# 1623:78

78 | Schwaben(schacht)höhle | 5/S/t/E x
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Altitude: 1669m
Depth : 289m
Length : 6.04 km

Location: E 35727.5 N (52)81436.3 H 1664.8
Actually on the SW side of Vorder Schwarzmooskogel, but approached by the same route as for things to the east, as cliffs bar access from Kratzer. Follow the Stoger weg from Egglgrube, past the T-junction to Kratzer, and on until there is a red omega in the middle of the path (marking Kat. 28). Just before this, in a position with a better view, is a laser-rangefound point marked by a bolt with a painted circle round it.

Take the Eishöhle path, which starts from the omega, going left up the hillside. Follow this for a few minutes, past an awkward little traverse rigged with a steel cable and then a couple of minutes further. There is a very easily missed branch left just before the path traverses a ledge under an overhang in a cliff to its left in a relatively wide small valley. The landmark for this point is a dead (lightning) tree up on the right.

Take this left branch, and follow it (few landmarks, but it is a definite path, and there are cut branches in places). This path eventually climbs into impenetrable dwarf pine, to emerge at a small gravelly clearing and a doline, used as a bivouac site. The two entrances are just short distances away through the pine, the normally-used one being below a prominent larch tree. The other entrance is a long rift shaft. Both are impressive, though it is quite infeasible that anyone could ever have found them in the first place.

The cave is a complex of hading rifts and steep ramps with several deep points. The deepest point is near the southern limit of the system. A vertical series with pitches of 9m, 15m, 17m and 13m reaches Nägschtmol-Meander (1992), where the survey legs are all very short. This climbs slightly before heading south and dropping, passing Alexander der Große (a generally level side passage heading southwest to Leopardencanyon, apparently beyond the known passages in Schnellzughöhle) to der gute Abgang (the good lead). A 7m pitch and more steep descents end at a point almost directly above the assumed line of Pete's Purgatory in Schnellzug, maybe a third of the way to the Confluence from where it is abandoned for the Purgatory Bypass. This small streamway lies perhaps 120-130m below Schwabenschacht's deep point, but it is known that several unsurveyed fossil phreatic passages lie above this upstream part of the Purgatory, so a connection could be quite close.

Exploration : Fred Vischer, 1980 (as far as 2/S/T)
Ongoing exploration by Arbeitsgemeinschaft Höhle und Karst Grabenstetten e.V.

Schwarzmooskogel ridge area
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