CUCC Expo Logbook 2018

CUCC 2018 Expedition: Week 1​

Once again the H?hlenforcher have travelled from the UK to Bad Aussee with gear, curry, and high expectations. It was all looking a bit bleak when Jim suggested it would be a no-drinking expedition, but when he promptly ended up drinking 7 beers the same night, we knew we were in business. The first week has passed quickly, with both bottom and top camp taking shape.


Frank has put in a heroic effort, here seen adding grommets to a new tarp for the bier tent. 

The weather has been treating us nicely, possibly too nicely. This has made water collection on top of the mountain a bit problematic, but means we get the tans that are otherwise sorely lacking in the caving community.

Gear from last year has been systematically inspected and repaired. Anthony went through all the dry bags, noting that a lot of them seemed to have more than the one hole you would expect, and patched them up accordingly. He claimed that in order to truly repair a dry bag you have to become one with the bag, and demonstrated how to do so.

This year, we have to take two large solar panels and accompanying batteries up the hill. Haydon stepped up to over-engineer cases that would protect these from any nuclear attacks that may be encountered on the way up. Several of us sat around providing some much needed moral support and criticism.

When it comes to over-engineering, one must of course never forget UX testing:

As always, the CUCC expedition is blessed with a great supply of nerds. Phillip Sargent spent an hour trying to convince me that the 4-step version control system couldn?t possibly be easier to use. Today, Mark Shinwell stepped up when the printer was malfunctioning, and solved this by pushing in the paper tray. Some people just aren?t made for the nerding I guess.

Up on top of the mountain the tarps are set up, and curries, noodles, flapjack, gear, soup, more curries, and the all important bog roll.

Leads are already being pushed, with the first few surveys already coming out. Our first major surface find of the year, Homecoming Hole (Heimkommen H?hle) has been pushed down 7 pitches so far, and is still going strong. While this cave was named in anticipation of football coming home, it seems like we?ll have to settle for caving coming home this time around.

The nights end with plenty of drinks and cheer, and continued nerding to slot in the new leads in the database. It's looking like it'll be an exciting year in Austria!

We set off from top camp,full of optimism for the day. Nadias's ankle was sore from the previous trip, so we wanted to take the shortest route to the cave to minimise stretch on it. With this in mind we set off along the path which went via fish face.

Arriving at fish face in good time we found another group that were about to go underground.After a chat, we set off for Homecoming with our glasses remaining half-full. Without a GPS we weren't entirely sure how to get there, but with morale high we were confident of bodging the way. I had already got lost going from FGH to HC, surely it couldn't happen again.

Fast forward an hour or so we were standing on the side of a sharpsloping wall of a gully. Looking in two different directions (our tone starting to resemble the internal monologue of a child who's lost their mum in Asda). We both said the same thing, 'I remember going this way'. After trialling the two options we discovered, with sinking morale, that we were both wrong.

My watch produce a nagging beep to signal mid-day; another pin-prick in the already deflating balloon that was my confidence. Our plan of action started to fragment;a staring chicken lost on a plane of fine brown gravel.

'It might be this way' I wouldsay 'no, maybe it's this way'.

Feeling a bit spent wedecided to rest. Over some flapjack crumbs we discussed our plan of action.

Setting off again, our plan A, B and C ready to go. We had at last cometoterms with our situation.

Bags on we walked around the bunde that had provided shelter for our break, a cairn, two, three, the familiar path to Homecoming.



With regards to the cave, we swung into the window at the top of Gromit, bolted the pitch Anthony had startedthe day prior. It lead into two continuations; one horizontal, one vertically down. We crapped out the horizontal and left the other labelled as a QMB. Reason being: it's clean washed, and it looks like it will connect to cave already found below.

• 3l water in 3x 2l bottles
• 2 karrimats
• 1 small bag muesli
• 12-man tent (inc. poles,pegs etc. [there is room to pitch this inside the entrance easily]

go along Stoger Weg past Windloch (32) and further past the next cave (marked 88 in faded red paint) in LHS of path. Go [10m] further from there along Stoger Weg and leave path descending limestone karren down to right. Proceed back along foot of karren slope and push aside 3-4 branches of bunde to reach a "path".

Follow along this until you can descend steeply to the left (a few more branches of bunde) to steep "rockery" scramble bank. Make your way with care down this and you should be able to see a truncated pine tree [4m high] on the other side of a small gully. (When seen from the other side, this pine tree has branches in the shape of a figure "4".) Descend and traverse round to the right and climb up to this pine tree across the gully.

Now follow "path" down and to the right across 2 areas of soil/grass/loose stones to eventually reach a big pine tree with a bend in the trunk at ground level and a small cairn on the bend in the trunk. Continue down right through bunde with a little climb until you can see a large dead twisted tree root across a gully. Descend and get to this via via lush grass and flowers on steep slope and loose soil.

At the twisted dead tree root there is an obvious route leading to the right. At this point you are only 13m from p115x but you can't see it as it faces S. and you are approaching from the N. 10m on you pass a large anthill and then 3m further and you're there.

You may see a water collection poly sheet a lot earlier but use this route to get to it. (I did it 3x today and lots of other routes are worse.)

Oh yes, on first visit to CUCC-PS01-2018 this morning I went in: climbing down a 30 degree straight tunnel. Roof is solid rock and floor is blocks and rocks [and relic vadose features]. I counted 1m steps coming out and it's >14m long. Continues deeper but I was in t-shirt and shorts. Slight cold outwards draft. [Photos and GPS tracks and locations recorded.]

• Surveyed Hobnob Hallway until mud/sand slope. went over fals floor very unstable needs a traverse line. Was crumbling as we walked on it.
• Under false floor is a trickle of water leading to a wet pitch Q.M.C.
• Found side passage at the bottom of a mud slope on the left. Keyhole passage that connects into Dickon's passage,currently unnamed.
• Heard flood pulse, while surveying, when we went out all ropes were dry except the very bottom of Radagast pitch. No issue with pitches being impassable except maybe Radagast.

My First Expo

Writing this from base camp on the evening of my last night on expo.

Expo has been a new experience for me and I've loved every second, from the comforts and luxuries of base camp to the Swiss Family Robinson style living on the plateau.

I arrived last Monday by plane and train and made my way up the hill and straight in Balkonhoehle on the Tuesday. The walk up was scenic, despite being strenuous, as we were greeted by the local cows.

At top camp, beds were set up. Bellow is a scene of my "bedroom" (for want of a better word) at top camp as well as the view of top camp from the outside.

The next few days were spend learning to rig on caves that had been bolted in years past under the supervision of more experienced cavers (many thanks for your patience, Dickon and Chris).

On my return trip from rigging String Theory in Tunnocksschacht, I discovered my chest jammer (originally bought by my mother in the '80s) had given up the ghost and was slipping by several inches by the time I got out. New jammers were swiftly ordered in and I managed to borrow an interim pair from Becka.

Later on, I went on some trips into Fisch Gesicht to do some surveying. I took the opportunity to try out my new Exotogg thermal layer which kept me extremely cosy, if a little bulkier than usual!

The next day, back to base camp for a shower and refreshment. The day was spent assembling the lints for carrying the new Solar Panels and Car Batteries up the hill (required for charging of drills, lamps, phones etc on top camp's own power grid). Below are images of the testing of the battery carrier. I still have bruises from being one half of a solar panel carrying team...

