CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2024

Despite getting up at a reasonable time, lots of faffing (mostly by Pete) meant we didn't get underground till after midday. There was a serious lack of enthusiasm as we crawled through Germknoedel's Revenge. I had knackered my knee on the previous day's walk up the hill and the trip got off to a slow start as I limped my way down Treeumphant. Eventually we arrived at Engaged in the Convenience series and began to feel a bit more enthused about the trip. Unfortunately, Pete had taken a wrong turn and had dragged the heavy bag of rope down Out of Order rift - silly bugger! By the time he arrived I had put in the bolts for a Y-hang at the top of the pitch series we were planning to rig. I was extremely pleased to find that the power drill we had dragged down there worked perfectly. Four rebelays later and I found myself at the bottom of a very drippy and cold shafter. It didn't go anywhere, but did have two sumps at the bottom. Unfortunately it turned out that me power bolting is considerably faster than Pete and Sarah surveying (despite the fact that they had a Pony and a disto!) so I had to sit and freeze for 1 1/2 hours at the bottom while they caught up. When they finally arrived they were hypothermic too and had failed to finish surveying the shaft. I set off back up the ropes and left them to finish their survey and derig. This took much longer than expected since Pete had forgotten his spanner and in an attempt to give him hers, Sarah dropped it down the pitch! Pete managed tot derig most of it using a maillon but in the end I had to abseil back down to the first rebelay and give him my spanner. Having been sat at the top of the pitch for over two hours, Sarah and I were once again hypothermic so set off out as soon as Pete arrived.

We stopped briefly in Dead Good Bat chamber for soup, but due to the passing of time we were starting t come close to our 9am callout so we didn't stop for long. At the bottom of Cerberus I left the other two (and my tackle sack) in order to get out in time for our callout and extend it for the others. I was extremely glad of Wookey's double strength Ibuprofen which made prussiking with my dodgy knee bearable. I surfaced at 7am and Sarah and Pete emerged at 11am. A ridiculously long trip considering the amount of progress we had made.

Things that went wrong:

- had to derig Dave and Djuke's rope - which got stuck

- Sarah lost her foot jammer

- Sarah's chest tape broke

- My foot jammer broke

- We all got freezing

- Pete didn't have a spanner and Sarah dropped hers

All in all a great trip :-)

Pitch series is now called S.L.T.R. for reasons known only to its surveyors.