Alright, Alright, Alright, here we go again! Brace yourselves for the CUCC expedition extravaganza, starting on the 1st of July and stretching over a whopping 6 weeks. We'll be gathering a mighty herd of 50 keen cavers to hit up Totes Gebirge, Austria, ready to venture into caves on the Loser Plateau. Get ready for updates, breathtaking photos, and yes, you guessed it, memes galore! Follow us here and don't miss out on the expo shenanigans on our Instagram (<ahref="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fcambridge_uni_caving_expo%2F%3Fhl%3Den%26fbclid%3DIwAR0aluFk-bZJwFrEaiZlgtJKO8Gvv5cBYTl1M0cw1VPoqaUHmAi6zsj_NRw&h=AT26PkaPL32evhUae3YJerI5_lpgBQds2pExJv8-3tDTR8D9SKxKmJ7Vr4cE82Zb9P9kEeXe8Hgdz_mZs7M86mclaIj5zgAbWAIBBD2VSm-li99PkoWCb7FoSuMK07HcNFDFii5XMbTg40qkxmwHjA"target="_blank"class="link link--external"rel="nofollow ugc noopener">https://www.instagram.com/cambridge_uni_caving_expo/?hl=en</a>) and Facebook (<ahref="https://www.facebook.com/CUCCEXPO"target="_blank"class="link link--external"rel="nofollow ugc noopener">https://www.facebook.com/CUCCEXPO</a>). <br>
So where are we going?! Meet the SMK (Schwarzmooskogel Höhlensystem) system… It's a mind-boggling 136 km long and plunges a jaw-dropping 1125 m deep. That's right, we're talking about the second-longest cave in Austria and the seventeenth-longest cave in the whole wide flat world. But wait, there's more…. It's one of only seven caves on this planet that surpass the magical 100 km mark in length and the 1000m mark in depth. Oh, and did we mention that Austria's longest cave, the Schönberg Höhlensystem, is just a casual ~3 km away? If we manage to connect these bad boys, we'll create one of the longest caves in the world. It's like winning the spelunking lottery! Let's make this 2023 expedition one for the record books! 2023 <br>
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<divstyle="text-align: center"><divclass="bbImageWrapper js-lbImage"title="GIS 1.png"data-src="https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?attachments/gis-1-png.16068/"data-lb-sidebar-href=""data-lb-caption-extra-html=""data-single-image="1"data-fancybox="lb-post-376554"data-caption="<h4>GIS 1.png</h4><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ukcaving.com&#x2F;board&#x2F;index.php?threads&#x2F;cucc-austria-expedition-2023-blog.30743&#x2F;#post-376554" class="js-lightboxCloser">ILoveCaves · Jun 22, 2023 at 4:27 PM</a></p>"style="cursor: pointer;">
Now, let's talk business, or rather, caving goals. In the glorious year of 2023, we have some epic plans lined up. We're not just here to break records; we're here to shatter them into tiny pieces just like our beloved drill from 2022…. Our long-term goal is to connect the SMK system with Austria's longest cave, the Schönberg Höhlensystem, and create a cave so long that even Indiana Jones would raise an eyebrow. It's the kind of ambition that keeps us up at night, dreaming of spelunking glory. So, get ready, buckle up, and join us on this wild ride as we chase after dreams, squeeze through tight spots, and discover the hidden wonders of the underground…. Gemma Höhlen erkunden! <br>
</ul>A recurring cave for this year's exploration is Fischgesicht (or Fish Face). Nestled on the plateau, it offers good drafts, and the complexity of its passages means there is good potential for these caves to connect with the SMK system. We have a lot of unexplored leads, one being a whopping great open passage that was left to be dropped on the derigging trip last year! <br>
</ul>In a surprising twist, we're bringing back a "mouldy oldie" to our caving line-up this year. Say goodbye to Balkonhöhle, which unfortunately gets a break. Instead, we're diving into the thrilling depths of Heimkehrhohle! This cave has incredible leads, and its relatively shallow exploration so far gives us the perfect chance to train our newest members. <br>
</ul>To spice things up and support our grand expeditions, we're establishing a brand-new camp at Garlic Cave! It's not just about warding off vampires; this camp will ease logistical challenges and become a base of operations for our Homecoming adventures. <br>
We proudly present (Probably) the biggest CUCC expo ever! We've assembled a whopping 50 cavers for this wild ride. With plenty of newbies joining the expedition, we've tweaked our goals and plans to accommodate everyone. Thanks to the incredible success of past expos and our amazing team, we've attracted a swarm of enthusiastic cavers to the Plateau. We continue to pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming, guiding and teaching new faces in the wacky world of international caving.</div><divstyle="text-align: center"><br>
Blog Author: currywuss<divclass="bbWrapper">Will be with you in spirit (or should that be in Gösser <imgclass="smilie smilie--emoji"loading="lazy"alt=""title="Thinking face :thinking:"src="/years/2023/./ukcavingblog_files/1f914.png"data-shortname=":thinking:"><imgclass="smilie smilie--emoji"loading="lazy"alt=" "title="Face with tears of joy :joy:"src="/years/2023/./ukcavingblog_files/1f602.png"data-shortname=":joy:">) Hope you find tonnes of cave, and don't burn down the bier tent <imgclass="smilie smilie--emoji"loading="lazy"alt=" "title="Rolling on the floor laughing :rofl:"src="/years/2023/./ukcavingblog_files/1f923.png"data-shortname=":rofl:"></div>
Blog Author: Adam 63<divclass="bbWrapper">A little something on preparing for my first expedition,<br>
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CUCC Austrian Expo 2023 will be my first expedition I’ve written this short piece sums up my preparation. Getting ready for my first expedition is an exciting but also quite daunting task. With the amount of new gear needed and the dangers and of the expedition itself it has proven a somewhat intimidating experience, however slowly I’m getting my shit together. A big help has been meeting with the other first time Expo cavers in Leeds, starting a group chat and meeting up to group order and discuss gear and insurance and generally about the expedition.<br>
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To be honest the biggest task has been just buying all the gear. One of the great parts of Expo is its affordability in terms of accommodation with travelling out making up most of the cost. Although for the first time going with not owning much gear for UK sport trips let alone the extra gear for alpine expeditions, getting the extra gear has somewhat affected my bank balance. However, aside from a few expensive items (a harness and over suit) there is plenty of general gear such as layers and dry bags that scrounging deals and charity shops, borrowing and gear exchange hasn’t been too hard to source.<br>
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In terms of practical preparation, I’ve been trying to get down the bigger and longer SRT heavy caves in the Dales and practicing rigging with other Leeds cavers going Expo. I have also been reading Alpine Caving Techniques and the Cambridge website. Furthermore, the Expo training weekend and CHECC have been really helpful to practice rigging and surveying.<br>
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This pretty much sums up my prep for my first time on expedition and aside from the nightmares of caves crumbling just by looking at them and flash floods lurking around each corner I’m psyched as f*** and basically just saving up money working, and getting down caves.</div>
<br/><br/>A crack team of expo's hardest cavers was assembled to take a rope out of balcony that was left there last year.
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Harry rigged the entrance handline off two bunda. Then continued rigging the rest of the entrance series. ROute finding was fine and we soon arrived at a very large quantity of rope. Chi, Janis, Emma headed out with the bags.
Charlotte derigged.
<br/><br/>Chi forgot to bring a bag so over 100m of rope had to be flaked at every ledge.
<br/><br/>Tried jumping on big boulder on second pitch of entrance series but it wouldn't budge.
<br/><br/>Derigging pair got out about 9.30pm as faff had led to getting into the cave
at about 5pm. Charlotte and Harry were both very grumpy walking back with very heavy bags and returned to top camp at 11pm.
<br/><br/>After a carrying day on the 2nd, we suspected ff would be snowed in. A faff morning of acquiring shovel. We got to ff with shovels, discovering it
did need digging. Jonty got particularly into this, producing quit the snow trench.
<br/><br/>After more faff from Chi, we set off about 10AM to carry gear and check out the route to Homecoming. Fishface to Homecoming was well cairned and fairly straightforward to follow.
<br/><br/>Then tried the painted track back to car park from Garlic Cave. Track was very easy to find from Homecoming. About an hour and a half from the plateau followed by treacherous cliff traversing - would be very unsafe with a heavy bag/in bad weather. Around halfwat becomes quite pleasant, 3h30m from Homecoming with empty bags. Route very hilly. Heavy carry with bagsfrom car park to Garlic cave likely to be at least 5 hours. Everyone agreed path unsuitable as route to Garlic Cave - takes longer and more dangerous than going via top camp.
