# 1623:107

107 | Gemshöhle | 4/S/T +
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Altitude: 1661m, depth 280m
Position: E 35930 N (52)82721
Marking: number twice in orange paint, 1998 tag on survey point "1623 107 CUCC 1978"

Location: On the plateau in a prominent dry valley below southern forepeak of Hinterer Schwarzmooskogel, some way below Laser Point 0_5. The bottom of the gully is pretty much on the (cairned) best walking route from Top Camp to Bräuninghöhle (Kat.82) and Eislufthöhle (Kat.76).

Small entrance in boulders in a dry gully drops into a small chamber, in the bottom corner of which is the excavated head of a pitch. This quickly bells out to 6m diameter and lands after 18m in a large passage which contains ice-formations early in the season. This large, phreatic passage chokes in both directions and the way on is in a rift to one side, from which the draught pours.

A pitch of 23m has an inlet entering part way down, which makes the rest of this pitch and the following one of 19m unpleasant in wet weather. Two ways then lead on, either down with the water or by traversing round this drop to another passage.

Climbing down with the water leads to a short passage with the water in a rift below. Round a sharp corner is a short drop to the head of a larger rift. A 5m pitch down this leads to another rift which, in turn, leads out to the side of a large shaft. Stones dropped from a small hole in the corner of the passage above the 5m pitch also fall into this shaft. Laddering from the side, the pitch is 67m with a large ledge just above half-way, and is unpleasantly wet in poor weather. From the base of this pitch, the continuing rift/canyon trends south west and has pitches of 5, 9 and 8m before the other route drops in from above.

Over the traverse, a short pitch of 4.5m, followed by a short climb up, leads to the head of a pitch of 10m to a boulder floor. Two ways on from here are down through the boulders into a shaft, or across the shaft and into a narrow rift. The way through boulders soon chokes, but the narrow rift soon opens into a massive shaft of 100m with a rebelay roughly halfway. This drops directly into the rift reached by the original route.

Below the junction, the rift continues with a 5m climb and pitches of 5, 14 and 44m, this last pitch being quite wet and emerging into a massive cross-rift trending south east. The water disappears into the choked floor of this rift via a nasty wet crawl, rapidly becoming too small.

Exploration: CUCC 1978: opened and Big Rift explored by Team Youth. Team Geriatric explored the Big Pitch and reached the bottom.

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