My next underground experience included some bolting and rigging tuition from Mike Butcher - a very enjoyable experience despite my largely ineffective hammer use... None of my bolts failed and with any luck my traverse line will keep some pretty corral-like calcite formations safe for years to come.

Just beyond the Y-hang I was bolting in the above image was discovered a huge chamber with a railway sized tunnel on the other side. Named Ulysses, it is fittingly large and hard to get through. Very exciting!

My final trip of the expedition was a pushing and surveying trip in Homecoming Hole (newly discovered this expo) where I christened my first cave passage "Kit-Kat Connection" which was discovered while taking a break in Hobnob Hallway.

Back down to base camp now - gear all washed in the river and hung up to dry.

My only wish is that I was staying for longer. I can't wait to come back next year and I will be following the progress of this year's expo with interest. Thanks to all of the expedition for making it possible.

--Crossley

We surveyed then dropped a ? p15m + dropped thenext, deeper hole. At the top level + down the pitch were amazing large beds of ginger crystals (see George's photos) at all crazy angles. The pitch turned into a biggy so it was lucky that I'd brought all 3 ropes along.Finding a clean hang among the sharp spikes,slopy walls + shit rock proved toomuch of a challenge for George :-).

We surveyed downwhilst George was rigging until we hit a big ledge where we'd run out of rope. There were huge boulders so we had fun crashing them down (though one monster he videoed headed the wrong way when I pushed it + I thought I was going to crush him) + I gotnearly 50m distoXshot further down so we're still well off the bottom.

Tired ont eh survey on the way out. Took 90 min from bottom of Hangman's to get out.

Pitch below Prangman's (rigged 19/7) [6]



Hangman's Traverse ( redrawn from 17/7/18)
and Snail Trail Traverse (20m after Snail Trail climb)



[10] Mongol Ralley Pitch - rigging guide - 1 of 3.



[See continuing Mongol Rally rigging guide]

• Swung into shallow leads followed down past 5m pitch/climb, under crawl, turn left.
• Went down left of rock bridge,(straight hang from from top) found 2 rifts, followed first toan aven, followed second until tight, vertical connection to first rift.
• Went back up to rock bridge and dropped right side to deeper lead. Added a deviation off a natural above the bridge. At the floor to the right was pitch ~20m. Clean-washed and dripping QMB (QM1). De-rigged and left.
• On third pitch of Homecomingtied rope from third pitch to connection between block and wall with bling. Not sure howeffective it will be. Added deviationon third pitch off top of big block with a sling.

Rigging Guide: Snagged and Shagged

A series of short notes on things that could go wrong.

Part 1.

You don't want to find this below you.

If you do, you shouldn't just pass it and descend the 20m to the next rebelay.

Not familiar with the EDK? Look it up. Really. I insist*.

Whilst I'm on the theme: knots in the ends of ropes. We can at least all agree on that one, yes? YES?

Here's an example that failed the visual inspection. Arguably, the fault lay with the puppy that was forcing an old dog to learn a fresh trick.

Part 2 will cover keeping anchors in the rock.

No further parts are planned but we're only 1/3 through the expedition.

*Though to be fair the top hit on Google is in it's defence.

Day 3

Prussicked out. The only inceident of note occurred in the camp before setting off. In the interests of documenting camp life, Chris was trying to compose a photograph comprising myself,nthe stooling stool, (complete with bag), a Daren drum prominently labelled "Poo" atop which was perched a bog roll with the visage of Donald Trump. Im the process, Chris nearly performed a backward-somersault into the ladies pissoire. Fortunately his un-helmeted head was unharmed and the shot was duly obtained [and is posted on the caving.uk blog - ed.]

 47 deg. 41.921 min. N 
013 deg. 48.478 min. E

MONGOL RALLY - Part 2 of 3 - rigging guide



Total rope for Mongol Rally = 23+40+40+22+100+65 = 300m (290m) approx.

[12] Pitch to enter Myopia from the top of Hangmans


[13] Myopia traverse


[14] Littleboy pitch



[moved from later in logbook:]

MONGOL RALLY - rigging guide - Part 2

[15] Suction cup pitch in Grand Prix,beyond Littleboy pitch rigged on 3/8/18

[16] Scum of the earth pitch below radio silence rigged on 4/8/18

MONGOL RALLY - rigging guide - Part 3

[17] Traverse above Horrible Pitch (Luke & Rachel)

[18] Horrible Pitch level of Indy Rally, 8+9 Aug.rigged George & Becka


[19] Horrible rift Part II - from horrible pitch Part I - climb down large muddy passage to corkscrewing around,to obvious pitch head.



[NB rigging moved back here from later in logbook as it belongs here]

The bolt climb crapped out after 20m.

After that we had a look fajelleux(?) with the others at a potential dig in Fisch Gesicht which also crapped out after a few metres.

• a 45° downwards tube which started with a 3m non-free-climbable pitch and turned right,
• a hole in the wall behind (what we thought was) non free-climbable pitch (but actually was), and a
• rift which lead to another 80m pitch.

On 18 July 2018 at 19:46, Charles Butcher  wrote:

    Philip

    Thank you. I’m sorry you had trouble finding it. Even the traditional route to the main entrance is quite a slog, 
    and if you don’t remember it – I certainly couldn’t – you could be in for a real epic. As you probably found. 
    I hope the server repairs went well.

    Thanks also for the GPS data in your previous message, and to Andy and everyone else who has worked to 
    preserve this stuff. I’m astonished that we still have good records of all those muddy survey pages 
    from so long ago. And to see it all connect with Google mapping is really impressive.

    Safe trip home

    Chas

On Sun, 1 Jul 2018, 10:31 Andy Waddington,  wrote:

    Sometime before sending, Philip Sargent typed (and on Sunday 2018-07-01 at 08:46:16 sent):

    > Any comments on the 115 entrances?

    I really can't remember any of this without reading the stuff on the website - but that stuff is available to
    everyone (unreliable memory is exactly why this stuff was all put there - but in the early days, which would
    cover the 115 period, we naively thought we would remember everything, that the same people would be
    going back, and that we didn't need to write everything down - though actual surveys were properly recorded).

    Where survey data was corrected for fridge north, that should be recorded in the survey notes. That was such
    a bizarre correction that I don't think it would ever have been done without explaining it. The Futility series survey
    had two compasses, Suunto 422903 and Chas' Silva 15T. Had there been a major discrepancy between them, I
    think they would have noticed. The bearings seem to be the same in the Survex dataset as in the notebook.
    ie. the first leg is 8.08 m on 320 at -11.5. That's from the dataset extracted from CVS in 2001 (which is the oldest
    I can find in a quick search here). I don't think corrections to fridge north would have been made more recently
    than that... 075 to Trisselberg cross is the same as the notes, and even if the 115 entrance wasn't located
    precisely, that ought to be enough to show if the error was more than the odd degree or two.

    Not sure if the scans of this notebook are on the site.
    Notes are a bit muddy, with no passage walls recorded.

    Did Arge not resurvey any of this ?

    Andy

Philip Sargent (Gmail) 
to Charles, andrew, mary5waddington

Chas,

[and Mary, please pass on to Andy as I don’t think any email works for him these days],

 
Update, as promised.