Blog Author: honorata<divclass="bbWrapper"><b>Progress after the first 3 days of expo</b><br>
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<i>July 1st</i><br>
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The first expoers arrived at Bad Aussee and we started setting up base camp. The instruction says setting up the kitchen tent is a two man job but we barely managed with six...<br>
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<i>July 2nd</i><br>
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12 people who had been at base camp at this point set off for top camp. The hike up was rainy and foggy. We put reflectors and more cairns along the way and then arrived at top camp. There is currently plenty of snow there and most of the stuff stashed in the storage cave had to be dug out (with mess tins since the snow showel was at the very bottom) and hauled up. We got everything out, except for the solar panels which require more consideration when towing out. We set up the water collection system and then headed back to base camp.<br>
More cavers had arrived and most went to top camp. Harry, Janis, Emma, Chi, and Charlotte went to Balkonhöhle for a derig (& succeeded). Me (Honorata), Radost, Mike, Jana, and Will set up the main tarp (took much more faffing than expected) and the second water collection tarp. Jonty, Mealy, and Emily went to Fishface to shovel snow out of the entrance (done!). Most people stayed at top camp for the night, except for me, Radost, and Jana who hiked down late in the evening. <br>
The weather forecast shows rain and thunderstorms today and tomorrow, which jeopardizes caving. People are hiking down to base camp. Meanwhile, Martin, Jana, and I have put the second tarp up at base camp, while Radost and Phil have been setting up electronics here.</div>
<br/><br/>Joel, Lizzie and Philip fettled the tarp (where some water had pooled overnight) whilst I had a go at attaching the big Daren drum (filled with the
<br/><br/>After minimal faff, we set off west. We reached Fishface in ~40 minutes and Joel dropped off some metalwork ready for rigging. We continued to
<br/><br/>We reached Homecoming, had a flapjack and water break, then went off in search of the Hunter's track whislt Joel et al. went to reflect the last
<br/><br/>I found the Hunter's path by heading NE past Homecoming (i.e. skirting past the entrance on a little path to the RHS), through a clearing in the
<br/><br/>Having successfully found the Hunter's path, I returned to Homecoming, and we decided we didn't have time to scope out Garlic Cave. I left the solar
<br/><br/>The route was a mixture of actually quite pleasant slabs to walk across and some grim bits (hopefully can be bypassed as rhe route gets finessed).
<br/><br/>Overall, progress was a bit slow - it took ~3 hours to get back to the col, hope we can get it down.
<br/><br/>Rest of the walk was atmospheric, with lots of gusts and rolling, ominous clouds. We had just gotten back to the car when it started raining.
<br/><br/>We set out to improve the direct route from the start of the plateau to Homecoming. The way down the wall after the second pole was suprisingly nice. This was followed by an easy flat section until the bunde and tiny cliffs obscured all the alternative paths we tried. Most of the way was already cairned, but we did find some nice fresh transitions through the bunde walls separating the easy-to-walk-on slabs. At Homecoming, we met Harry, Christian, Alice, Merryn getting ready to rig the cave. Then we visited Garlic cave - a massive above ground hole that leads to a bridge below which are the entrances to the cave itself. There was loads of snow - just as in every entrance - but there was a nice campable bit , plenty of water dripping. I sensed some garlic smell, remembering the story that this smell gave the name of the cave, but was still mysterious. Then Maddie realised we were surrounded by chives! Mystery solved.
<br/><br/>On the way back we met Jono, Evelyn, and Oakem who were on the way to Garlic. At Homecoming, Honorata and Radost told us they had found 3 intriguing holes while prospecting. We found a baloon with a sweet note on it and read it to them.
<br/><br/> Just after, we found a loose wellie which now acts as another cairn [reflectoring trip on 11th noticed that this is "size 9", so therefore a UK wellie]. The final pathwe made is quite nice except for one climb over a ravine tha t seems to be unavoidable without drastic changes to the route. It was a nice day. On the way back, we saw the Dachstein for the first time , complemented by all the numerous kinds of mountain flowers.
<br/><br/>An ambitious day which slowly went increasingly wrong. The group departed base camp at a stunning 8.20AM, blitzed up the plateau and promtly became mired in several hours of faff which soon descended into more festering. The plan had been to rig the entrance series of Fishface down to the bottom of Blitzen Boulevard (4th pitch), from where we expected everything to be left rigged. However, confusion about rope lengths and metalwork and some impressively long grike trips meant that the two shallow pushing groups planning to explore from Blitzen and Liquid Luck caught us up at Top Camp. Uncle Mike was not amused. We swiftly bombed down to FF in 25 mins and started rigging. Joel was left to do everything as Jonty's light 'broke'.
<br/><br/>The entrance pitch/spiral traverse thing was completed on a 40m rope. Tasteful noods (2nd pitch) didn't quite go on a 27m due to rerigging around the top rebelay to avoid rub, so Joel initially reached the bottom on a knot pass and Jonty rerigged to the bottom on a 32m. The traverse at the bottom of Tasteful Noods (2A) and pitch 3 both had rope left from last year but not rigged - some of the knots didn't line up and required rerigging but the lengths were fine. Pendulum pitch needs some more bolts at the bottom, possibly as a traverse, to make getting on and off the pitch less deathy. Uncle Mike rigged Blitzen for us as we got too scared, he insisted the step over the huge rift with no traverse was fine, so we left him to it. There may or may not be a bolt there now
<br/><br/>past Blitzen, everything remained rigged in situ from last year. We checked everything to the traverse at the bottom of Liquid Luck (pitch 6) and apart from some loose bolts all ropes were fine and hangers non-corroded. On the way back, we measured pitch lengths using the ULSA disto and Jonty drew up a definitive rigging topo that takes into account the route changes last year. The pitch lengths will be entered into the box below when Jonty reappears at Base Camp.
<br/><br/>Having decided we'd held eveyone enough, we joyfully skipped back up the Plateau to bed.
<br/><br/>After hiking up to plateau to arrive for midday, we discovered the advanced rigging party still above ground... In order to leave them time to start rigging the first 4 pitches of Fishface, an ungodly amount of faff began. We finally arrived at the cave at 3pm, thinking we'd left plenty of time for the riggers, we quickly changed and headed underground. Alas, our hopes were crushed as we came to the bottom of the first pitch to discover the other pushing party sat freezing their tits off at the top of the second pitch as the riggers rigged just below them. Needless to say, it took some time to descent to the bottom of Blitzen Boulevard with Mike taking over the rigging of the 4th pitch after a debate over placing another bolt at the pitch head. Once arrived at Benign Bubble Baby Bypass, we conducted a quick something time to refresh our surveying technique before splitting into 2 groups. Me and Mike went ahead through the tube leading on through the bottom of the climb heading towards the liquid luck ptch head to bolt the small pitch at the end of the traverse whilst the others began surveying from said turn off. As me and Mike arrived at the pitch head, I asked if I could begin my bolting lesson before a big scary hole. I was refused. Instead I was told to tie the rope around a small head sized bolder wedged in the rift, which were currently both stood on. I thought this was a silly idea but obliged. The actual bolting of the pitch went well (I think?), however comments about placing bolts higher were made which was somewhat impossible given my height. The final bolting and rigging became passable so I decended the large (4m...) hole.
<br/><br/>As we finished bolting, the survey team emerged behind us. At the bottom of the pitch, 3 leads emerged, a large passage with a traverse sloping down in front of us, a small drafty tube to the right, and a hole heading into the ceiling behind us. With the rigging team and pushing team 2 in the near vicintity of the cave around us, me and Mike were a bit naughty and scooped the large passage in front of us, as we reached the end, we could hear voices in the rift above us, thinking it was the other pushing team we called up. It was not. It was Buck from the rigging team stood near the base of Blitzen Boulevard essentially where we started. Discovering we'd done a large circle , we returned to the base of the pitch where the survey team were. As we arrived, Zac from the team 2 appeared in the hole above us, they had also done an circle.
<br/><br/>Once regrouped, it was approaching 9:30PM so we decided to leave the small drafty tubeand started to make our way out of the cave eventually making it back to top camp just before midnight.
<br/><br/>We prospected between Fischgesicht and Heimkehr entrances. We found 5 caves, which I will refer to here using the temporary number and names entered in expo.survex.com. Small drain (2023-hbrw-01) and medium drain (2023-hbrw-02) were surveyed completely and they both strecth for about 20-30m, a small stream passing through each of them.
<br/><br/>We also found 3 new caves which seem to continue but we couldn't survey them since they all begin with large pitches:
<ul>
<li>Amphitheatre Hoehle (2023-hbrw-03) is the most promising cave entrance we found. We estimate the pitch it begins with to be around 40m deep. The entrance is right above Watershed - a previously explored Heimkehr passage. Presumably Amphitheatre connects into Heimkehr.
