CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2024

Slavedriver Payne woke us up early and we got up the hill vaguely fast (despite Chi's moderate faff). Unfortunately further faff then occurred at the entrance to Homecoming. This included further effort towards the Gordian Knot from the first Homecoming trip, which concluded in Chi doing an Alexander the Great. We ended up with two ropes. Chi also spent some time reconstructing a pantin from two broken ones (it didn't work). Clearly one person was the issue here. *editorial note: it would transpire that Lara concluded faffing a good 20 mins after the futile pantin was birthed*

Harry and Charlotte entered early to rerig and apparently faffed for an ungodly amount of time. Chi and I got underground at 12:40 collecting Charlotte's Pantin, which she had ironically managed to forget after it had been used as a model for the Frankenpantin. Much faff followed this as well: we raced down to the top of Wallace where we met Harry coming up the pitch. He had somehow managed some mess involving a dropped drill bag, a random pitch and disgustingly twisty rope. All was retrieved and the rope was replaced.

Chi zoomed down to join Charlotte and de-rig Heifer for rope while I coiled the old shit 2013 11mil (it was not a pretty job). Harry and I sat kindly waiting for each other to finish 5 minutes after both of us had, without saying anything.

On the way to the pushing front only one eventful thing happened. Harry got entertainingly stuck on a pitch-head after descending into the traverse line. He attempted to climb over it at the risk of falling backwards, again, much to my entertainment, before giving up.

We decided to push the QMA aven at the start of Flowstone Canyon. Chi and I pushed a lovely big rock down it first. Nice stuff. EDITORIAL NOTE it was at the end of Watershed, the aven isn't in Flowstone Canyon . Chi spent 20 slow minutes putting in bolts while we layered up. He was frustrated at how slow the drill was until it was pointed out to him that it was in reverse. Chi blamed DeWalt. He then claimed that some strange mineral vein had fucked his drill bit, which turned out to be entirely flat at the tip. With the drill bit swapped, he tried to put it in the same hole and fucked the second bit a little too. We eventually dropped the pitch.

The bottom had a potential camping place (whooo). It was drippy on the pitch side of the pot but dry on the other with a flat rocky area you could potentially fit four sleepers in. Chi also realised I had left his down jacket at the top of the pitch thinking it was the emergency shelter. In my defence they were in identical orange bags.

After lots and lots of discussion Chi called the chamber 'Peculiar Pot' after the strange large boulders surrounding the camp. I surveyed, Harry drilled and we dropped a pitch down the rift on the other side. What followed was a lot of wiggly rift with a pitch at the end. Due to the strange pitch/traverse Harry rigged which you had to stand in it was dubbed Perverse Pitch which proved itself accurate.

We agreed to finally turn around once it was dropped, it already being 9pm. Annoyingly, (or not) at the bottom we found the side of the Sound of Water pitch. Loop closure! This of course meant closing the survey loop and derigging what we'd just dropped, making the whole exercise interesting but a little pointless.

I forgot that Harry's water bottle was in the bottom of my bag, and may have slightly convinced them they were wrong. Harry, desperate for a drink took a sip from a streamway before realising it was a little frothy a few feet upstream. Chi and I had indeed pissed there five minutes before. The dehydration continued as all the other water was used for noodles and Harry had never found his, how mysterious. I was in trouble when I emptied my tackle sack on the surface but on the plus side denying Harry basic human necessities slowed him down behind me on the entrance series.

Harry and Charlotte slowed themselves down by doing some more Wallace fettling. Chi and I got out at the lovely hour of 3am and napped for the 15 minutes before they caught up. I got deja vu as we headed up to Garlic and immediately passed out. A very long, very fun day.