CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2024

On the day of expo dinner a rag-tag group of cavers gathered under the tatty hut tarp. These cavers were all here for all the wrong reasons. Firstly, supreme leader and trip planner Marie had bailed on caving in preference of washing her undersuit. Next we have Wassil who was both procrastinating his masters thesis and feeling sorry for himself about killing his own lead. Finally we have Dickon who decied to go on a caving expedition despite hating caving, and as a result elected do go canyoning. Proceeding the formation of this glorious trio, Chi decided to show his face following a disasterous camping trip which did not result in a camp occurring and was at a lost end. Apparently Marie, Wassil, and Dickon looked like a suitable group to go canyoning with and somehow they decided Chi would be a suitable accomplice.

Despite waking up at nine at and leaving at ten, Marie somehow managed to faff for two hours. As a result of the "rush" to get ready, the route description of the canyon selected the night before was not studied (although perhaps she should not have been given full responsability of the organisation given it was her third ever canyoning trip). After three pit stops for hats, spanners and post-canyoning hummus (not respectively - the order and combination will be left as an exercise to the reader), Marie was no longer looking like the faffiest on the trip. Unfortunately, the blame shifted back to Marie when Dickon had to drive for an undisclosed period of time down the road to get signal to download the route description so that we knew what was in store.

As Dickon was dealing with Marie's mess, Chi put on his wetsuit and his wetsocks. Unfortunately, the ordering was sub-optimal and required modification. This would require an elongated period of nudity, which would expose the hoardes of cyclists to Chi's own manhood. Furthermore, flashing Dickon would have shifted the group dynamics such Marie and Wassil would feel like they were third and fourth wheeling.

On the walk up, group bonding was achieved by Wassil's sharing of his deep fear of small wet holes, which he tried to confront by entering such a hole (drainage pipe under rode). Apart from that, nothing of any interest happened on the walk up. We reached the top of the canyon when we decided that we were sick of walking next to the streamweay and dropped into it.

As a result of having forgotten everything written in the guide (we had a little group reading session), the canyon was a constant stream of surprises. This lack of knowledge inhibited our ability to jump, thus forcing us to resort to abseiling instead. At one particular waterfall, Wassil abseiled first (he does in fact not like water that much). Chi then inquired as to the depth the pool, to which Wassil answered "two meters", actually meaning "at least two meters". The truth is, Wassil is scared of deep water and did not really want want to dive further than 20cm.

The canyon proceeded with a set of interesting but technical pitches including a double-waterfall with a built in hypothermia-inducing whirlpool and enormously high traverse line which prevented Marie's exit from the aformentioned pool. Upon being being dragged out of the pool, Marie was no longer dying of hypothermia. The second stage of the double waterfall was comprised of what looked like a jump but was deemed too stupid for even Chi to attempt. In order to navigate this safely one had to abseil to about 3m off the water and then free-fall. Wassil did not get the message, resulting a in his elbow being smashed on a small ledge. He seemed quite sad about this and required a series of group cuddle sessions to stave off hypothermia in his short wetsuit (why would you canyon in a short wetsuit? - Wassil argues that an undersuit and oversuit remedies this. It does not.)

The next few pitches were far simpler and did not claim any further injuries. We did however, stay quite cold and began to desire the end of the trip. En-route we discovered various excavator parts strewn across the canyon and eventually reached the main river. After a brief walk back to the car, houmous feast and faff, Dickon decided that the bridleway signs were clearly intended for motorised vehicles, much to the dismay of literally everyone else, including pedestrians. Three cyclists showed their gratitude in the form of various facial expressions and during our adventure we passed through an interesting tunnel and multiple bridges which did not appear suited for a car of four. Despite the passengers' protests, Dickon did not turn around and was adamant that his "route" was faster. It would transpire that his "route" was in fact 6 minutes faster and we all made it to the expo meal on-time.