Through the miracle that is survex, and the diligent curation of data* over decades by 
Wadders and Wookey, I have recovered the survey points from your surface walk with Pete 
on 27 July 1983 and attach as a GPX file in modern WGS84 coordinates. You can plot this 
on top of a GoogleMaps photo using http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map_input 
(or select “OSM (TF Landscape)” in the drop-down on the map to see contours).

I will be re-tracing this slog and looking for more entrances in a week or so. 
A bit lower than you went looks promising from the geology.

[snip]
 
I also attach the Futility series surveyed by us on 26 July 1983 (futility.svx)
and as resurveyed by Germans on 8th August 1999 (nutzlos.svx). But this is less 
useful as GPX on Google maps as it is inside the hill of course and you would need 
to use Survex/Aven itself to see it. They also seemed to have found another entrance 
in 2000 which drops eventually into the phreatic stuff which they called the 
Nebukad series (Nebukadnezar) and is now p115b (ent.) in the survey data.

I hope a find a cold draft coming out of rocks at least, even if I can’t dig it out.

Philip
 
* http://expo.survex.com/repositories/home/expo/loser/shortlog/b6c8d59090c3 is an online 
look at the version control system used for cave data on Loser these days.

From: Philip Sargent (Gmail) 
Sent: 21 June 2018 17:28
To: 'Charles Butcher'
Cc: andrew@pennine; 'Wookey'
Subject: RE: Aha - futility series entrance search...

Chas,
 
Unbelievably, that surface survey you and Pete did (“lookfutile”) is a standard part of the SMK dataset.

I can see that your final survey position was 11.7m above the drafting hole in Futility 
(contrary to Andy’s notes in the file below), and 157m away horizontally. Maybe some 
fridge-north corrections have been done since then.

You were also spot-on the line where the bedding plane of 115 intersects the hillside. 
So going downhill from there, maintaining a heading of 118 degrees (if possible) would 
track further down that bedding plane. As I remember, the survey legs may have been 
ascending, but the passage roof was coming down to the sandy floor. So the draft 
connection  (“Utility Entrance” ?) would be lower down.

From: Charles Butcher 
Sent: 16 June 2018 23:11
To: Philip Sargent
Cc: andrew@pennine
Subject: Re: Aha - futility series entrance search...

Thanks Philip. When you told me about your plan the other day it brought back memories of 
thrashing around on the hillside, but I couldn’t remember what we were looking for.

I do remember that it was harder work than being underground. I suppose a Laplander pocket saw 
would be frowned on in the Naturschutzgebiet, but useful all the same.

I assume those coordinates are relative to the entrance, or to whatever else we used as a 
main datum. So if you have an accurate GPS fix for that datum, wouldn't it be quite easy 
to locate the hole Pete and I made? Not that that is likely to be much use, since it’s 
probably the one place we know there isn’t an entrance…

Anyway, good luck and keep us posted!

Best
Chas

You wrote:
stumbled on this:
http://expo.survex.com /years/1983/log.htm
 
1983-07-27 | Surface survey and Prospecting below 115. | Chas, Pete
The aim was to find the end of the Futility Series popping out of the hillside below 115. 
We surface surveyed down to a permanent station, marked with bolt hole and lots of red paint: P1983/1. 
This was almost directly below 115 and on the edge of the big trees. 
It was at E77.2, N-237.3, H -195.8, whereas the end of the Futility Series was at G30: E 139.7, N -54.2, H-187.8. 
So we were (!) at the right place, but the cave end was 180m into the hillside. 
We had a good look round but didn't find any signs of caves there.
So we looked at a big phreatic entrance further east (up the valley) and ~50m higher.
This was looked at in 1982, but a bit of proddling released lots of boulders + we were able to 
follow up a narrowing bedding plane at ~60°, for 10m until it got too loose/small. 
Very difficult descent on scree to the end of the Altausseer See + then the Schniderwirt for Weizen Bier. 
Pete
 
and Wookey thinks some Germans had a look around there too in later years
Unfortunately we use WGS84 GPS lat./long. these days so I’m not sure I’ll be able to find this 
35-year old red paint.
 
I’m hoping to use better geology and modern surveying to find where the bedding plane intersects 
the surface this year. I’m going out for 4-5 weeks.
Philip

Midterm Report
Three weeks in and three weeks left. We are all filtering down the hill to clean up for the annual dinner and refresh for the second half of the expedition. Here's what's happened so far...

Homecoming Hole
The new cave of the year has been a smashing success. Found early in the expedition, Homecoming has been an excellent training ground for many of our expedition newbies. Over time the cave has been pushed below 200m which includes a 60m pitch, no easy feat for a tired caver. Up steam is a large rift traverse being pursued by Haydon and Jon primarily. Down stream there are many tight rifts left to be explored.

Two teams gearing up to push leads in Homecoming

Fisch Gesicht
A promising lead from last year is still going strong. We have dropped this below 200m as well. It has reached an exciting pitch called Ulysses. Attempts have been made to Traverse around to find an appropriate place to drop the pitch, however the other side of the shaft is no more appealing. This is creating and interesting challenge for our cavers.

Surveying in Fisch Gesicht

Tunnocks
We had our first camping trip down Tunnocks this week. Chris, Antony and Lydia pursued leads down Beckoning Silence with much success; running out of rope, hangers and stoke all at the same time. Another aim of the camp trip was to test out our cave radio systems. Top camp was very disappointed with the failure of the system. Mean while the campers had a good laugh as they were able to hear top camps attempts to contact them but a fault in their microphone prevented them from responding. This lead them to name the continuation of Beckoning Silence, Radio Silence. Plans to fix the microphone fault are in the works and will hopefully soon have a fully functioning radio system! Further trips into camp have been prevented by a lack of hangers and maillons! Too much success! New ones have been bought and exploration will continue.


Balcony
Last year a lead was found that had been walked past for 5 years! A small crawl leads to an open chamber which was being pushed at the end of last year. Becka and George (with a rotating cast of helpers) have been putting in the hours this year to extend this further. First ones to leave in the morning and the last ones back. They dropped a pitch, Hangman, through a tight squeeze and into surveyed passage. A quick trip down the hill showed that they had connected in to Tunnocks! Dropping further down Hangman lead to a 200m pitch series, Mongol Rally. 50m from the floor is a swing into a window, The Pit Stop. From The Pit Stop horizontal blowing phreatic passage slopes down pushed ~500m and still going. At the floor of the Mongol Rally more phreatic tubes where found ~20m in diameter! Becka and George managed a whole kilometre of surveying in a day! They popped out on a window to a large camber, climbed down and found that it had been surveyed. Another connection. Putting the data in to survex showed that they were just above camp Kraken. A potential new way into camp. Many exciting things going on in Balcony. 

The top of Mongol Rally

Looking to the Future
Our overarching aim is to connect our Schwarzmooskogel system to the Sch?neberg system to the north west. Homecoming and Fisch Gesicht are heading in the right direction, one step closer to our goal. looking forward we would like to pursue a connection from the existing system to these two caves. With Homecoming an hour and a half walk away from top camp we are working on setting up a satellite camp in the west to minimise the commute.

The new bivy cave. The floor has been flattened out and terraced to accommodate 6 cavers.

This year we have had an influx of student cavers from many different universities. We will have 14 cavers on their first expedition from 6 universities, Cambridge, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Bristol and Nottingham. We are working on developing our newer cavers with surveying and bolting as well as general caving skills to pass down knowledge and experience to continue to develop our expedition as well as student caving in the UK.

