Balconhoehle - Rigging Mongol Rally
Wookey
Walked up to top camp in the evening ready for trip down Balkonhoehle to get Mongol Raly rigged with Jono. I was somewhat perplexed to find no sign of Jono, and still not as it went dark. He eventually turned up about 10am the next morning. We had our gear to carry over so it wasn't a particularly early start.
I had forgotten a load of the upper passages, but did at least remember the obscure left turn for Honeycomb/Mongol Rally. Soon enough we arrived at the end of the rigging part-way down hangmans, complete with a rigging diag, some rope and a drill. Jono did this one, complaining at the bottom that the bolts didn't match the diagram, rigging a 2-bolt rebelay as a rather peculiar deviation. We realised that we were starting part-way down the rigging diagram, not the top, so he went back up to put it right whilst I continued to start Mongol Rally. Dragging the gear through was the usual faff (someone should just take a spade and make that crawl bigger).
So now it was my turn and I suited up with Anthony's nice new drill and 125m of rope. The 25m didn't quite reach across the traverse with a big thread round a boulder, so I put a bolt in the roof to improve the rigging (another one just over the hole in the floor would make the traverse line a lot more useful, I later realised). The rock was impressively cheesy, with about 20mm of goo to remove before getting to actual rock.
The rigging diagram suggested another bolt near the top so I added one about 6m down on a nose to the right, only to realise that one had probably already been done some previous year. I also realised at this point that the tape on Anthony's drill bit was set rather too short for reliable bolt-setting so adjusted it to give an extra 10mm of hole. I then added another bolt on the left, replacing one in the maximum rub-spot just under a lip (very odd placement). This finally removed all the rubs on this top slope and actually made the changeovers nicer, so I think it's an improvement.
Next dilemma was whether to use the bolt on a nose (with hanger left behind) or the reflectored bolt on the well-used muddy route. The nose was harder to get to but gave a nicer hang (and was suggested on the rigging diagram). With a sling to help the changeover it actually worked quite well, although maybe the obvious route would also work fine - there is no way of knowing without trying both and I had faffed enough by now. Continued down for another hour or so rigging rebelays. The rigging guide is accurate. Hummed and hawed some more at the odder bits of rigging trying to work out what 'better' might look like. Left one bit (with a nearly horizontal deviation) some extra rope to come back to and add a bolt if time allowed but pressed on until the rope ran out, just on the same ledge that had had a knot pass in 2022. Looks like that is where 100m gets you to.
We were out of time so called it a day and headed off out, only realising on the way out that the rope bag we had left contained a note 'top of mongol rally' in it so we had used the wrong one (misled by the '25m' rope in the top matching the '25m' rope marked on the topo for the traverse. Oh well.
Got out around 11:30, having had a very satisfying trip, Jono had finally got underground and enjoyed himself. It was a chill trip with almost zero stress, and we'd done enough to make a camping trip feasible next time.