Prospecting and walking to Appelhaus
Olaf
We had a trip booked in the Appelhaus area to visit some of our neighbouring cave systems. So first we had to contour to it across from Top camp. And as I didn't like the idea of walking back to the Stöger-Steig, I came up with a plan to go around northwards from Topcamp. We followed the path to Tunnocks for a start and then headed off into unknown territory north from there. We crossed some large bowl following a ridge on its western rim. After crossing some snowfields the ridge eventually ended and we got to a large depression with a hole in its northwestern corner (UTM 33T 0411876 528324). Appears to be a relatively deep shaft of approx 25m, but with little to no draught. Anyway, its a cave either on its own right and also its very close to March of the Penguins and Bullethöhle (exploration started [illegible]). We tried to look down the shaft, but some bolting and rope seem to be necessary to get anywhere.
We therefore continued our tour and just a bit further to the north we found the next interesting hole (UTM 33T 0411904 5283600). This one appeared to be a bit of underground passage with a collapsed roof and lots of rubble on the floor. However, the passage appeared to continue towards the south and again the lack of rope stopped us from getting there. Probably only about 5m climb/rope needed. We instead continued walking to the next col and then started heading down one valley further north, where the ski route is marked on some maps. This route took us awfully close to the BS16-BS19 entrances, and we probably also spotted a good bivy site which may have been used during the UBSS expedition. And of course we stumbled across another cave, which must have been described by UBSS somewhere. Entrance is at 33T 0412332 5283988. The entrance is a 2m diameter horizontal passage in the side of the cliffs and Wookey walked inside for a couple of minutes, across some shelf, turning right, and then turning around where the passage got smaller. Again a lack of draught, but quite a bit of cave anyway. Down in the valley we had to struggle a bit with what is not called Bunde, but it was easily possible to reach a real forest, Wildenseealm and eventually Appelhaus