It?s coming home: Final Homecoming Stint​

Homecoming is a cave found this year, approximately 90 minutes walk from our bivouac on the Loser plateau that has just gone and gone! Unfortunately, it has sunk lots of resrouces and plans have been formulated to set up a satellite bivi in the future, where our expedition aims will consolidate underground efforts.

The derig
Despite our best efforts, we arrived at Homecoming to begin the derig, a cave we had little information about, but that did not extend much further than a junction, 200m down. Luke raced ahead and left Nadia and I remarking at the cave?s remarkable features; howling icy draught, deep free hanging pitches and long, low hanging traverse lines over rift passages.

Having entered the cave, thinking we were going to derig 200m of pitches, we found shit tons of rope after where we had expected to start, perhaps twice as much rope as we expected. Luke began the derig, Nadia ferrying tackle bags and myself ?processing rope? and packing bags. After an ambitious few hours, moving 200m of rope, we arrived at our preconceived start point. Here we plotted our PAELLA: Pulling A Extremely Long Length Altogether.

None of the 3 of us had ever ?paella?ed rope before but we knew we were not going to be able to prussik it all out, easily. We sent Luke up first with the rope tied to him and all the metalwork, ~35 handers+malloins and the emergency kit. Nadia and I derided the traverse to the big 120m pitch. With each bolt ~5m apart and no handholds to speak of, we questioned our sanity, but pushed through. Luke was much faster than our derigging effort and pulled our rope chain up 80m to the ledge, prussiked the tackle sack up 40m and came back down to meet Nadia on the ledge again. After a bit of discussion as to how to pull rope up two pitches at the same time they figured it out. Luke prussiked up the 40 and created a new pile as Nadia pulled the ropes I was derigging up. Very smooth.

At the top of the 40m our chain was over 300m long and we were entering rift passage. Luckily the timing was right and we were met by Ruairidh, Jacob and Alex, who supported the transportation through a climbing rift, by acting as human-deviations getting the chain ~60m through twists and turns to the next pitch head.  The rest of the trip was smooth sailing with only a few rocks being dropped and one hanger escaping out of a hole in the bottom of the tackle sack. The final length that lay piled outside the cave entrance was over 500m and bigger than the average caver. An estimated 70 hangers and maillons plus deviation crabs were also brought out. Cavers returned to camp for 2am.

Man hours: 66

Bunda filling the plateau - click for bigger picture

2018-ntu-01 neil_view_west - click for bigger picture

2018-ntu-01 tag arrows - click for bigger picture

2018-ntu-01 looking down shaft and rift
click for bigger picture

2018-pf-01 paul drilling tag: view northeast
click for bigger picture

2018-pf-03 and pf-02 arrows
click for bigger picture

2018-ntu-02 view west
click for bigger picture

2018-ntu-02 entrance pitch 4.6m
click for bigger picture

2018-ntu-02_drilled-hole_view-south
click for bigger picture

A big opening in the side of the mountain

2004-18_valley_cubic_boulder_afar_view_west
click for bigger picture

cubic_valley_east-end_cave-view-north
click for bigger picture

,
aa-1-2017_with-tag
click for bigger picture

aa-1-2017_looking-down
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Beside this shaft is another shaft with a snow plug and 2 spits well positioned for rigging, but no visible tag nor informations recorded.

bolted-untagged-cave_beside_aa-1-2017_view-northwest
click for bigger picture

Who could have been there?



2004-16 and 2004-17 and Maybe Hole
As it was getting late and our water bottles were empty and it was very hot, we left our heavy caving gear in a hole and tried to head back to top camp. On the way out of the valley we found the other 2 caves 2004-16 and 2004-17, which we waypointed on the GPS (1878m, N47° 41.594' E13° 49.150' and 1881m, N47° 41.608' E13° 49.150', respectively). Then we struggled on through thick larch and sheer cliffs, passing by a potential hole to explore (UTM: 33T 0411410, 5282786), in our dehydrated and grumpy state, until we saw someone walking on the Fischgesicht path in the distance, which we could eventually reach and thankfully followed back to Top Camp, arriving just 20 minutes before our callout time!

T/U: 0.0 hours

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2018-08-09

Wookey, Paul Fox, Natalie Uomini,

Eiskeller - Revisiting 2004-18

T/U 2.5 hours

Surveying 2004-18 Eiskeller
The day after our eventful prospecting trip, Nat, Paul, and Wookey returned to 2004-18 to survey it. We recovered our gear left in a hole, and Paul rigged. Feeling hot, I went down in my t-shirt and trousers. But during rigging and surveying I got so cold that I had to ask Wookey to send my bag of layers down the rope. We landed on the snow plug which had blocked further exploration in 2005, and rigged a rebelay from which to climb down the snow plug. Our first ice climbing experience! At the base of the snow plug is a chamber with a side aven and a rubble floor and possibly a tiny gap round the western back end of the snowplug but we did not fancy squeezing into it [see photos]. We decided to name it Eiskeller (Ice House) as it looks just like one.

We surveyed back up the pitch [see our survey and notes in wallet 2018#44] and emerged gratefully into the blazing sunshine, where Wookey had been sunbathing the whole time. Then we took the easy hike back to Top Camp, which we'd found on the way in [see our description in Approach and our GPS track].

Twin Caves
Along the northern edge of the valley approaching 2004-18 we waypointed two shafts with snow inside. UTM: 33T 0411527, 5282982.

Summary: go back to Cubic Valley!!
Given the number of deep shafts in this valley, it's the most exciting place to return to. The Cube-shaped boulder sitting above 2004-18 is an easy landmark to find [see our photos]. The hike to/from Top Camp is so quick & easy that it makes a perfect few days of rigging and surveying for Expo novices or for people who don't want to go deep. According to our GPS track, the hike is 670m and takes 23 minutes. Be sure to wear an oversuit and layers!

T/U: 0.0 hours

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2018-08-09

Becka, George, adam aldridge,

Expo - the last Kraken camp of 2018

Blog Author: adam74aldridge

This will be a summary of the last Kraken camp of 2018, and maybe ever.
The trip was partaken by George, Becka, and myself (Adam). We went underground in Balcony on Friday the 3rd of August around mid day and surfaced from Tunnocks around 8pm on Sunday.

Following a generous helping of faff resulting in an irate Becka we set of towards Balcony with optimism. This would be my first ever underground camp trip, so there was a pinch of excited apprehension in my mood.
After the necessary commute in balcony we made it to the Mongol Rally, this 200m shaft, sloping slightly from the vertical, was by far the biggest i've ever seen. The decent, seemingly endless, is mostly experienced with blackness above and below.
After a short journey from the base of The Mongol Rally feeling suitably far from home, we started work at the pushing front.
Day one was finished with around 250m surveyed; George had dropped a pitch which led into large airy passages. Throughout the day George had been commenting on invasive smells. Most of these instances were a result of Becka taking out her pet mouldy cheese. I quietly found this rather amusing.
George and I awoke after a night at camp to find Becka doing lots of productive things, she had checked the radio (unfortunately without success) and was well on the way to making breakfast. Led by Becka's enthusiasm, day two was begun with less faff than the previous. We set of along Tentacle Traverse and down Octo Pussy towards the front.
I was feeling remarkably weary on this second day. There was point, as George and Becka shot off, where I was nearly defeated by a section of upward sloping mud.
An arduous (for me) and increasingly muddy commute later, we reached the pushing front: a muddy wet pitch, great! Feeling a touch despondent at this point, we pushed on; George started bolting the pitch while Becka and I waited at the top. Waiting very quickly got cold so in an attempt to alleviate this situation we started jumping about. The nature of this was quite comical, it was a fusion between a Zumba class routine and the irregular movements of telly tubies who have just been exited by the sun baby.
To our surprise and elation, the muddy gryke of a lead dropped into a dry spacious expanse with multiple ways on. We began surveying down a railway tunnel passage sloping slightly down. This, to our bewilderment, led to a gentle meandering river banked by sloped volumes of mud. All of a sudden, Becka became exited, George and I rushed over, she had found a sprout in the mud! A surreal occurrence at ~700m below. The sapling drank in our light deeply as we admired it's lone perseverance.