<li>Ungluchliche Gemse Hoehle (2023-hbrw-04)lies practically right between the entrances to Fischgesicht and Heimkehr. It starts with an approx. 20m pitch, which prohibited survyeing the entrance. The entrance pitch is large enough to give hope that Ungluchliche Gemse Hoehle (unlucky chamois) connects to either Fischgesicht, Heimkehr, or both. We found a dead carcaa (of presumably a chamois) about 10m from the entrance, hence the name).
<li>Rose Blumen Hoehle (2023-hbrw-05) lies within 30m of Ungluchliche Gemse, in lush bush with pink flowers growing to the left of the entrance. The entrance pitch is at least 20m deep and partially filled with snow which prohibited us from assessing the depth accurately.
<br/><br/>Gave the rigging team ~3hr headstart but we still caught up with them at the bottom of first pitch. Emma and Zac then sat around while Ash and Mealy calibrated the disto. We were waiting so long that Uncle Mike's surveying group caught up. We waited in a a bothy for them to pass us before slowly, one-by-one, following on. We then caught up with them again at the top of Blitzen pitch and had to bothy again (after Mealy led us on too low in the rift).
<br/><br/>At the beginning of BBBB (Benign Babble Baby Bypass) we talked with Mike's group pushing the other lead and descending some small pitches to push ours. We faffed around a while trying to find it, but when we did, we found it just looped back around to Mike's group's lead. We surveyed it anyway.
<br/><br/>Zac and Mealy surveyed the top of the rift and the pitch (Mealy on notes, Zac on disto) while Ash and Emma bolted and rigged the pitch. Once surveyed and linked to Mike's group's stuff, we packed up and headed out. Ash raced ahead while Mealy and Emma got stuck behind Zac who was very tired and slow and sweary. Eventually, they exited. Trip started at ~15.30 and ended at ~00.30. A very tiresome dark hike to top camp.
The day started with deeply unpleasent rising from our nice warm beds after a long day prior. Despite the lethargy, a resonaby efficient departure from Top Camp was acheived. Heavily laden bags containing metalwork, emergency kit, and rope were dragged by Wassil and I to the enterance of Homecoming. Upon reaching the enterance much faff ensued, during which, we were greeted by the arrival of Harry, Emily, and Charlotte who had a similar aim of rigging and pushing within Homecoming.
<br/><br/><b>The descent</b>
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Following behind our companions, we descended the enterance series with relative ease. Descending Radogast was very pleasent and we soon reached Definitely Not the Dachstein. Following normal procedure, everyone had their turn to curse at the awkward traverse and we eventually reached the pitchhead of Wallace via a set of small pitches. This was descended to reach Gromit. <i>Gromit has been described as a "sizzly" pitch</i>. After bottoming Gromit, a fun traverse is found and descending this took us to the divergence of the 3 known A leads within homecoming.
<br/><br/><b>Unknown Territory</b>
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Setting off down the phreatic rift, we quickly entered the beginning of The Second Coming, where a truly massive gust can be felt. A brief, pleasent passage, was shortly followed by a number of both protected (traverse line), and unprotected traverses with varying degrees of exposure. A fall on any of these without a safety could be catastrophic. This is crossed to a calcited, blackened ledge at the end of a travese line an feels like an obvious end to the first section. Following this, the ante is uped and the traveses become more techinical, involving some harder climbing and some crossing of loose-ish collapses. Eventually, the end of the rift is reached and a sharp leftward bend is found. <i>A number of sumps, puddles, and a few brilliant white formations can be seen on the journey. </i>
Immediately after this bend, a deep cross-rift is found and a swiss-cheese like maze of passage is entered upon crossing the rift (this needs properly surveying and is the end of the currently surveyed passage, we have named this "Swiss Cheese"). Passing through this and trending left (following the draught) leads to a pre-rigged traverse line which continues again in a high-level passage which followed to a Y-hang. Descending this leads to an upward-trending wall traverse which terminates in a 2/3 bolt Y/tri-hang. This hangs over The Lizard King and is descended over something like 50m via a 1-bolt rebelay, a deviation, and two further 2-bolt rebelays, eventually either reaching the floor (we had a good look around here and it didn't appear to be very useful) or a higher level muddy ledge facing away from the rebelay and on the right. This was already bolted and leads to the start of another deep rift.
<br/><br/><b>It begins</b>
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Following a new set of bolts placed by myself (the first bolt is at a funky angle and could be replaced but is likely fine), a new traverse line is followed up the roof of the rift along steep-walls. This is easy with a traverse line but is more thought provoking to bolt, rig, and de-rig. Much like the top of The Lizard King, a Y-hang is reached (there is another bolt further used for exploring but was deemed to be useless) and is descended into War of Attrition. A 95m rope was used to righ from the the top of The Salamander Queen 2 (previously named "The Lizard King") to the Y-hang dropping into War of Attrition. A 1-bolt rebelay is reached and a deviation is used on the opposite wall. This is finally descended to a ledge with another 1-bolt rebelay. Here the intention is to continue down to reach a to-be-bolted Y-hang in the right in an attempt to decrease rope-rub. This would be descended about 7m to a vague ledge system and followed further into the large phreatic tube via a traverse line (later called The Salamander Queen).
<br/><br/>We pushed 60m at the top of "Clap My Pitch Up". Pushing required bolting ~20m of a traverse (<u> Mike adds: 20m ish of the traverse was new passage surveyed this year but there was about 30m of traverse bolted this year which was naughtily pushed by me - Mike - and Luke last year in the Red Light Spells Danger trip so the traverse is about 50ish m long</u>). The final few metres of the traverse go above a sizeable pitch (30m?). We names the bolted traverse, "European Federalists". At the end of the traverse, we continued walking for another ~40m until arriving at the top of a massive pitch - further pushing would require bolting. The distance from where we were standing to the furthest point down the pitch measured with the disto was ~40m. We kicked rocks down the pitch and the sound continued for 10s, giving rise to a presumption that the pitch may be very deep. If it connects to "Clap My Pitch Up", it's at least 100m deep. IMPORTANT: the traverse passage and the walkable continuation are muddy and slippery; posing a hazard of falling down the pitch. Ash, Jonty, Mealy and Janis want to push the lead further on Saturday 8th July.
<br/><br/>We wandered down to the cave around 10am, making it to the entrance around 12pm. The entrance series went pretty fast ... at least it did for me as Harry and Charlotte were carrying the heavy bags. On the way we made a quick stop to rerig a knot pass. As we reached the bottom of Wallace and Grommit where they had finished rigging the previous day both me and Harry experienced fizzling as we glazed the dry rope on the final 55m. I did not enjoy this part. We then made our way up the climb and Harry began rigging the small pitches before the long pitch series. The most notable part of this was when Harry appeared the wrong side of a pitch head after following the description and getting lost. It was highly amusing. As Charlotte began rigging the final pitch series me and Harry huddled in a shelter and watched Mathilda the musical. As it came to replacing a bolt Harry left to go help Charlotte and I was left along ... until it was discovered the drill battery was dead and I had to come down with a back up. As 8pm approached we made our way out leaving rope to finish the final part of rigging. On the way out we made a noodle stop at the top of Wallace and Grommit but with no fork a knife had to suffice. The walk back was miserable as we started following new reflectors towards the col and had to turn around and start again. We finally made it back to top camp at 1 am.
<br/><br/>Another frustrating day with network. WiFi router refused to allow connections - rebooted at ~0830. Ok.
<br/><br/>Rebooted network for a reason I can't remember - failed to re-establish routing to router. Much faff standing on chairs trying [illegible] as cables all duct taped to the wall with it in [illegible] operating position up by ceiling. Found [illegible], edited into [illegible]. Redocumented everything in handbook.
<br/><br/>We went to where the group - Honorata, Radost and Mike - had left off the previous day. European Federalists was a very tough traverse that required the use of ascenders. We bolted and rigged (my first bolt!) the pitch at the end of the muddy passage about 10m down to a choke of boulders. At the bottom of it we saw that there is a large, smooth crack continuing east leading to a large, deep chamber that seems to be the same one we saw on the right. If it is it would be elongated roughly in a north east to south west direction. Ash and Mealy also explored some C leads which did not go far.
<br/><br/>Radost and Honorata had found a few promising entrances that they could explore with just a hand line on Thursday so me, Mike and Emma set out with caving kit, bolting kit and a few ropes to investigate further (ropes were slightly out of date ones - ropes were very hard to come by at Top Camp so we pinched two 20m ropes from the stash at Fishface entrance).
Having grabbed our kit from Fishface we looked at Radost's GPS coordinates, got a bearing towards them and headed in that direction. Plateau walking is always challenging, we came across a coupe of gaps? in the plateau, none of which went.
