Balkonhoehle - Rack Vs Rally
Colin
This is my first logbook entry so may need fettling.
After a rather eventful walk up the plateau summiting a mountain on my travels. I arrived to a concerned Becka and James about to come looking for me. On a side note would not recommend carrying caving kit and camping kit in one go it sucks. The next few hours were spent waiting for the previous camping trip to exit the cave so we knew what to take and do once underground. The other group - Wookey, Marie and Anthony - arrived at top camp at around 18:30 where we discussed their progress. Apparently it involved lots of swearing at far too many tackle bags on the way down the various pitches. Opting to eat dinner at top camp we continued to faff, getting underground for 20:00. This would be our last daylight for 65 hours.
Due to James and I not knowing the way to camp we had a guided tour of Balkonhoehle by Becka which slightly slowed progress taking 4hrs to reach camp. I was using my rack much to James's entertainment. I proceeded to drink half a litre of very cold water causing me to shiver. This would be the coldest I was all trip. When in our sleeping bags I apparently fell asleep far too quickly in comparison to a jealous Becka who was still cold. I was very warm and had a great nights sleep.
The tour of Balkonhoehle continued on the first day after a slow start. We found a couple of draughty A leads near camp which would be good for another team to look at if they're down for a short day. Once at Northern Powerhouse we dropped the big pitch as someone had to do it, resulting in a lovely 50m pitch which went nowhere. Becka nearly had a big rock land on her head when it fell out of the wall when James lent on it. Luckily the big rock went nowhere and only a little one went down. This would become a trend of our trip. Having used up all our thru-bolts to push the pitch and being a little late we decided to scope out our leads for the next day. This involved going to the lead in the chamber surveyed on the previous camping trip and digging a boulder choke to bypass a pitch. Once we realised it was going we left and James squashed his knee behind a rock. Becka was very concerned, thinking James had seriously either squashed or trapped his arm. I rammed myself into a very tight, horizontal, sharp and rifty squeeze where I bailed out due to rescue being impossible. We then looked at some other leads which needed killing. We went back to camp for an early night in preparation for a big pushing day the next day.
The gas stove required much love to actually work at cooking our dinner. On another side note the gas stove could do with being replaced with a stove with a pre-warming gas loop, otherwise you have no chance of cooking anything quickly.
An earlier start than the previous day left us with plenty of time to kill many leads. We set off to yesterday's dig to put in the pitch above as we now had bolts to bypass the sketchy boulder choke. Here I learnt to bolt under observation from James. Two more pitches were found and bolted. At the bottom of the second pitch I had to return to the top, while James and Becka surveyed our new found shafts, I was sent to collect the 50m rope for the 3rd pitch and some more flapjack. On the way back to the others 2 false floors collapsed underneath me while on a traverse line resulting in a disgruntled Becka, appropriately so. The 3rd pitch had some slightly more inventive rigging due to a low amount of bolts left. Here I had a conversation while bolting which was not a good idea, resulting in unset bolts which I had to be reminded to set. The 3rd pitch finished at a muddy tube so it ended rather depressingly.
After having de-rigged we had no thru-bolts to rig anything so we pushed a couple of horizontal ramps on the way to Tartarus which all connected to themselves quite entertainingly. There seems to be a big, wet boulder choke where all the leads crap out. We then headed further in to a QMB, which was lovely wide passage until it again died while on top of a boulder false floor on top of a big drop. We all got scared and ran away.
On the way back to camp we replaced the old (2012) rope from the Northern Powerhouse up-pitch and also surveyed a short side passage. I ran away to camp to make a start on dinner while the surveying was done. An inventory was taken and an early night was had.
A very early morning and a relatively faff-less start was achieved. Mongol Rally was quickly started by Becka. I tried to make my life easier by abseiling out of the window on an Italian hitch with my jammers on the up rope. The plan failed when the carabiner failed to open, resulting in me having to untie the rope from the natural it was secured to in order to feed it through my carabinier to then try again. James was not impressed and made sure to hold onto the rope. Once this first obstacle was passed I was off, being chased by James and trying to keep up with Becka, which didn't happen. My pantin and croll weren't being helpful, making my life very unpleasant. Much suffering was gone through trying to exit, much to everyone else's entertainment. The exhaustion caught up at the bottom of the entrance series. Much flapjack was consumed, giving me a second wind. I exited to Becka going telling me that we were behind schedule and cracking the whip.