A few pictures later, we moved on, only to find a sump. This would have been annoying if not for the alternative upstream continuation.
Half an hour or so up this lead, much to my relief, we stopped on a muddy bank for a lunch break. The only way on was a 3m climb into a relic inlet. Becka argued that we should turn back as it was getting late (a sensible idea to be fair). Despite Becka's standpoint, George and I were up for going on. With Irate protest from Becka, George began the climb. Out of sight, George began talking in awe of an interesting blue lake.  With more protesting from Becka, I climbed up as well.
The pool in question was like something out of a sci fi film, Its colour and complexity was preternatural. I could explain it to you by a picture able to convey more than words.

With rekindled enthusiasm for exploration we continued deeper into a truly surreal environment, the vast relic stream passage was littered with artefacts of its past; here and there, pools of immaculate water lay undisturbed for presumably quite a while; marbled fractal mud formations encrusted the lower surfaces; bizarre spiky rock formations en-habited the walls, formed by a vigorous torrent, long forgotten.
With over 400m on the PDA, we returned to camp. The commute seemed friendlier, for me at least, with a sense of accomplishment under the belt.
Waking up for the second time in absence of sunlight, the task for the 'day' was to de-rig and prusik out.
The camp was packed up and raised to the top of Kraken in five caries up the pitch (one by me two each by George and Becka). George competed a particularly obscene carry: a huge orange survival bag tied at the top with cord, he looked like a surreal speleo version of Santa Claus.

Once camp was sorted, we began the long ascent to the surface. Becka and I set of with some bags of rope while the machine that is George began to de-rig the pitches.
This was my first trip to Kraken camp, but it might also be the last. However as one good thing comes to an end, the next is on the horizon: with the persistent efforts of this year (especially by George and Becka) a new region of Balkony has proved promising, and so, the camp will be reformed there with new opportunities awaiting.

 

T/U: 0.0 hours

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2018-08-09

Becka Lawson,

Expo - A mature view of Expo

Blog Author: Becka

A mature view of Expo
[from https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=23424.msg299639#msg299639 ]
We've already had posts from first timers so, to balance that out, here's my old-timer's perspective on this year's Expo. This summer I did a lot of my caving with George because, at the start of Expo, it was clear that he was lacking direction and, whilst not green (this was his third time out) that he'd benefit from my experience, constructive advice and tactful supervision.

For the avoidance of doubt, and for those of you don't know us, that's utter bollocks. George is a far better caver than me at SRT, rigging, finding and sticking with a project, navigation (not hard), climbing, carrying heavy bags, derigging, patience, surveying, conservation and scooping (yup, it's out there, sue me for defamation if you dare!). Don't be running away with the idea that list is comprehensive though: I have the edge on him at squeezes (despite him being willing to try harder, sleep deprivation (my, don't young people sleep a lot?), I'm far bossier and, though I haven't tested this properly, I reckon I've a greater bloody-minded capacity for enduring misery (I suspect it would take around a week of 10 hour trips in small, cold, wet, muddy, boring caves to break him and you just wouldn't believe how full my diary is right now so that'll have to wait).

Anyway, we (us two, Luke, Olly, Adam, Rachel, Nadia, Jacob, Philip, Wookey and Max) had a series of fine trips including finding what we think is the deepest shaft in the SMK system (Mongol Rally at 200m deep), two connections between Balkonh?hle and Tunnockschact, a sprout and a sump at -720m, many, many bat bones and over 5km of passage including the monster Grand Prix (incidentally, I agree, what's with the names? My carefully crafted puns were all flat-out rejected so we're stuck with a notable chamber called Big Lad - it should have been Raisin' Hell - and both Hangryman Pitch and Hangeryman Pitch are still up for grabs). Also, after 5 weeks of training I've mastered an alternative way to the tie a stopper knot and learnt the industry standard way to tie knots in the end of a rope (thanks, guys, for that fine use of my strictly limited long term memory).

After 220 hours underground this summer with CUCC I've skipped derigging (obviously I'd have loved to have helped out but unfortunately the timing was against me) and I've decamped to spend a week with the local Austrian club (VHO http://vho-caving-news.blogspot.com/) on their Plankamira expedition. This made for quite a culture change - there's only 5 of us and we're all around a half century old. Now, at last, my rigging suggestions are listened to attentively (rather than being firmly squashed) and nobody passes comment about the volume of food I get through (George eats like a grasshopper). I've also escaped the unending put-downs - "if you're going to rig that pitch don't do a half-arsed job of it"; "that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't placed it in a flake"; "you and your slopy shoulders"; and "no, you can't lead us out, you're so bad it's just not funny" and so on. Also, it's relaxing not having to tell everyone what to do Best of all, I'm now the fastest prussiker (yeah, yeah, of course it's not a competition).

On the down side VHO are agonisingly slow to get going (how can anyone spend more than 9 hours in a sleeping bag? It's mental torture when you're camping underground and you're too polite to start loudly crinkling plastic bags and accidentally shining your light in people's eyes. Not that that worked anyway, you idle sods). And then, once they're up, there's the coffee to drink then the second coffee then breakfast then herbal tea and a second herbal tea before anything might happen. Hmm, thinking about it, George would have done better here instead of me (his favourite thing: sleeping; his next most favourite thing: sitting around doing nothing).

I did struggle on skills transfer ... this summer I heard someone claim that thru-bolts (as VHO use) have fewer modes of failure than Hiltis (that CUCC uses). Well, not in my hands, I can tell you. Of my dozen none went in easily (I must have been given the wrong diameter drill bit, goddammit) and there was horrible flaking with several, whilst one cracked out altogether with the rock it was in (I blame the Petzl hammer they gave me, it made all the rock sound shit so, since the good-looking rock made the same sound I deduced that all the rock was good. Then it fell apart). Most distressingly, on three of them the sleeve thing split and refused to go into the hole, just rucking up on the outside. Please, can I give up and go home? VHO rigging is typically spare, no Y-hangs unless there's a big swing and no deviations (there wasn't a single sling on the expedition). However, I was so worried about my lousy thru-bolts that my section was backups and Y-hangs all the way.

