Fishface - Camp in Fishface - pushing Redlight & Persied Showers
Emma
10-07-23 - We wake up early-ish with the goal of leaving at 9/10 but quickly decide MUCH more faff is needed. A stop is made at the shops to buy biodegradable bags and a magazine, eventually Jonty, Mealy and I made it to the car park. It is very very warm and we worried about dehydration. We get waking, faffing more by running into many groups coming off the plateau, and Mike catches up quickly. Once on the plateau the weather seems more pleasant - a cool breeze is present now - when I see the cause - a huge could of rain hanging over the Dachstein. "Nah, that's just mist" says uncle Mike. We make our merry way, not forgetting to bow to the plateau monster (Mike doesn't bow) until we hear a rumble of thunder, "Nah, just a plane" says uncle Mike, soon, to vertical rains start, which we are not dressed nor prepared for, so we hide by crouching against a wall in the plateau. Then, wind turns and we get very soaked so we huddle under Jonty's 1-man emergency bothy. Anyway sun returns, much more faff is had, I take a fall... we don't make it into Fishface until 20:45, carrying LUDICROUSLY large bags! Mealy and I lead the way in, made a little clumsy by our heavy loads - though not as heavy as jonty's, and not at all as bad as mike's whose "side bag" is a full-sized tackle sack containing lots of rope. The first pitch was not my Friend and I dropped a plastic bottle - after that I enjoyed myself - esp. impressed by TK Maxx, a super cool pitch!! Mealy & I get down just after 23.00, followed soon by Jonty and a little later by Mike who had stopped to get even more Rope. Mealy goes of to faff with Cavelink, Jonty & I head over to help and we send the important message "camp creche want more peanut" - it sends. Mealy & I share warmth & noodles. Jonty & mike eat curry, we whip out the mini-Jagermeister, all take a little sip and head to sleep. I apparently caused some disturbance by snoring (sorry) and we all sleep intermittently.
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11-07-23. We make a late start (it's hard to leave warm sleeping bags) - no response on cavelink so we spend several more messages saying "weather update pls"? etc. Mealy, Mike & I eat porridge, Jonty eats noodles, then Mealy and Jonty head off to push Radorst's lead and Mike starts rigging Persied Showers - I sit in a bothy in case Mike needs me. he does not, and I get quite bored. Eventually he comes back, now a little damp! Quite displeased at the state & placement of some bolts. We go to find the others and run into them on their way back - Radorsts lead was a loop & Fishface was connected to Fishface yet again. Back we go to camp - still nothing on the cavelink - a little concerning as rain was forecast for +/- 24 hours later and we really wanted a weather forecast. After more Faff we decide to stay another night, so Mike went off to re-bolt and rig the rest while Jonty, Mealy & I went to look at the mysterious ABC- lead in Moths 2. I enjoyed doing the free climbs there. Then, we heard LOTS and LOTS of water that Mealy did not remember - we carried on to look down the pitch witch was rigged quite weirdly - the rope into Moths was sort of... dragged into Moths 2. We decided the vibes were simply off and left without pushing... pre-this me and Mealy had some veg soup and also fancied non-freezing water so we heated up water which tasted SO Good. Jonty was sipping the warm water and it fogged up his glasses - upon which he proclaimed he couldn't see anything other than the BEAUTIFUL GOLDEN GLOW of our veg soup! and indeed this beautiful glow felt like a 'diving presence'! We each took turns fogging up our glasses and looking at what we decided must be the face of God himself and went thus lenthily intranced.
Anyhow, back from Moths area, we decided to have a lil look for anything, realistically, and stumbled upon what looked deeply unpromising - a tight little sandy rift Jonty had to crawl into, but was in fact some really niece passage that contained some merry little formations!!! Thus we surveyed Get Righty - a fun detour. We popped out into a BIG rift that we briefly were hyped about but turned out to be familiar ground. Back at camp we were quite tired to headed to bed despite being a little worried about Uncle Mike who was still on Persied Showers. Luckily he showed up not long after - a little damp and not too thrilled about the efforts - Persied Showers still needs surveying and it was wetter than you would want to get even with rebolting.
Mealy and I got up around 7 and pack (&faff a lil) to start prussicing out & stay on the safe side of any rain. The bags were very arkward in the rifts but other than that it was quite a good time - Mealy left me sweet treats on the bolts every not and then as motivation. At around BBBB time, I got horrile cramps that made the entire rest a bit of an ordeal though prussiking wasn't too bad. I had a little cry on the surface but mostly was just very pleased to be in the sun again. Soon followed by Jonty and Mike - conclusion. Effort does not equal Success!
Author's note: MB would like me to include that we discussed the most likely position to find Kerian A in a sex shop - costumer or salesman - and decided we would expect to find him naked as a human counter.
Transcribers note, 21st July 2024. Whilst I do appreciate the write up and the narrative of my friends going caving, this has been the most horrifically punctuated account I have yet had to digitize. I am aware there are typos in my version, I can't be fucked to change them currently.