Surface stuff on Plateau
Jenny Black
Weather wasn't great and Olly woke up with a bad headache so decided to do surface stuff again. Went over to Ice Curtain Cave (2006-73) and I went down to the lead. This is a snow narrow pitch on the left before the ice curtain. I kicked a load of snow out of the way and it was wide enough to abseil down. Got ~ [blank left] m down and the way on was blocked by ice flow (may be passable a different year) which appears from beyond. To get to where the ice comes from requires climbing up a 45 degree boulder slope for a few metres - I wasn't brave enough to step up onto it in case it all moved. A bolt may make this possible. Horizontal stuff appears to continue and then go round a corner. Surveyed out and GPS-ed the entrance.
Moved on to 2004-03. I went through the squeeze which was larger than it looked and got into stooping height passage. Followed this for a few metres till I saw bones. This freaked me out for a bit, but after some reassurance from Olly I continued. Passage continues ~2m further than the disto leg from the last visit and then ends sadly at a small chamber with solid rock walls. I carefuly photoed the bones on Olly's camera. We think it is probably a Gemse but don't know.
Surface surveyed this to 210 which appears NOT to have been retagged but we didn't have any tagging stuff. Returned to bivi, linking in 2005-94 and 2005-96 to the surface survey.