Eventually, after about 1 km of wandering in the direction of our bearing we came across an entrance that matched the photos Mike had seen that looked like it went a decent distance. Having never bolted before I kitted up and headed into the entrance in a snow-plugged rift with big ~2m boulder wedged in at the end with a significant drop afterwards.
We rigged a hand line off a natural near the entrance and I (with heavy instructions and a lot of faff) put a bolt in the ceiling to make a Y hang with the natural and headed down.
The pitch was a free hang for 3-4m before hitting a steep (~40 degrees) snow and ice slope, going down our 23m rope missed the bottom by 2-3m so I traversed around the slope, locked off my stop to a large, walkable rocky area to the right (looking down, left, looking up). Bits of this were quite unstable and scary with a large, car-sized boulder wedged up on its long axis, supported just by a few cms of rock, looming over me. This chamber thing had a coop ice fall on one side and no ways on at the bottom down to boulders. Mike came down and concluded that there were no ways on at the bottom. ???Hopping??? up the pitch above the car-sized boulder there was more passage that continued for a while but Mike didn't reckon it went any further. Being quite cold at this point I prussiked up the icy pitch (with difficulty) while Mike did a quick survey of the cave (on paper with the Disto). Mike then derigged and we headed on.
The next lead was Radost and Honorata's. Amphitheatre cave, which Nadia and some of the Garlic cave lot had also claimed as theirs. Deciding to tread lightly we free climbed down the large boulders in this very deep, very wide ???? hole. Rigging a hand line off the last boulder near the rift, Mike climbed down about 3m into the riftonto some scree and went on a bit more before arriving at a ~6m drop. We decided to leave further exploration for a day or two to let the people who found it have a go but it looked very promising. We had a fair bit of water in there as well despite little rain recently.
We then walked back, attempting but failing to find Garlic Cave. On the way back we did find a nice looking camp spot (flat, grass, ????, would be good for a tne) at 47.6925722 13.8087777
<br/><br/>I carried my caving and bivvy gear from Top Camp to Homecoming whilst Harry and Charlotte carried Top Camp's second shovel and a camp bed (surprisingliy heavy) to be picked up by the Garlic Cave people.
After a bit of faff at the surface we got underground and to the bottom of Wallace and Grommit without any problems. We headed up to the little pitch to Propane Nightmares, down a series of little pitches, past the "deathy" sump, reaching the top of the "Strained by Gravity" pitch. We layered up and Harry set off to finish rigging it. Charlotte and I came down. I didn't enjoy the second deviation (it was quite rubby) although apparently I went round the wrong side of a boulder. I think a rebelay should be added here for people (like myself) who don't look down too much when abseiling.
The pitch drops into a drippy, bouldery chamber. We found our way through into a rift with surprisingly nice stal and shuffled along to the pushing front (a T junction). Right was an undescended pitch. Left was where we started surveying.
We surveyed for about 100m through sandy rifts, down a few climbs (that were much harder on the way up!) and past some pretty flowstone. The passage ended with a ~20m pitch that can also be traversed over to the left and right. Harry and Charlotte havedubbed this passage "Flowstone Canyon".
Slow, tired progress out saw us leave the cave at about 1am. I stumbled to Garlic Cave to sleep on the slabs outside the camp whilst Charlotte and Harry bivvied in a group shelter at the entrance.
<br/><br/>This was a long day that started at Base Camp with the intent of rigging the entrance series of Homecoming cave. We set off only slightly later than the planned 8:00 [illegible] some faff. Quite surprising since Will was not part of the team.
<br/><br/>The walk up to Top Camp took almost 2 hours, just as expected. We were also carrying drills, string, food, and other Top Camp equipment. We followed the reflectors to Fishface. They were white on both sides, which could make it frustrating if you are someone who is lost on their way to Top Camp. Instead, it should be red that leads to Top Camp, while white leads to caves and the car park.
<br/><br/>From Fishface, it was only a short walk to Homecoming. Wassil rigged the first few ropes of the cave. . The first rope is a 14m on which we descend the entrance pitch. Then Wassil used a ~70m rope which was used to rig the next few pitches. After the entrance pitch, [illegible] come 2-3 small pitches rigged without rebelays. This makes it easier to climb on the way out. Wassil rigged everything up to Radagast.
<br/><br/>Harry rigged 'Definitely not the Dachstein', while Chi di Wallace and Grommit, including an awkward traverse.
<br/><br/>In the meantime, Merryn, Alice and Wassil were waiting in the group shelter practicing the fiddle.
We went canyoning on a rest day. The "Strubklamm" canyon is located near Saltzburg, approximately 1h of driving from Bad Aussee. The canyon is graded V1A3 (vertical 1, aquatic 3). It's very aquatic, with many small jumps available and a 300m swimming passage. There are 2 bigger jumps: approx. 8m and 10m, both can be abseiled (topo can be found online).
The canyon is very easy to do without ropes if jumps up to 10m are acceptable. We did not use ropes and generally seemed over-prepared. There was another group in the canyon: a family of 5 (mom, dad, and 3 children aged below 10). They didn't have any equipment other than wetsuits and helmets, which seemed unreasonable in case the small children didn't want to do the big jumps.
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The canyon had pre-rigged pitches and handlines, all of which were quite dodgy (e.g. rope close to breaking at the knot). The entire trip took us 3 hours with a 15 min snack break in the middle. We did half of the trip on an inflatable unicorn (taking turns).
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The weather was good, sunny and hot. The canyon seemed quite dry, as though there was usually more water there (e.g. some slides were only drippy as opposed to full with water). The canyon has at least 2 escape routes.
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Blog Author: Babyhagrid<divclass="bbWrapper">Canon Ball Run - Austria (Attempted)<br/>
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Three blokes from Cardiff Uni on their first Expo with CUCC. Left a house at Reading with the goal of getting to Bad Ausse in a single day. A task deemed challenging at best, stupid at worse. The saga begun at 1:30 am. With a base camp eta of 9pm we excitedly exited the ferry hitting the motorway heading for Germany.
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It was cool runnings for the first 700 km. Until the dreaded check engine light appeared with the car going into limp mode on the scary lane of the Autobahn. A maccies and petrol station near Stuttgart were quickly found, breakdown was called. The wait for rescue was painful wondering if we would make it to Austria. Support arrived with grim news. Problem with the turbo, needs to be taken to a garage which is open in the morning. Arrangements were made at a local hotel to the cost of the drivers entire expo budget.
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The morning came with a nervous trip to the local garage with baited breath. Good news came with the problem quickly being diagnosed as a sensor issue. After the pricey hotel breakfast the Autobahn was returned to making it to Munich in good time. Passing Munich on the last stretch to Austria, things were looking up.
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This was until a black bmw slowly changed into our lane with the feared follow me sign in the back window. We nervously followed the Rozzers to a nearby police station where our papers were thoroughly checked, with one of them quizzing a passenger on whether they "smoked". Thankfully we were back on our way, we thought that we had a clean journey to the border ahead.
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Yet again a black bmw slowly moved in front of us with their sign flashing. Another check without the fishing for drugs. After this whole ordeal we arrived at base camp, one day late, with a breakdown and two stops from the police. A beer was cracked with relief!</div>
<br/><br/>Will and Phil went up as part of the 2-car lift to the carpark. Others all going to topcamp. Cardiff contingent (Ely, James, Thomas) arrived the previous day (at last)
<br/><br/>Dep. carpark 10:06 we walked to the col but got spread out, 2 Cardiffians particularly heavily loaded so Ash dropped back to accompany them while James headed on with Radost and Honorata.
The Amphitheater Hoehle is named after its entrance which resembles an amphitheather. There are a couple of meters of an easy climb from the very top to the boulder where we started rigging. Rigging starts with an approx. 5-6m down climb, where we put a handline. It's followed by a traverse (10m ?) above the entrance to the first pitch. We rigged a Y-hang at the end of the traverse.
<br/><br/>The first pitch is at least 20m deep and ends on a wide ledge filled with snow. The pitch goes a bit across, resulting in us putting 2 deviations on the way down. Beyond the ledge, there is a short (5m ?) traverse which leads to the second pitch.
<br/><br/>We surveyed the cave to the end of that traverse with a few splays directed at the pitch below. Ash bolted the second pitch halfway down while Radost and I were surveying. The second pitch is slabby, drippy, and has ice patches on the sides. A stoney bridge lies underneath the traverse that leads to the second pitch. In total, we surveyed 70m of Amphitheather Hoehle on that trip.
over to fish face, looking in more potential entrances and rifts along the way which all choked quickly or became too sketchy, like 2023-JS-03
Gardeners'World.
