CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2024

Following our previous shallow trip into Fishface we set out to continue the previous combined leads from the day before. The journey across the plateau and into the cave was uneventful, aside from the other group catching up with us. Dropping down into Blitzen Boulevard we continued along the rift and dropped Mike and teams previously rigged pitch (as we had de-rigged fivemoose), getting to the pushing front.

Since the PDA had officially died, it was on to sexytopo on phone, with Mealy keen to do more on notes. Alice and Will were both (unusually) keen to survey which allowed me, as the most experienced, to take on the role of chief scooper / co-ordinator.

The rift continued, bending slightly to the right as we surveyed along, soon becoming a sandy crawl. Passing a tight deep hole (likely connecting into Liquid Luck) we reached a junction. Right quickly crapped out at a puddle below a blind aven. Left, crawling continued with stalagtites and popcorn/coral formations. In hindsight we should have taken photos. The passage became more rifty again with a few more formations.

We could hear voices seemingly ahead, which did not bode well. I scooted ahead to find the rift connected with the far side of the top of the Liquid Luck Pitch. Unfortunately, this was Jonty and teams lead for the day so they were quite annoyed, although hadn’t started bolting their way across yet.

We finished off surveying and I went round the long way to the far side of the pitch to ensure we could close the loop. Done for the day, there was now a clusterfuck of people all trying to leave fish at the same time. One by one people left the bothy and headed up Blitzen to the surface. Back to top camp for curry.