On the first day we got out in the dark from a new cave with over an hour's walk back to camp and big bags. The other half of the team set off confidently but then, 30 minutes later, he pointed at least 90 degrees off when I asked him to show where he thought camp was. Foolishly I'd not saved it as a waypoint on my phone and he was struggling with a new app on his phone so all we had to go on was the outline of the peaks around us. I persuaded him I knew which one to aim for and, 15 minutes later, hurrah, someone at camp saw us and left their light on so we slogged towards it. But then the light went out and we were reduced to navigating towards the sound of the generator reverberating in the huge rock bowl we were lost in before it was switched off. Then my companion, dressed in the shortest of hip-hugging racing shorts, refused to follow me through some prickly dwarf pine. I'll go round and meet you, he says, then disappeared. So now I'm by myself, three hours walk from anyone bar us few cavers so I shout his name. Eventually he shouts back "Don't cry unless it's an emergency". Then silence. Grrrr. So I hang around looking for his light and eventually spot him beetling off towards camp without a backward glance. I'll be damned if he gets there first so I stumble off and we arrive together. Two hours on Karren karst on a moonless night and I barely glanced up once so I caught just the one shooting star on the best night of the year for the Perseid shower.

Now I'm back down the hill in time to fix my broken tooth (note to self: don't eat rock at underground camp). We (well, the Cambridge University Caring Club, which tickled me) have just been awarded a certificate for our 35 years of service by the Mayor of Bad Aussee, Hilde made us delicious doughnuts to celebrate and I'm signed up for a final top camp carry tomorrow so all's right with the world.

Becka

Here's a few photos to brighten up the post and, I stand corrected "whilst not green (this was his third fourth time out)"

A strikingly colourful lake near the sump in Tunnockschacht

What's this? Surely not life on the banks of a starless river?

Yes: a pallid sprout growing in a huge mud bank just before the sump

The sump at -720m at the end of Scum of the Earth in Octopus Garden

All photos by George Breley

Becka

Click to expand...

 

T/U: 0.0 hours

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2018-08-10

Luke Stangroom, George Breley, Rachel Turnbull, Becka Lawson,

Balkon - Camping trip : Balkon

8th, 9th, 10tgh August

Balkon -> top of Kraken, collect camp, move it to Littleboy, ->Push in Indy Races (8th Aug.) then push Horrible Pitch in Indy Races (B+G) + push One Direction (L+R) (9th Aug.) then exit with big bags (10th Aug.)

[Caved 11:00-21:00 on 8th, caved 11:00-20:00 L+R, 11:00-23:00 B+G on 9th, caved 07:00-12:00 L+R, 08:00-11:00 G, 08:00-12:00 B on 10th.]

Day 1

In with food + dumped it below Littleboy pitch which we thought could make a good camp then to the vast dumpof stuff at the top of Kraken. L+G already shuttling gear by the time R+I arrived(we took 2 hour to bottom Mongol Rally)(G took 15' to descend Mongo Rally + they took 2h to the top of Kraken). Large Marge + 5 tacklesacks plus the drill bag + some claptrapwere ferried across the traverse then we slogged them up the climbs to get them into Grand Prix. That broke the back of it. We took one load each to Little Boy (surprisingly Large Marge made it intact all the way) + found a campsite against the wall looking out to the pitch.

R+I made a levelsleeping platform, dragging out the mud + putting in a retaining wall of boulders whilst L+G scoped out water, finding a good source midway down Indy Rally. Needs a scoop (e.g. a mug) but only ~10' to fill a Daren drum. We laid the tent flat as a groundsheet then mats. No draft + we weren't cold at night. We then all headed to the end of Indy Races. Rachel boltedthe draftng traverse but this immediately led to the head of the wet pitch so she + Luke surveyed then derigged it. George started to rig the pitch (Horrible Pitch), grumbling lots about shit rockwhich led to someugly, rubbing drops. We surveyed + then Luke + I fetched (?) the rest of the camp gear from the start of Grand Prix whilst George + Rachel surveyed 2 loops near camp.

Day 2

Luke + Rachel headed to leads in Grand Prix which led nowhere but then they hit paydirt in the QMC on the left in Indy Rally before the water source. This gave 50m crawling then a junction. One way led in good-sized passage back to Grand Prix + the other way was drafting + left-going. George + I returned to Horrible Pitch + George quickly rigged down to a big ledge. This gave a short corkscrewing passage that led back to the conclusion (?) of Horrible Pitch but we were diverted for some time by some smaller tunnels off the horizontal route that I found. This led to some interesting, drafty tubes + possible leads. I put in some lousy bolts + then found the rope too short so, with relief, handed the rigging back to George + I returned to camp to fetch another bag of rope.

George got down to a double ledge by a bridge with water flowing in. Here he ambled up a steep mud slope (er, do you know how far above that last bolt you are?) + put in a bolt (er, youv'e got loads of Hiltis, why not a Y-hang?) + ambled back down the slope, over a sharp rock ridge and dropped inelegantly (i.e. with rubs) to the floor. You could also go directly down from the double ledge to the floor. All of Horrible Pitch is dry despite lots of watery bits nearby.

We ran around at the bottom + George managed to temporarliy strand himself up a climb up a mud bank. Geoge was pretty much surveyed-out by now but he steeled himself for one final slog doing the bottom + then the 2 pitch sections. We left it rigged. We found the otehrs asleep by the time we got back to camp.

Day 3

Rudely awoken at 06:00 when Luke + Rachel got up to head out (I can't complain, I'd spent an hour or two yesterday morning rustling bags and shining my light at them trying to get people going). They had packed the muddiest rope the night before + headed out at 07:00. By then George + I had given up on sleeping so we got up + packed more junk + headed out at 08:15.

George caught the others at the top of Mongol Rally and was out in 3h - yeah, yeah... Luke + Rachel took 5h and I took 4h (I ditched a rope at the top of Hangman's as I seemed to be going at snail's pace and both my jammers + my pantin slipped all the way up - poor technique according to Luke, sigh).

End of my caving for Expo 2018 -221h underground for me :-) Off to Plonkermira [??] with VHO tomorrow to see how things look from the other side of the hill...
This has been transcsribed into ugcamplist.html

T/U: 49 hours

2018-08-01

Jacob, George, Olly

Balkonhöhle - to Tunnocks

As well as being my first caving trop of the expo, this was also the first Balkon-Tunnock's through trip made. George changed the hang at the top of Mongol Rally, added a rebelay and fixed another at the bottom of MR. Olly began to bolt the right hand wall of Floodland. He got so far down the pitch but didn't bottom due to time constraints.

The connection between Balkon and Tunnocks is very impressive. Large chamber after large chamber.

The Prusik out was a laugh! It was an introduction and a half to Austrian caving. 10/10 would do it again.

T/U: 0.0 hours

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2018-08-12

Anthony Day, Becka Lawson,

Surface - Prospecting holes from yesterday

[from Callout book]

Prospecting holes from yesterday near/towards the Brauning Wall

Callout 2100

T/U: 0.0 hours

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2018-08-12

Chris Densham, Ruairidh MacLeod, Wookey,

258 - String Theory & Usual Suspects

[from Callout book]
'Chris' assumed to be Chris D. as Chris H arrived later in expo?

Callout 2200

T/U: 0.0 hours

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2018-08-13

Alex Stirling, Jon Toft, Ryan Boultbee,

Fishface - Garden School

[from Callout book]

dep. 0800. J., Ryan & 2 Germans & Alex.
No one here at basecamp [Philip S.] so effective callout will be at top camp.