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For some reason, we also spent many hours proving our Japeishness by filming ourselves hiding within teeny holes on the plateau, in whack-a-mole style.
We went on a via ferrata located close to the Loseralm parking lot. The via ferrata route is graded D. Car is best parked on the side of the toll road, below the parking lot, next to a big pile of rocks. Getting to the start of the via ferrata requires a short (200m ?) hike up on steep terrain with many small loose boulders, which make the hike anoying.
<br/><br/>The via ferrata route goes up the mountain (it's vertical) and it is very exposed. It requires using the upper body quite a lot and does not have many aids besides the metal wire. The route ends next to a metal cross at the peak of the mountain. One hikes down to get to the car. The description says that the via ferrata takes between 1 and 2 hours but it took us 50 minutes, with a 5 min photo break in the middle.
Blog Author: honorata<divclass="bbWrapper">The first two weeks of expo have been quite eventful, with exploration proceeding in Fishface and Homecoming, and a new camp being set on the plateau.<br/>
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<b>Garlic Cave</b><br/>
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Garlic Cave is located just 20 mins of walking from Homecoming, making it a perfect location to explore the far side of the plateau. <br/>
<b>See the great <ahref="https://expo.survex.com/expofiles/video/2023/garlic-cave1280.orig.mp4"target="_blank"class="link link--external"rel="nofollow ugc noopener">movie by Zac Woodford</a>.</b><br/>
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Pic (L to R): Nadia Raeburn-Cherradi, Oakem Kyne, Jana Podbelsek, and Jono Lester at Garlic Cave.<br/>
A couple of shallow leads were pushed and killed. In terms of deep leads, me (Honorata), Radost, and Mike pushed 60 meters above <b>Clap my Pitch Up</b> which required bolting a muddy traverse (we called it <b>European Federalists</b>). Later, Mike, Emma, Mealy, and Jonty camped in Fishface for 2 days to push the area further, but they were running in loops. The traverse we rigged has a strong draft which seems to be coming from the massive pitch at the end of it. The pitch is likely part of <b>Clap my Pitch Up</b> which had been explored earlier and might even connect to <b>Ulysses</b> above. Mike also explored <b>Perseid Showers</b> which does not seem to go anywhere. In sum, the most promising leads were killed.<br/>
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<b>Homecoming</b><br/>
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A fantastic lead has been explored by Wassil, Chi, and Oakem behind <b>The Second Coming</b>, called <b>Salamander Queen</b> (not to be confused with <b>Salamander Queen II</b> which lies closer to the entrance, under <b>Radagast</b> -- I suppose the salamanders are crawling outwards, hence the reversed numbering). The passage was deemed a good lead because of a strong outward draft. <b>Salamander Queen</b> is achieved by going from <b>Radagast</b>, through <b>The Second Coming</b>, <b>Willfully Endangering Lives</b>, <b>Swiss Cheese</b>, <b>Salamander Queen II</b>, <b>German Engineering</b>, and <b>War of Attrition</b>. It is an approx. 90m deep pitch which seems to continue with a scary down climb. Wassil and Chi intend to camp in Homecoming on Saturday to push the lead further.<br/>
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Meanwhile, Harry and Charlotte (with the help of Sarah and Becka) have been pursuing another lead in the direction of <b>Watershed</b>, called <b>Plowstone Canyon</b>. It is a phreathic tube with a draft (not a very strong one). They set off to the plateau today to continue pushing it.<br/>
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<b>Prospecting</b><br/>
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A few small caves were explored and killed between Fishface and Homecoming by various groups. Radost and I found a massive cave entrance 5 mins of walking from Homecoming which we named <b>Amphitheater</b> Cave (<ahref="http://expo.survex.com/1623/2023-hbrw-03.html"target="_blank"class="link link--external"rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://expo.survex.com/1623/2023-hbrw-03.html</a>). The entrance lies approx. 200m directly above the <b>Watershed</b> lead in Homecoming, giving hope that the two caves connect.<br/>
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Pic: Radost Waszkiewicz at the entrance to the Amphitheater. <br/>
We returned there with Ash on July 11th to explore it. We surveyed it until the entrance to the second pitch (70m) and Ash bolted it halfway down it. On July 12th, Ash and Janis returned there to push it further. They arrived at the bottom of the second pitch and continued down a passage which chokes with ice boulders, making further exploration dangerous. Essentially, the lead was killed, but we surveyed about 115 m in total. The second pitch is drippy and has ice patches (independent from the water entering it), and so is <b>Watershed</b>. Perhaps when the ice melts over years, we could return there to push the lead further. <br/>
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<b>Festering</b><br/>
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Meanwhile, rest day activities took place. Me, Radost, Chi, Harry, and Ash went canyoning to Strubklamm near Saltzburg. The canyon is graded V1A3, it is suitable to do without ropes (if jumps up to 10m are acceptable) and can be done on an inflatable unicorn. Alice and Maddie also went there later.<br/>
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Pic: Christian Kuhlmann on the unicorn in Strubklamm.<br/>
Multiple groups went on via ferratas. Me, Radost, Harry, Charlotte, Oakem, and Jonty went to <b>Panorama Kletterstieg Sisi</b>, graded D and located close to the Loseralm parking lot. It is a fun vertical climb -- the scarcity of aids (besides the metal wire) makes it entertaining. The description says the route takes between 1-2 hours but it took us 50 mins with a photo break in the middle.<br/>
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Pic: Oakem Kyne (L) and Jonty Pine (R) on <b>Panorama Kletterstieg Sisi</b>.<br/>
Administrative note: a few days of rain, heavy at times (1 tent bent, 1 flooded) has led to lots of basecamp nerding. So far, 829m of new passage has been surveyed and recorded and expo has been running nearly 2 weeks.
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Full details at <ahref="http://expo.survex.com/expedition/2023"target="_blank">http://expo.survex.com/expedition/2023</a>
<br/><br/>Following an impromptu pre-expo-dinner dinner the night before, we all arose with a tinge of hangover. Rapidly consuming breakfast and packing kit, we set off at 8:30am, only 30 minutes after we said we would which in all fairness is very good going for us.
After a smooth ferry to the Loser car park by our wonderful chauffer Alice, we set off up the mountain. Almost immediately after we left the car park a navigational faux pas was made and we found ourselves on the wrong path, and with a small section of off-roading, we headed up to top camp with no other further obstructions.
<br/><br/>Upon reaching top camp we were greeted by our fellow plateau dwellers and began the ceremonial scrannage of noodles. Spirits lifted and full of noodles I repaired some of the drill batteries, apparently broken from over-excited handling; followed by a brief faff session and subsequent departure from Stoney Bridge. En-route, I found that bringing my 35-litre rucksack was a mistake. The 100 litres I normally brought was a far more suitable size and the choice to go light for this trip would not be repeated. The resulting journey was incredibly tedious and required a camera in one hand and a sleeping bag in the other. This would become a recurring theme.
<br/><br/>Plateau stomping completed, we arrived at the entrance of Homecoming with Ash and Ely closely in tow. Proceeding another bout of faffing and packing, Merren disappeared over the lip of Homecoming and began our quest into the cooler climate we so desperately needed.
<br/><br/>Upon entering the entrance series, we began to realise that Homecoming, topologically, is not well suited for dragging camping equipment in. The bags became the bane of our collective existence, constantly getting caught in rifts, getting tangled in ropes, and just being generally annoying. With no small amount of effort, the bags were dragged into Swiss Cheese after surviving the toils of Wilfully Endangering Lives. Leaving our kit behind, free of (some) of our burden, we headed off towards Lizard Queen and beyond in an effort to survey some passage we were unable to survey before and begin some more bolting adventures.
<br/><br/>As we bottomed Salamander Queen II I fired up the noodle factory awaiting Merren and Wassil’s arrival. As usual, the flavour sachets were incredibly awkward to operate without becoming caked in grease, so we settled for dry flavouring alone. Better than nothing.
<br/><br/>Again full of noodles, we entered German Engineering, more aware of how much two of the bolts needed replacing than before, we carefully traversed the exposed rift. Dropping the next pitch into War of Attrition and traversing the associated rift, we approached the end of what had been seen before. Upon reaching Salamander Queen, I was welcomed by a two-bolt y-hang in slightly chossy rock backed up by a good bolt with the only issue being it had enormous amounts of rub. This needed to be fixed.
After descending the pitch, I collected the drill and bolts and began my way back up. Reaching the top I was met by the dulcet tones Wassil and Merren surveying War of Attrition and I began adding more bolts. The back-up bolt was turned into another y-hang and the original y-hang appeared to be in good rock but maybe 20cm below this, the rock crapped out and needed gardening. After pulling up the old rope, Wassil gave in to his gardening addiction and began yeeting large quantities or kitchen appliances down the pitch. After breaking half of the cave, I re-rigged the y-hang on a rope that, this time, did not require a knot pass, and did not rub a scarily large amount. En-route to the floor, a re-belay was added to reduce the chance of being chossed and to enable faster ascending.
