We sat around eating mashed potato trying to warm up enough to go back + finish surveying. In the end we gave up + walked down the hill, still wearing our furry suits.