Callout - at top camp when Luke gets there approx.2100

T/U: 0.0 hours

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2018-08-13

Philip Sargent,

base camp - "Local contact: Dr. Helmut Kalss"

Helmut Kalss

Hitched a lift down from the carpark with Helmut Kalss who lives in Altausee (we drive past his house every time we go up to the plateau). He is a local and teaches at the agricultural college. He knew about the SMK system but not what we had done - so he gave me a lift to the potato hut and I showed him the posters and aven. (He also has a hat with a feather in it.)

T/U: 0 hours

2018-08-13

Ryan, Alex, Jacob

FGH - Finishing Fish Face beyond Gardening School, discovering Private Pineapple Pitch

Accompanied by Pi and Andt (two German cavers).

The trip was to push Fish Face further following a low-level lead in Gardening School. An exchange was agreed with German cavers whereby they would offer us a trip if we offered them a trip (an agreement arranged by Alex and Jacob during the bottom base camp BBQ). The trip also allowed the German's to experience top camp, both who were incredibly impressed by the arrangement, declaring, "You English are mad!" The international caving group encounted a language barrier in the especilly crumbly and loose passages of the Fish Face entrance pitch and traverse. WHile descending Alex had one of the Germans (Pi) shout "stein!", somewhat confussed he looked up to find the German caver was not offering him a beer, insted a number of rocks had been kicked down. A system was then proposed by the Germans to overcome the language barrier. The sylable count of words would indicate the cave command, therefore the language used would be rendered pointless.
Image of the syllable system table

It was also agreed during the trip that signiifciant space woudl be left berween cavers on th epitch/traverse series leading on from another due to the daners of very loose rock and the potential of injury. The gardening school passage was pushed beyond the unnamed and unknown pitch that offered a lead. Originally we believed that a shaft 3/4m down would be best for a rebelay, however on investigation this appeared to be a large boulder wedged between a large rift. Furthermore, the placement of the boulder, nicknamed 'coffin lid', appeared to be only secured by small boulders. The decision was made to drop the Y hang down through a squeezy pitch, although tight, the pitch is easily accessible. The newly found Pirate Pineapple Pitch (PPP) ~50m and decends down further into the rift. Multiple passages can be seen coming of this pitch which may be worth future exploration. The pitch bottoms out in a small chamber ~10m^3. A smaller interesting chamber is to the right, nicknamed 'mud hole', here a variety of interesting geological features are found. ALso at this point a small pool of water has forned. Directly in front of the dropped pitch after a smooth step the rift can be seen to bottom out. However, at this point, we had ran out of rope. An additional 15/20m (unreadble word) have allowed us to reach the bottom. We assume this amy be the bottom as its the collection point for many of the smaller dropped rocks. The rift appears to curve around the corner offering a potential easy lead for those who are willing to push this further.

NB: the pitch was named Pirate Pineapple Pitch due to the consumption of a pineapple by some rugged looking cavers at the bottom of the pitch. The carrying of pineapples to inappropriate places is a tradition upheld by Alex Sterling (sp?) of Nottingham University Caving Club in reference to the Pineapple on Tour (sp?) - a society at Nottingham University which took pineapples up munrows in Scotland. The society was dispelled by the university and folded into other outdoor societies.

T/U: 0.0 hours

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2018-08-13

Jacob Pulaho,

Eishohle -Schneevulkanhalle Tourist Trip

Accompanied by Pi and Andt (two German cavers).

While drunk and making friends with some Germans, one of them, Andt, gave me a proposition: "You take me caving and I'll take you caving in an ice cave... with a snow volcano." I liked this idea! Despite the cave being less than 1k from top camp, due to Losser's 'I'm going to kill you with every steo you take' nature we had to walk accross the plateau toward Applehaus and then take that path. After negotiating some traverse, beating some bunde and safely avoiding the caver grinding we arrive at some dead larch... and a misty cave entrance! THis was to be our exit point. Pi headed up the hill to start rigging the top entrance while Andt gave me a quick lesson on how to walk with crampons. When crampon school was over, we too head to the top entrance. An oblong entrance of 10m-ish by 4m wide entrance pitch to the top of the snow volcano was probably 40/50m. When on top of volcano, daylight can still be seen. 'Tis quite impressive. When on top of volcano the size of the chamber starts to become apparent. In the distance ice stalls can be seen glistening through the mist. We continue the descent, this time down the side of the snow volcano for ~3-m until we reach the bottom.

Ice is hit.

Rope free.

Wow!

This chamber would be impressive even without all the ice. We wander around for a bit and I amazingly manage to remain standing I literally cannot stop smiling. Some of the ice pillars were easily 15m high! Eventually, Im forced to live by the call of nature. We exit through what was once called the Elephant Arse - cos there was a formation that like an elephant but has sadly melted since. I emerge from the cave, breathe, appriciate life and then have a piss!

T/U: 0.0 hours

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2018-08-13

Neil Smith, Natalie Uomini,

plateau - Tagging Surface Trip and Lightning Storm descent

Went 100m NW of top camp to put a tag on a possible cave (located previously on 8-9/08 by Nat and Paul) numbered 2018-NTU-01. We practiced hand bolting to install the tag and picked wild chives.

As water was needed at camp, snow was collected for the bivy. While Ryan efficiently poured 5 tackle sacks of snow into the rain tarp, Nat and Alex and Ruairidh proceeded to practice drilling a Z-rig to try to haul an overfilled bag of snow vertically (see separate write up). While taking 2 ropes each down the mountain, we successfully crosses the plateau in fabulous perfect weather, only to be hit by a sudden bad storm at the col. An hour of super heavy rain and lightening was upon us. We were forced to emergency shelter in our double-bivy baf near a rock.

Several very close lightening strikes (with 0 second gaps) reminded us how quickly the weather can turn against you on the mountain.

Lost 1 and half hrs of time waiting for lightening to subside, so final hour of walk down was in darkness and driving rain and winds.

REMEMBER: Check the weather, kids!!!

T/U: 0.0 hours

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2018-08-15

Luke Stangroom, Radost Waszkiewicz, Max Weiser, Christopher Holt,

FGH - "FGH Derig"

Derig was going to be a big job. Tonnes of rope still down several holes, and most people had already buggered off, and a fair few of those still around had buggered themselves in some fashion! So we had maybe 6 decent cavers to do maybe 20 bags worth of rope from 3 different entrances in two days. The real hard nuts had done most of Balkonhole on a camp/push/derig the day before, and half of that group were quite deservedly taking a day off. Ruaridh's broken arm had mysteriously 'Got better, honest' until we made him prove it by climbing into the Animal house, so he was out. Fishface/Fischgesicht was the next biggest project, with ~300m depth and vague rumours of a drill left at the bottom for the "unclimbable" leads.

I'd always known it was goin to be a little bit cheeky turning up just for the end of Expo and still hoping to get a chance to push something, but as it turned out I wasn't even the most jammy of the lot! I'd had a couple of days to acclimatise to camp life and reacquaint myself with the hypothermic delights of Alpine caving when Radost finally arrived (Actually, he had been there earlier, but was just showing his Dad around and wasn't caving), making two of us who hadn't pushed anything. So, the priorities for this trip were to be

• Derig a metric tonne of rope.
• Retrieve the drill
• Check whether the sod who left the drill hadn't left other vital equipment too
• Show me (Christopher) and Rad how to bolt, and do a little bit of surveying
• Maybe do a rigging guide to speed things up next year

Anyway, after the standard intrepid hike across the plateau, all looking super-cool if I don't say so myself, we change and Luke and Rad zip down while Max waited for me to get changed. Max and I had already been all the way to Ulysses earlier that week, so he assumed I remembered the way and shot ahead. I have a terrible memory for complex junctions and my light casts a very sharp throw-pattern, so I still got lost a couple of times and found them all taking a leisurely rest at that nice picnic spot, below the free-climb pitchy thing, where left goes to the way on and right to that disgusting traverse across Ulysses (which Max had derigged two days before and left 70m in a pile in case people wanted to bolt leads below).