<br/><br/>As Merren and Wassil surveyed the previous sections, I began to explore and try to locate the most promising lead. At one end of the chamber was a small stream flowing out of the wall. This did not go (but did provide good noodle water). On the other side, I bolted a small, maybe 7m, pith aiming to enter a large clean-washed aven. At the end of this is sharp clean-washed traverse over what seemed like a 30m rift. Reaching the end of this I began bolting a new traverse over a now, much larger, chamber which looked like it was about 20m wide, very long and about 50m deep. Continuing over the top of this in a keyhole rift, we were greeted by a phreatic tube.
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To our surprise, this was an lovely stomping passage with some squidgy silt on the floor and a set of small dry waterfalls. This continued for about 100m and ended about a huge chamber where water can be heard from a good instance away. Here the strong inward draught returned, and our hopes were revitalised. Wassil and Merren caught up here and I was strongly encouraged to drop the pitch as Wassil who was incredibly excited. After bolting the Y-hang and dropping our rope (we think about 40-50m) it did not reach the bottom and we headed back to Swiss Cheese with our tails between our legs. Returning to Swiss Cheese we noticed that some traverses were a little vegan for our liking and required a couple more bolts to be deemed reasonable as a route for more people to use. This was a job for tomorrow (or rather later today).
<br/><br/>Reaching the underground camp at about 4am, we devoured a collection of noodles and freeze-dried curry before settling down for the night. This night was miserable, little sleep was had and escaping our beds was truly a battle. After some freeze-dried “porridge with strawberries”, which turned taout to be amazing, we trekked back to Lizard Queen, this time exhausted. Merryn waited in Lizard Queen II and Wassil and I made our way to Lizard Queen. Upon reaching the top, Wassil awaited my return, and I ventured down to retrieve all of the pushing equipment from the bottom. I was not happy about this.
<br/><br/>Reaching the top of the pitch again, I handed the bolting equipment to Wassil and made my way to Merryn with a large quantity of metalwork and rope. With Wassil only having bolting kit I felt very overburdened and a little hard done by on my journey. Despite this noodle provided a fine remedy upon reaching Swiss Cheese with Merryn.
Wassil later joined us and we all finished off the noodles. This marked the strat oif our arduous escape from the Second Coming and Homecoming in general. Laden with camping kit, most of the metalwork, lots of rope, and the bolting kit I was far slower than normal and at some points found the normally airy traverses thought provoking. Here Wassil left Merryn and I in pursuit of a faster exit with the guise of carrying the “heavy group kit” (this group kit was lighter than Merryn and I’s group kit and mostly consisted of his own shit).
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The escape was awful and became briefely less awful upon leaving the bolting kit at the split of Hobnob Hallway, The Second Coming, and Watershed. Here we found a beautiful note left by Becka’s group requesting some bolting supplies to which we left a not by our supplies. In my dehydrated, exhausted mind, I misread a request for a shelter being left at the bottom of Gromit as a request for it to be left at the top. In hindsight this made no sense and was pretty stupid. No shelter for the I guess.
<br/><br/>The entrance series proved to be the worst section, despite having left the bolting bag. Additionally, near the end of our exit, the rope I’d carried most of the way-out abandoned ship and was later found by Becka’s group later.
<br/><br/>TLDR:
Overall, a great trip with over ~294m surveyed and more promising leads found. Couldn’t recommend camping in the second coming more!
Blog Author: Harry Kettle<divclass="bbWrapper"><b>Pushing Watershed in Heimkehrhohle</b><br>
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I got back from 2 weeks in Austria yesterday and spent much of that time pushing Homecoming (Heimkehrhohle). Homecoming was discovered in 2018 and was last visited in 2019. A key interest of Homecoming is it sits a long way west of the main SMK system, so connecting it to SMK would move the expedition closer to a long term goal of connecting to the Schoenberg-Hohlenen system to make one of the longest caves in the world.<br>
<i>The Schwarzmooskogel (SMK) system (right) shown in relation to the Schoenberg-Hohlenen (SH) system. Homecoming is labelled 359, sitting just west of this year’s other main objective, Fishface (290). </i><br>
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I spent this years expo pushing Watershed, a piece of passage found by Dickon, Becka and myself in 2019. Looking at the survey data, Watershed appears to offer the best hope of connecting to Fishface, which when Fishface (hopefully!) gets connected to the main SMK system would in turn connect Homecoming to SMK.<br>
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At it’s closest point, Watershed sits just 300m horizontally and in the same vertical plane as Keanu Breeze, a pitch in Fishface bolted and surveyed by Jonty, Joel, Luke and myself last year, named for its strong draft. The hope this year was we may find passage in Watershed that could move Homecoming closer to Fishface.<br>
<i>Homecoming survey next to Fishface and SMK</i><br>
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It took two long rigging trips and ~600m of rope to get from the Homecoming entrance to the pushing front. From the bottom of the entrance series, a small up pitch is climbed to access some small phreatic fossil passage named Propane Nightmares. This is followed for a few hundred metres via a series of small pitches, climbs and pleasant sandy crawls to the head of Strained by Gravity, a 75m pitch series that drops via 3 large ledges into a large wet chamber and the start of Watershed.<br>
<i>Emily eating noodles after the second rigging trip with a rope knife as we forgot to bring a fork.</i><br>
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Watershed was named as we had to run through several wet drips to access the ongoing passage, though thankfully water levels seemed lower this year and we were able to stay relatively dry. The ongoing passage is a lovely phreatic tunnel with a significant active streamway and many excellent stalactite and helictite formations in the roof, both unusual for caves in this area. <br>
<i>Charlotte looking at some of the Watershed formations.</i><br>
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On the first pushing trip Charlotte, Sarah and myself surveyed ~100m along a sandy downwards rift. This was again well decorated with some lovely flowstone and stalactites, and passed several tight thrutchy down climbs that were good fun coming back up. At the end of the rift a small pitch was reached so without bolting gear we turned round for the day. This passage seems like a good option for a camp, which may be necessary soon as the pushing front gets further from the entrance.<br>
<i>Sarah surveying by some nice flowstone.</i><br>
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Thunderstorms halted progress but three days later Charlotte, Becka and myself returned. Charlotte hadn’t bolted before but after a quick lesson went bolting down the pitch whilst Becka and I surveyed more horizontal passage. My book work was quite rusty but Becka is an excellent teacher and I soon got back into it. The passage consisted mainly of tall narrow rifts with several passages lying on top of eachother. The day finished with 6 drafting A leads to come back to.<br>
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Annoyingly further thunderstorms were forecast but three days later we returned again. This time Charlotte, Becka and myself were joined by Jono and James, with a plan to split to two teams at the pushing front. In a streamway at the base of the previous pushing trip, Jono and Becka went upstream looking to experiment with photogrammetry on Jono’s phone whilst Charlotte, James and myself went downstream. Following the narrow rift and streamway a series of small pitches were reached which James bolted and rigged. After the second pitch the tight rift opened up into huge passage and a further 20m pitch to the floor. Sadly by this point we had run out of rope so had to turn round. Annoyingly on turning round I realised half the survey notes had been rubbed off the notebook in my oversuit so we had to resurvey some of the passage heading out. <br>
Despite ~300m of passage being surveyed minimal progress was made in getting closer to Fishface but there are lots of excellent leads to explore and four weeks left of expo so hopefully lots more cave will get found <imgclass="smilie smilie--emoji"loading="lazy"alt=""title="Slightly smiling face :slight_smile:"src="/years/2023/./ukcavingblog_files/1f642.png"data-shortname=":slight_smile:">.</div>
Blog Author: Mealy<divclass="bbWrapper">Written as we (Mealy, Jonty, Emily) made slow progress through endless traffic in Germany on our route back to the UK. Finished at home with working internet.<br>
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In an attempt not to repeat Honorata’s write up… I’ll briefly summarise <b>week 1:</b><br>
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First caving(?) trip was spent digging the entrance for fishface with Emily and Jonty as we were greeted with rather more snow than 2022! As you can see from the photo we may have had a little too much fun with the transporting the shovel; trying to recreate the Patagonia baby photo. Jonty got a little carried away with digging and quite the entrance trench was formed. Once dug in we saw some excellent ice features.<br>
<i>Mealy and Emily recreating the Patagonia Baby photo with shovel.</i><br>
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After set up and digging my first week was spent across 4 more trips into fishface. The first being the least successful owing to not bringing the correct bolts to rig so I’ll just skim over that minor error as Joel in particular got rather sad at the reality of that trip. Each of the subsequent and arguably more successful trips were accompanied with a different new expo goer. Emma got to bolt their first pitch and Will survey’d his first passage. Alice claims to have enjoyed surveying for the first time. These trips resulted in the accidental killing of all leads between the Blitzen Boulevard and Liquid Luck area as it turned out all 4 leads were the same interconnected loop. Some entertainment was had as teams met midway through loops. Claims of “you’ve stolen my lead” were made. On the raining days I enjoyed some challenging nerd times sorting the loop closures on survex with Ash. A big thank you to Ash for helping me improve my survey skills on these trips!<br>
