CUCC Expeditions to Austria: 1976 - 2024

It appears that James' logbook entry for our prospect day has gone walkabouts, so I am writing again.

After a heroic day huddling from the rain, we set out to finally prospect, trudging up to tunnocks col, down, and back up again. James W, Zac, and Risa arrived first and successfully bullied the massive boulder out of the entrance to Nat and Sarah's promising shaft [believed to be 2024-ND-01 - Becka].

Rosa bolted and headed down first. Meanwhile I explored James W's nearby (10m awaY) discovery. I wriggled over a boulder that he had kicked into the entrance, gardened rocks down the slope, and found a very pleasent chamber - completly chocked out - that I decided would makje an excellent camp for anyone my sized. It even has a nice ledge in the entrance for storing gear. I did a sketch survey and named it Mercurial Mine in honour of the glistening water on the walls.

Back to the initial hole, rosa had arrived back at the surface without too much promise and a bit cold, so I went in. A dodgy single bolt descent took me into a lovly. very wide shaft (very slowly on the thick rope) and down onto the ice plug. Had ome fun slipping around and swinging across the roiom on the ice. I put a deviation directly on a spike of ice, and tried desending down a hole at the edge of the ice. After two meteres or so I decided it was a bit too dodgy. I shouted down and the echo was very unpromising. I could see 4 or 5 meteres further down, ending in boulders on a floor. I could imagine it is possible a crawl could lead on horizontally a meter above the floor, but there was no wasy of testing this without descending below some dodgy ice. Did a sketch. headed back out. shooted the disto down to the ice and measured an avarega of 21m vitrical hight.

rosa and james went off to survey pelvis pot. its a large open hole with a climb down on the north and south sides, there is a continuation on the east side which continues down a climb past a pelvis (gemze?) to a chossy end with a small tube on the left which also chokes out. james taught rosa some surveying which ended in tears!

We headed off towards the Promised Land. Very excited about the area that had apparently 'made backa smile'. All in all it was a bit hopless. Lots of masive long, deep rifts - around 7-12m deep, 2-6 m across - that would all appeared to chock out at the bottom. No evidence of anything horizontal. The most promising spot was a nice arch at the bottom of a wide rift that Rosa and I scrambled down to, but this did not go more than a few meters deep. I walked above all the major rifts and scrambled down into a few, witrhout promise. My opinion is that the beds in the promiosed land are all poor in caves. And if there were any minor caves they would pop out very quickly. Searching on the northern side of the ridge may be more promising where the beds can be intercepted.

Some of the group explored Stoney Arch up there, then we headed back. Me James and Rose decided to return in a straight line by taking a bearing to Stoney Bridge. The platau monster did not approve of this decision and punished us with forests of bunder to swim thorugh.

We did however discover a very promising cave entrance. Turns out it was found by becka in 2004, and surveyed in 2013 by Alex Crow et al, but there is some ambiguity about whethjer it was killed off, and may be worth returning.The whole area around there appeared highly promising for cave entrances - though seems to be well prospected in the past.

Arrived at stoney as the first rain drops fell, througoulyu punished for our hubris for attempting a 'short cut'.

I have uploaded a gpx file of my approximate path this day, made 3 daya later, called 'Prospect_day_3.8.24.gpx'