There was a brief discussion of what we should expect, and we settled on the priorities listed above. Luke declared 4pm(?) to be our turnaround time. He wasn't keen on taking more rope deeper into the cave, but given Rad's and my keenness to push the two of us decided to pack it anyway once Luke and Max went ahead. It was only ten minutes later that the shout was relayed to us "Guys! There's more rope down here anyway! DEFINITELY don't bring that other rope!" I duly returned the bag to its original position and retrieved the survey gear, which I had of course forgotten to put back in the bag.

The lower shaft of Fischgesicht is a truly marvellous black hole - One of those can't-see-the-bottom, can't-see-the-top ones. In stark contrast to the rest of the cave above, it was extremely poorly rigged. Well, I suppose it could have been worse, but even on the way down I was thinking "Should I retie that knot? It really looks like it rubs. No, it's probably just me being a wuss and it's like that for a reason". This was looking at a lop-sided, 2-metre wide Y-hang that required a sort of acrobatic climb down to access. New rope, at least, though it was quite dry and required a lot of patience to avoid glazing. Plenty of time to look around the blackness and ponder the geological mysteries of metamorphosed Carboniferous sediments.

We needn't have brought in a drill battery, as together with the drill there were 3 high-capacity ones already there. Rad informed me that Luke and Max had gone up the slightly more obvious (right turn at both junctions) of the labyrinthine passages in this new horizontal level to check that the dead end really was one - apparently the small climb Max did crapped out very quickly. We met back at a junction, I picked up the survey gear from the previous junction, and we headed off (left at second junction) to check the other end of this slightly-larger passage. Everyone agreed that this was a cracking horizontal level. Very nice walking-sized!

The previous group (whose identity remains to me as nebulous and vague as their cave descriptions) had apparently concluded that "you'll need bolts and rope to push any of the leads". Total bollocks. We did find a quite sketchy looking climb overlooking the virgin passage floor, but there were two different crawling ways to bypass it! After this initial reccy we reconvened and distributed survey gear. I was to get to grips with the CHECC disto, entrusted to me by Luke that morning. Rad wanted to do the drawing. I had forgotten to pack any station-marking stuff, but luckily Luke had some nail varnish in his pocket. We reckonned we had an hour and a half to push, and with no bolting necessary, the excitement of potentially hundreds of metres of 3x3m phreatic tube became evident in everyone's voices.

So, on to the description itself. The phreatic tube trends uphill, with a vadose trench in the bottom taking the water gradually deeper and out of sight and earshot. Where the passage jumps up a dodgy climb, the safer way on is through one of two little holes down and to the left - the leftmost a low crawl, and slightly to the right of that a narrowish slot. After these, a small chamber with boulders on the floor

Crawl. We managed to shoot the lazer straight through a tiny window, avoiding the need to survey the crooked oxbow crawl round the right. Now in another small chamber, but open both forwards/left up a slope, and vertically/right into the big tube, where we were later able to survey the loop (seems to be a near-oxbow of the phreas, which was undercut to make this 3-way big junction with a fourth crawly way that we had just come through). We progressed forwards up the slope, and the 3x3m tube meanders around for m. The floor of the tube is covered with sandy mud that seems to have a darkened crust. Very easy to follow the path established by the first person. About halfway along Luke dropped his nail-varnish, so we resorted to scratching in the mud on the walls. There is a bit of a climb up before a steep slide down a sandy slope. Take care to avoid falling in the hole at the bottom - it looks like a soft landing because of the pile of sand, but I've no idea how you would get out of that chamber - it looks a bit like the whole tube has a false floor in that area. Anyway, the tube continues, eventually changing in profile to more of a tall 2x5m elipse. The noise of the stream can now be heard again - far below, but I suppose cascading more steeply and so making a louder sound. Eventually we reached a sloping-sided hole in the floor, obviously wet at the bottom, QMc, with the same old tube heading up to the right, QMa, and a bottomless traverse on the opposite side of the hole, QMb. All of these will require either bolting of a traverse across the hole or a spiderman-like grip and balls of steel. I would prefer the bolted traverse option.

We still had over half an hour to go, so we returned ot one of the side passages we had noticed earlier. Climbing back up that steep sandy slope was interesting - everyone had a different method; running full pelt, desperate scrambling, chimping up the wall, etc. Rad was about to zoom off when I called him back - "You do know I won't be able to do anything from up here, don't you?" he observed. "Yes, but I don't want to die alone!". Cautiously attempting to disturb the sand as little as possible, I delicately levitated myself to a position of safety.

It was only a couple of legs into the side passage that it started going crazy. A-leads to the left, A and B-leads to the right, leads below - way too much to do any justice to in the time we had left. Clearly the polite thing to do was to leave it for some lucky bastard next year. There's enough down there for two simultaneous survey groups.

Derig - I was to go up the big pitch with one bag of rope, Radost to follow with the drill and batteries, then pass it to me to put in the top of the 70m bag at Ulysses. I was so mentally beasted from prusiking with a palpable twang on every bounce, at least until I passed the rub-point, and then He-Manning it past that rebelay, that I completely forgot about Rad's bag until I was about to go past Ulysses. I backtracked and hauled his bag up the little pitch for him, packed it in the top of the rope bag there, and with two heavy bags proceded up the free-climb. I had a bit of a sense of humour failure at the top, and having overheard Max "so how many bags do you have, Rad?" "At the moment, precisely zero!" I foisted the heavier one back onto him, selfishly thinking that it would be better for the first person to travel light and quick. Even one bag on that traverse was troublesome, and so when at the top of the next pitch I heard Rad swearing his way through with two, I decided to redeem myself and took back one of them.

It was slow progress up the rest of the cave, barely keeping ahead of the deriggers (Luke and Max). At another free-climb I reaslised after >10 minutes of struggling that it was much easier to just throw the bags up and then chimp up after them. At the surface, I debagged and lay looking at the stars for a couple of minutes, before returning to the first pitch to take Rad's bag. He was decidedly less talkative than usual, and had the look of a man who needs a break - "it's just quite a heavy bag for a first trip" - I was inclined to agree. I saw another 3 meteors in the space of 20 seconds before going back to sketch a rudimentary diagram of the entrance traverses and take one bag from Max, and then back again for another. Realistically, it was the easiest bit of the bag carry, but it was hard thinking of Luke and Max doing all that work and not trying to help out.

The decision to leave all the tackle sacks at the entrance was endorsed unanimously. I poured myself a large Schnapps and followed everyone in double-curry dinner and falling asleep immediately.

T/U: 0.0 hours

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2018-08-19

Christopher Holt, Philip Sargent,

115 - Schnellzughöhle

On the way back from KH entrance, Chris and I detoured to 115 to get 6 litres of water as we were very thirsty. Also took out the museli and flapjack. Left ~4 litres of water and a orange polythene swirl ('survival'?) bag.

T/U 0 mins

T/U: 0.0 hours

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