CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2024

Having had a couple of underground days and one planned for the following day, Dinny and I decided that a day surface prospecting would be sensible. Nat and Becka suggested we scout the area between Balcony and Griesskogelschacht (#232), as there may be a better way into the deeper parts of Balcony between the two entrances.

As we were getting ready to leave, Emily decided she wanted to join as she wasn't feeling well enough for a caving trip.

With minimal batteries on our phones we set off to Balcony, where we dropped off our caving gear for the following day. We then walking along a path waymarked by cairns that Dinny had followed on a previous prospecting trip with Wookey to Noel Snape's previous discoveries.

We then followed the best available path towards Griesskogelschacht. We split up along the way to check out any potential holes. Most were already tagged or were mere alcoves or bridges. We were keeping a keen eye out for any horizontal leads, similar to the Balcony entrance, but found nothing of interest.

Eventually we found Griesskogelschacht and spent some time exploring this area, not that we were expecting to find anything of interet, as it had clearly been explored by others before. Dinny found a stash of gear in one cave entrance, believed to belong to the Germans. We stopped for lunch after wandering around for an hour or so. While eating lunch we saw two holes at the opposite side of the valley. We decided to visit them on the return journey, but they turned out to be alcoves that went nowhere.

We took a slightly different route on the return to Balcony, but nothing of note was found. This area appears to have been fairly well explored by CUCC/the German cavers previously.