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<b>Week 2</b> started with a camp. After hearing of the promising roaring A lead from Radost, Honorata and Mike that they strongly suspected would connect to SMK if it kept heading east… I was keen to go to Europeon Federalists.<br>
<i>Mike, Jonty, Mealy and Emma bags packed about the head into fishface for 3 days of camping.</i><br>
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After a tremendous amount of faff and a rather exciting walk across the plateau that had Mike, Emma, Jonty and myself trying to hide under a 1 man survival bag to not be wiped out by a brief monsoon we made it to camp.<br>
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Jonty and I set out for European federalist which has to be the muddiest place I’ve been to on the CUCC expo! Mud got everywhere! Progress was slow the rock made some unpleasant sounds as we tried to find some where to bolt a traverse. We clambered about trying to not fall down the whooping shaft to our right. Eventually we got across having taken a number of hours to move about 20m we found 2 phreatic tubes, Jonty crawled into one, before I had moved I could see a light in the second (Jonty's light of course…) once again in fishface we had a loop! I complained about the 2023 curse of the loop and that fishface simply connect to fishface again and again and surveyed another loop closure. We also had a poke under the traverse onto a boulder choked floor above what we suspected was clap my pitch up to survey that area and confirm if it was that or something else and check no sneaky passages were hiding down there. We called this “nice rift bad sound” owing to the whooosh noise rocks made when they got knocked down. Hungry, disappointed and myself so cold I was beginning to question if I still had feet we returned to camp for some food. It was this day I had to exercise some self control limiting myself to a 1 minute timed cry for I was scared, cold and very tired. Jonty on the other hand was quite cheerful and somewhat bemused by my request of a 1 minute timed cry stop.<br>
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After noodles and a weird situation with Jonty seeing the face of god in legume soup, we stole Emma (who had been abandoned in a group shelter) from Uncle Mike leaving him to his bolting of a dry route down Pursid Showers to try some other leads on the horizontal level. We headed off to Moths2 only to find it too wet to proceed this surprised me as last year I recalled that area being dry. Turing around (again!!) we discussed pushing the Keanu breeze area but concluded if moths was wet that would be very wet. So we took to a smaller rather unassuming lead off Kubla Khan just after Miracle Maze a person sized walking rift for a person Mealy size, Jonty was experiencing a bit more bother taking to flapping around on the floor like a ‘graceful’ (he told me add graceful) salmon. Emma making less fuss, on disto duty and having a better time than they were having in the group shelter! The rift meandered for 50m and was rather pretty, we popped out onto a larger rift. Jonty and Emma got excited that we were finally getting somewhere. I sat perched on the edge of the rift having got perhaps too into playing on sexytopo colouring sand in, I looked up and got that I’ve been here before feeling just as Jonty with evident disappointment shouted he was at a survey station. Yet again another loop closure! It now being gone 10pm we made our way back to camp, via our cave link. I should add we’d gone in Monday knowing rain was due Wednesday and we were not confident with how fishface responds to rain. We had requested weather updates via cave link , alas nothing on the cave link. Back at camp no sign of Uncle Mike, a tad concerning but we decided Uncle Mike is a big boy and Pursid Showers was a big task so we wouldn’t get concerned until 2am, we set alarms and took a nap. Mike appeared shortly after. Having spent some time “warming his crotch up on the stove” I did not enquire any further on what that was about.<br>
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Now we discussed the weather, the lack of any contact via cave link, our leads crapping out and concluded it be sensible to make a retreat/escape early Wednesday as we had a growing concern about the prospect of getting flooded in. We slept. This night we positioned ourselves far better than the previous night and didn’t wake up downhill. Wednesday morning with our heavy packs we made our way out timing it rather well with the rain; luck not judgment. Exhausted we made our way down the hill via top camp to drop kit and back to base camp.<br>
<i>Mike, Emma, Mealy and Jonty forming a cuddle puddle of exhausted caver's outside fishface entrance. </i><br>
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That night back at basecamp at 3:30am myself, Jana and Jonty awoke to discover our tent was under flood and had become a lake swamp hybrid in the storm (glad we had decided to leave the cave! It was quite the storm!). Jana and Jonty ran away apparently both terrified of rain - they were unfortunately for them on the down hill side of the tent and experiencing more of a lake than myself and the slugs that were residing on my side with me were experiencing. I decided perhaps out of tiredness rather than good thought to “ride the flood” bid them farewell in their fleeing endeavours and stayed in the tent thinking I could make the water agree to stay on one side and I’d sleep on the other. I spent Thursday morning bailing the tent out with a beer bottle.<br>
Post camp we have learnt that we should have visited Keanu Breeze as it is now suspected that is the most likely place that we could connect into homecoming from (as Harry shows above).<br>
jono and i had spotted an A lead bolt climb off the edge of propane nightmares over the death sump. armed with bolts and mikes drill we set off from garlic cave and after much faff we finally enteretd into homecoming. we got our kit into two bags of very heavy nature and set off down the cave. the entrance pitches went easily and eventually we got to the traverse . this was a interesting with large blokes and large bags stuck in the rift. after a large amount of swearing we got down to wallace. this went easily, and we got onto grommit. this was rather "fun" as the rope was looking interesting, and you had to go very slowly to avoid sizzling. at the bottom of grommit we gathered some bolts and hangers from the bag down there and set off into propane nightmares.
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we stopped to document and tape a bat skeleton and some spelotherms . care required when going through this section of cave. we then kept going and arrived at the death sump. i bolted a traverse over the sump which was good fun. blowing the dust out of the holes showed a nice draft blowing from the lead into us. we kep going after this and arrived at the base of the bolt climb. jono climbed this with various thrutchy moves and an inverted skyhook. and placed a bolt at the start of the awkward uphill tube. this up pitch was named the heifer. jono then bolteda traverse at the top into a nice phreatic passage which led down a nice pitch. we dropped down this with the final bolt and found another static sump at the bottom in a nice quiet chamber, called the trough. it went but we decided that we needed to get more bolts to upgrade the rigging on the heifer. we collected some more from the bottom of grommit and then headed back to the heifer.
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on arriving back to the heifer we climbed baack up and realized that thye rigging needed some drastic changes. we bolts a better alternative route with a nicer hang. then we started surveying up the pitch. on the down pitch i installed a deviation. once at the bottom of the pitch i could hear a large sound of flowing water. at this point jono felt large gusts of air at the top of the pitch. we traversed over the sump at the bottom and installed a traverse line at the end for a bold step (needs replacing next trip, 3 meters of rope required). once across we found a small stream running towards our sump. we kept surveying and eventually the water kept rising and we got to a low arch that was impassable with the water levels but a large 12ft high contiuation could be seen beyond survey point 9. a bolt climb into a higher rift could be seen to right opposite survey point 8. we also found two unstratified long bones from a small mammal. these were sampled. we then thoughbt it would be a good idea to turn around as it was getting rather late and the water was rising still. we crossed back over the sump and jono scanned the cave.
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we regrouped at the base of the heifer after adding a bolt to make the pitch head easier and started the long trudge out. the route to watershed sounded apocolypticly wet as we passed by. i arrived at the base of grommit and the drums of khazard-dum started to sound. the water coming down beyond the pitch was carrying some loud rocks with it which was a fun accomaniment for the prussic. the pitches stayed nice and dry and eventually i got to the cheese press. my bag and i had a falling out and many expletives and death threats were made on the horizontal traverse i had to tighten a few of the spit bolts (entertaining due to large bag and being horizontal). finally we made it back to the rock at the end of the traverses. i stopped and had a flapjack here and waited for jono. i heard his displeasure at the cave appear and we shared a bag of happy bears which boosted the mood. radagst was rather dripping but we eventually made it back onto the surface at 3AM. we arrived back at garlic cave and ate some grim noodles and went to sleep. good trip well do
Blog Author: Samouse1<divclass="bbWrapper">I’m very happy that Homecoming is being revisited, I pushed that back in 2018 when it was discovered, and named a lot of the bits you can read about above.<br>
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One thing to note is that in German it’s Heimkommen, not Heimkehr! The second was found to be a propaganda film related to a certain political party in the 30s and 40s. The original exploration logs from 2018 have it as Heimkommen. <br>
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Either way, glad to see it being pushed towards the rest of the system!</div>
Ah yes. Mr Bernard knows his stuff. Planting more trees when you have the chance is generally a good thing, especially if you just freed up loads of land due to cutting down on the excessive production of high-carbon cows and sheep. But they do have to be the right sorts in the right places, with a plan to look after them for at least a decade othwise most will die and you just wasted a lot of time/effort/money. But it's no substitue for actual emissions reductions.
