Expo - Perspective of a newcomer to expo
Sun 30 Jul 2017
Phil Withnall
Blog Author: flakey
Phil Withnall
Perspective of a newcomer to expo
[id is 'Flakey' = Philip Withnall]
Having been caving for several years with CUCC, but having managed to successfully avoid Expo previously, 2017 was my first year in Austria exploring the caves of the L?ser plateau. I spent two weeks out there and, having returned home and had a few showers, here are some of my thoughts about the Expo experience.
I turned up on Expo shortly after the setup and rigging had been completed, meaning that some of my first trips were to the pushing edge of exploration. All of my trips this year were in Balkonh?hle (apart from a couple of trips down a new cave, found while prospecting; more on that below). This was more caving than I had done before on any trip: more depth, longer duration, and more technical SRT in one place at the same time. Good fun. While I was confident with my caving before arriving, there was the inevitable mismatch in prussiking fitness between me and those who had already been out on Expo for a week or two. A few trips down to Galactica (one of the lower areas in Balkonh?hle at the start of Expo) started to sort that out.
There were other skills which I hadn't had the opportunity to practice before: surveying, and photography. Since a lot of Expo is about surveying, that was a critical skill to learn. Thanks to the patience of Luke, Nadia and Rachel, I got enough practice on a couple of trips to feel confident about surveying. Rachel and I surveyed the bottom of Galactica (a huge chamber found at the end of last year?s expedition which, unfortunately, is an almost complete dead end due to fill from fault breakdown). Later on, Nadia, Nathan and I started surveying a new cave. Exciting to do; less exciting to try and work out how to write up afterwards. Thankfully, various people at base camp were quite helpful in guiding me through writing up surveys and tying a new cave into the overall survey.
One of the downsides I found on Expo was that knowing the set of A-leads to investigate was hard; the information mostly resides in a few people?s heads, rather than on a list somewhere. It was only during my second week on Expo when we got a relatively up-to-date survey to look at at top camp. This made it a bit harder to take the initiative to lead trips to the pushing front. Hence I became a sheep; a situation I was happy with, given it was my first year at Expo.
Prospecting was another activity which I got some practice at, due to a few days where the weather forecast was terrible (and the weather reality was rather nice). Given a bad forecast, going down Balkonh?hle is inadvisable due to the potential for getting flooded in (the Entrance series drains a lot of water). Prospecting seemed a safer option, and the possibility for finding the long-sought second entrance to Balkonh?hle was attractive.
We didn't manage to find a second entrance to Balkonh?hle, but we did manage to find another promising cave (nicknamed Bad Forecast; I?m looking forward to the Austrian translation) which we pushed to -100m in a large phreatic chamber. The entrance passage is about 100m long at 45?, running contrary to the dip of the surrounding plateau, and doesn't seem to take water. So at least we?ve found a cave people can do in wet weather (so far), and something for people to push if they?re bored of Balkonh?hle or Tunnocks. And I think we?ve now surveyed enough of it that the name can't be changed, so that?s one more pun set in stone.
Weather was ever-present during my time on Expo: there was typically the threat of rain (also typically dismissed, correctly, by people). When there wasn't rain, there was sunburn. A particularly entertaining two days of rain lead to us rebuilding the kitchen area of the bivvy, and me running out of reading material. Pro tip: bring more reading to top camp. Another pro tip: bring more interesting food; preferably things which can have the powdered custard from top camp added to them to increase their deliciousness. After much experimentation with various combinations of powdered food up there, I concluded that custard and smash is a timeless combination.
[id is 'Flakey' = Philip Withnall]
Having been caving for several years with CUCC, but having managed to successfully avoid Expo previously, 2017 was my first year in Austria exploring the caves of the L?ser plateau. I spent two weeks out there and, having returned home and had a few showers, here are some of my thoughts about the Expo experience.
I turned up on Expo shortly after the setup and rigging had been completed, meaning that some of my first trips were to the pushing edge of exploration. All of my trips this year were in Balkonh?hle (apart from a couple of trips down a new cave, found while prospecting; more on that below). This was more caving than I had done before on any trip: more depth, longer duration, and more technical SRT in one place at the same time. Good fun. While I was confident with my caving before arriving, there was the inevitable mismatch in prussiking fitness between me and those who had already been out on Expo for a week or two. A few trips down to Galactica (one of the lower areas in Balkonh?hle at the start of Expo) started to sort that out.
There were other skills which I hadn't had the opportunity to practice before: surveying, and photography. Since a lot of Expo is about surveying, that was a critical skill to learn. Thanks to the patience of Luke, Nadia and Rachel, I got enough practice on a couple of trips to feel confident about surveying. Rachel and I surveyed the bottom of Galactica (a huge chamber found at the end of last year?s expedition which, unfortunately, is an almost complete dead end due to fill from fault breakdown). Later on, Nadia, Nathan and I started surveying a new cave. Exciting to do; less exciting to try and work out how to write up afterwards. Thankfully, various people at base camp were quite helpful in guiding me through writing up surveys and tying a new cave into the overall survey.
One of the downsides I found on Expo was that knowing the set of A-leads to investigate was hard; the information mostly resides in a few people?s heads, rather than on a list somewhere. It was only during my second week on Expo when we got a relatively up-to-date survey to look at at top camp. This made it a bit harder to take the initiative to lead trips to the pushing front. Hence I became a sheep; a situation I was happy with, given it was my first year at Expo.
Prospecting was another activity which I got some practice at, due to a few days where the weather forecast was terrible (and the weather reality was rather nice). Given a bad forecast, going down Balkonh?hle is inadvisable due to the potential for getting flooded in (the Entrance series drains a lot of water). Prospecting seemed a safer option, and the possibility for finding the long-sought second entrance to Balkonh?hle was attractive.
We didn't manage to find a second entrance to Balkonh?hle, but we did manage to find another promising cave (nicknamed Bad Forecast; I?m looking forward to the Austrian translation) which we pushed to -100m in a large phreatic chamber. The entrance passage is about 100m long at 45?, running contrary to the dip of the surrounding plateau, and doesn't seem to take water. So at least we?ve found a cave people can do in wet weather (so far), and something for people to push if they?re bored of Balkonh?hle or Tunnocks. And I think we?ve now surveyed enough of it that the name can't be changed, so that?s one more pun set in stone.
Weather was ever-present during my time on Expo: there was typically the threat of rain (also typically dismissed, correctly, by people). When there wasn't rain, there was sunburn. A particularly entertaining two days of rain lead to us rebuilding the kitchen area of the bivvy, and me running out of reading material. Pro tip: bring more reading to top camp. Another pro tip: bring more interesting food; preferably things which can have the powdered custard from top camp added to them to increase their deliciousness. After much experimentation with various combinations of powdered food up there, I concluded that custard and smash is a timeless combination.
T/U:
Response by Wookey:
Flakey [Phil W] said:
One of the downsides I found on Expo was that knowing the set of A-leads to investigate was hard; the information mostly resides in a few people's heads, rather than on a list somewhere.
There is supposed to be a list Flakey, but your fellow 2016 expoers did an exceedingly poor job of sorting out such things last year after expo finished, so one was not updated/generated properly. Nevertheless (despite not going in Balkonhoehle last year, so knowing very little about it) I did collect what info I could find and put it in the [qm.csv] list [ Now imported into: http://expo.survex.com/cave/qms/1623-264] so there was a list of sorts.
I understand that a 3-line whip will be in place this year so no-one can leave if any docs or surveys are out of date. There will still be piles to do over winter, and I hope we can do a better job than last year, because, as you observe, it's a right pain if it doesn't get done.
Wookey