CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2024

Various reports/complaints had made it clear that the rigging in homecoming left a lot to be desired so since the forecast for the afternoon precluded the possibility of derigging Big Bastard or making moves to push Clap My Pitch Up Nadia and I derived to go and fix this. The walk between this cave from FF is one of the most irritating pieces of plateau bashing I have ever had to do. Lots of snaking up and down rugged terrain, through large patches of bunde and dwarf willow, with little idea how close you are to your destination. So SA to a good start. Eventually arrived and kitted up. Headed down the first couple of pitches with banks of snow before arriving at the pitches after the crawl. I installed a new bolt at the pitch head just after the crawl to make a traverse line. Then installed another rebelay near the bottom of this to reduce rub.

Then headed onwards. I had to completely derig the next section then rerig it because many of the Y hangs were needlessly low and also because the rope had been threaded around a natural through an alpine butterfly in a highly japish fashion. At the head of the main hang of radagast, I decided to swap the rope because the y hang had been so poorly equalised that the alpine butterly had tightened solidly. After dixing this new rope in at the top I carried on rerigging down Radagast. This long (30-40m) hang had not been broken up at all despite being a rebelay bolt halfway down! I added another bolt here then just below drilled a thread for a deviation. This pitch could do with one more rebelay before the traverse to avoid the big swing in the dicps. Swapped out small rope at the bottom as the new orange can do it all. Then headed on throufh thge anbnoying rift traverse with thin rope to the next traverse. Added another natural to the end of this to make getting off the end easier. Then derigged down the pitch and following up rope which arrives at the head of Wallace. Replaced these with a new descending traverse which avoids the need to go down and up through an annoying rift, I then installed a small new traverse line to protect the exposed approach to the start of this while Nadia added a new rebelay part way down Wallace and lengthened the deviation.

NB: While I was rigging the new descent to the head of wallace at 1700-1800 we head a large flood pulse somewhere ahead of us in the cave, which came on really quickly and dispatched over ~ 2 hours.

We turned around at ~20:30. On the way out I noticed that Radagast, forced along a really nice normal fault, a marker had between 50cm thick between 2 shale bands shows it has ~10m displacement walks back was very damp of treacherous, saw many salamanders back at top camp at ~1am after dropping gear at FF. Thru bolts used: 13