76: Boiling Tubes
Jenny Black
It had rained a lot overnight + was still raining so decided the
pitch in 148 might be unpleasant, so decided on 76 instead. Went to the
end of the Boiling Tubes where we left 3 leads in 2004. None of the
leads looked great, but we started with 04-62B, the straight-on lead.
This was crawling then wiggling to a boulder which was followed shortly
by a stal blockage - unusual for Austria. The stals weren't huge, but
neither was the passage. I surveyed back while Olly took notes, and
sadly my promising lead heading straight for 2007-71 was no more. (There
was a small red spider there).
Olly removed some soil from the RH lead 04-63C and discovered that
the soil continued for quite some way, so we left off that and looked at
the final crap lead (04-04C). After moving some rocks I crawled down,
slightly downhill and over rocks. I was really hoping that I would be
able to turn around at some point as I wasn't looking forward to
reversing back.
Then I noticed the passage was echoing. In my experience so far,
small crawls tend not to make large echos. This made me excited and
optimistic that I might be able to turn round. After a few more metres
the crawl enlarged enough that I could just turn round, yay! Rocks
dropped down the pitch went for ~2.5s then bounced a bit more. Shame it
would be a crap place to carry gear.
Returned to BNW and looked at 04-25C, surveyed down to
where it got small - is very easy to move rocks though. It looks like it
connects with Loopy so probably easier to get through from the
south.
Finally looked at 04-26B, scramble in (easily) [something] - the A+
pitch ledges into a narrow walking height passage followed this up to a
T junction, left is low crawling and right a bit larger - both are C
grade leads. The RH one may join 04-41C perhaps. Surveyed this and left,
removing the radon detectors on route.