CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2024

Very slow start after yesterdays epic. But too hot to fester all day so forced to go caving. Decided to go and finish Notwindow pitch as not too far down, gear there, and Ol wanted his hangers back. Set off rigging last ~10m of pitch from pre-placed bolt (!). Wook rigged whilst George poked hole at back of main drop landing. Turns out this goes through tight spot into climable rift. George ended up looking into passage at foot of pitch near where Wook was coming down, but he couldn't actually get through. After putting in a rebelay Wook arrived at the floor.

Pitch continuation is wet and quite narrow - looks like modern development, but there is a passage going off where you land (2-3m high, 0.6-1m wide rift). Round corner is straight rift for 30m. 10m along is very windy passage on L(draughting towards you: out of cave). Beyond rift seems draughtless, but pitch-climb at the end was not descended. QM B. On R opposite draughting passage is smaller passage which also has a 10m drop after 5m. QMB.

Surveyed up windy passage (Heat Recovery Ventilation). It was bloody cold (and not very big), but kept going steadily uphill for a couple of hours of surveying (20 legs). We were hoping for it to get to something (it clearly goes somewhere) but nothing happened before we had to turn round to hit our callout, allowing for surveying up the pitch and derigging and dragging drill + rope out of cave. Interesting passage. QMA (and hole in the floor at last station, QMB)

Just about made our callout, getting out at 7:30pm, and were surprised to find Ol + Jenny coming out at the same time as they'd had success too. Turns out that base-camp hadn't even noticed our SMS anyway so no need to worry much about missing callouts...

[Missing writeup here: Wagon Wheel caving song, Elaine]