CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2023

2 Teams descended Fishface. I'd never been so was relieved of the pressure of knowing anything remotely navigational. Mealy led the way through the entrance, immediately tossing her tackle sack with the drill and batteries down the entrance pitch and onto the traverse line. After an enormous thud, she went to retrieve it and hid in the sandy crawl. This entrance pitch is still a bit loose and we descended one at a time. I abbed to the the sound of her sad 'Oh's. Mealy called up the pitch, 'is it allowed to ooze?'. Unsure whether she was talking about the drill or batteries, I shouted to her to keep her hands clear. Ooze was something I was fairly sure was not good. Thankfully, the batteries were not oozing, just the drill. Everyone else descended, we faffed and discussed what to do. Eric's team had caught up with us by this point and it was decided he could show Charlotte and I to the lead, whilst Mealy and Joel went to investigate if there was a spare drill at the Stone Bridge. They removed the drill and batteries and left the rest of the bolting gear at the bottom of the entrance pitch.

Erik showed us the way. We were baffled to see our route had been previsouly bolted on hiltis and survyed, and wondered why we were back there. To kill time, I rerigged the 50m pitch above the connection to a long, thicker rope. Charlotte dropped it as a sub-optimal free hang, noting the rebelays we didn't have the bolting gear to utilise. Unable to get safely off the rope, she ascended and we surveyed the top of the pitch area and waited for Mealy and Joel.

They reappeared, and Joel rigged the remainder of the pitch and bolted a traverse below that headed along the rift to a stone bridge. Down and across the traverse, we passed under the Bridge and formally into Happy Butterfly. Wuheyy. Found HB survey points to tie into. Erik's group were due to derig behind us, but due to us being 4 hours behind schedule, they'd left, leaving the traverse and pitch into Fishface rigged. There was a climbing traverse into HB that Mealy was hesitant to derig and despite lots of tickling, that got left. Down the hill, we found out there might be potential leads there anyway.

Left via Happy Butterfly, myself derigging and Mealy (Amelia) derigging a pitch where the bolts weren't a meter above her head.

Expected time underground - 6 hours. Actual time underground - 11 hours. A warm welcome to the creche. Insert Kreshconnection rigging topo below.

In Mealy's defense account: The donkey's dick failed me, it was very sad. Braking [sic] drills is sad