<br></br>Tourist trip down Fishface to Pisspot. Already more SRT than Joe has done in his entire lifetime combined, hopefully not holding up Kai too much.
<br/><br/>Turned around and headed back out after 2 hours or so as felt we had done enough SRT practice
<br></br> Following the trip down fishface, Kai and Joe instructed to survey a tight lead from the surface, at GPS location <b>47.6916192, 13.8128410,</b> to the right of the bottom of a snowy chossy slope.
<br/><br/>Cave starts with a short, loose downwards slope, continuing on for about a metre before being ending, filled with frost-shatter. To the left, a short, again loose, upwards slope leads to a vertically upwards shaft of about 4 or 5 metres in height, and around 1.5m in diameter. The lower 3m or so of the shaft was easily free-climbable, but potentially loose rocks made climbing the rest of the shaft difficult. However, from the highest point reached, it looks to be very narrow carrying on, so was considered dead.
<br/><br/>Upon leaving this lead, Kai looked to the left of this lead to find another tight lead, floored with frost shattered, starting with hand and knee crawling, but progressing to belly crawling. A small branch off to the right, looking quite tight, was found, followed by a standing chamber filled with soil, again to the right, before daylight was seen ahead, up a muddy slope. Upon some minor digging by Kai, he was able to reach daylight, finding himself at the bottom of a snow filled hole unable to reach the surface. Joe was not entirely excited at the idea of returning through the belly crawling on sharp frost shatter but had to.
<br/><br/>This second lead to the left was not surveyed nor fully explored and needs returning to.
<br/><br/>Hearing of an exciting new lead, "Mahlstromhöhle", from Frank, Max and Flo, Frank and I embarked on a walk westward out of Fishface gear dump. Upon finding the entrance (which took considerably longer than anticipated) we quickly started kitting up, only to find an absence of any drill bits in the drill bag, contrary to what Frank believed to be the case. Frank then left for fishface gear dump in search of drill bits, whilst I waited patiently, in kit.
<br/><br/>After maybe 45 minutes, Frank returned, unable to find fishface, pointing that he had in fact walked in the wrong direction. Upon directing him in the right direction, he again disappeared for around 45 minutes, returning with no drill bits. Giving up, we headed back to fishface to dump our gear, and started the walk back to topcamp.
<br/><br/>At some point during our travels, Frank had decided we should attempt to pioneer a new, shorter, easier path between topcamp and fishface, leaving the path halfway to embark on this endeavour. After much time scrambling, bunder-bashing and pathfinding, we finally refound the path, having created a path that was not easier, nor shorter. Frank then got bored and created a new gear rack at topcamp whilst we waited for the garlic cave prospecting group to arrive.
<br/><br/>After the brilliant success of yesterday's failed pushing trip, Frank and I returned to Mahlstromhöhle to actually go underground and push. After the entrance pitch, there is a small hole in the floor, from which several small-ish pitches follow.
<br/><br/>The cave begins to follow a canyon, starting with a lovely tight climb up to a ledge at the pitch head, with some other equally fun freeclimbs on which we decided to bolt a handline on the way back.
<br/><br/>The canyon appears to have several false floors which we followed, resulting in several very small pitches which would certainly be a freeclimb if there were actually any holds. Bolting and surveying on the way, we kept pushing until we ran out of bolts and found a squeeze followed by a big wet pitch. We turned around and quickly exited the cave, with much SRT faff from me at the small canyon pitchheads and unusually rigged pitches by the German pair.
<br/><br/> Hearing of our great success with this shallow lead, Nadia, having returned from a fishface camping trip the day before, decided she would join us for a nice easy surface trip.
<br/><br/>Heading back to the pushing front, we decided that the previous handline climb should in fact be a pitch with a horizontal crawling entry above a rift as this was easier and safer.
<br/><br/>Upon reaching the pushing front, the first fun activity was to negotiate the squeeze before pitchhead. Frank managed this with little difficulty and began bolting. Nadia went over and we began surveying from our last station. Finally I went through, finding the squeeze somewhat uncomfortable and we continued surveying through the big wet pitch, getting to a large chamber with two leads off to the left and right which quickly becamce too small for humans, and the main canyon continuing as before, with a nice wet but very sharp rift traverse leading to another somewhat small pitchhead leading to a big, wet chamber.
<br/><br/>At this point we decided to turn around, concerned by the forecast. On the way, I struggled with the squeeze (I must have done it wrong) and several pitches, realising that drill bags are heavy and annoying to carry.
<br/><br/>We surfaced, headed back to topcamp, and arrived just before the thunderstorms did. We waited for it to mostly clear, then headed back to the carpark.
<br/><br/>On the drive back, Nadia claimed we "undersold" everything between the pitches, and described Mahlstrom as a "Yorkshire blackbook" cave
Blog Author: Sarah P<divclass="bbWrapper"><b>Pushing Hobnob hallway in Heimkehrhoehle</b><br>
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Exploration in Homecoming this year has been happening along 3 distinct pushing fronts. Harry has given an excellent account for the exploration along Watershed (scroll up). Pushing has also been happening along a section of the cave called Second Coming, including a particularly character-building (but productive) camping trip that ended in a promising looking pitch. My exploration this year has largely been focused on the third pushing front: along some very pleasant sandy passage discovered in 2018, called Hobnob Hallway, down some less inspiring passage called Dead Flies passage (a lot of dead flies can be found really quite deep into Homecoming - do any cave biologists know why this is the case?).<br>
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<divclass="bbImageWrapper js-lbImage"title="Homecoming_plan.png"data-src="https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?attachments/homecoming_plan-png.16335/"data-lb-sidebar-href=""data-lb-caption-extra-html=""data-single-image="1"data-fancybox="lb-post-378061"data-caption="<h4>Homecoming_plan.png</h4><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ukcaving.com&#x2F;board&#x2F;index.php?threads&#x2F;cucc-austria-expedition-2023-blog.30743&#x2F;#post-378061" class="js-lightboxCloser">Sarah P · Jul 30, 2023 at 11:54 AM</a></p>"style="cursor: pointer;">
At the limit of 2018's exploration at the end of Dead Flies, I bolted an approx. 70 m deep shaft, named 'Goose Box' (named by one of our expo newbies as 'Juice Box', then misheard). The pitch was deceptively deep, I kept arriving at what I thought was the bottom, just to get there and realise it was just a small ledge.<br>
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The bottom broke through into a chamber with a very aesthetic canyon, with a waterfall feeding a stream through it. (No photos have been taken, because none of our group are enthusiastic enough about cave photography, so I hope everyone enjoys nerdy figures instead... ). Phreatic passage led off from the top of it, but it would have required a rope traverse, so we left that as an ongoing lead. We clambered down into the canyon and surveyed along there for several legs. I discovered my wellies had holes in them, so had to adopt the French (i.e. aquaphobic) approach to my caving technique. Our exploration ended at an approx. 8 m mini cascade, that would make a nice beginner bolting task. We named our canyon 'Lassitude Canyon', based on the fact that we were feeling a little fatigued and generally lacking stoke a bit at the beginning of the trip.<br>
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Back down the hill with beer and chips in hand, we (and by we, I mean Becka, the trip's survey wizard) input the survey data to discover that our lead was at the same vertical level as the Second Coming lead, and some of the horizontal passage along the Watershed leads. Its possible that we have broken through into a major horizontal level - time and more exploration will tell...<br>
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<divclass="bbImageWrapper js-lbImage"title="Homecoming_elev.png"data-src="https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?attachments/homecoming_elev-png.16336/"data-lb-sidebar-href=""data-lb-caption-extra-html=""data-single-image="1"data-fancybox="lb-post-378061"data-caption="<h4>Homecoming_elev.png</h4><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ukcaving.com&#x2F;board&#x2F;index.php?threads&#x2F;cucc-austria-expedition-2023-blog.30743&#x2F;#post-378061" class="js-lightboxCloser">Sarah P · Jul 30, 2023 at 11:54 AM</a></p>"style="cursor: pointer;">
Also, it is now our closest cave passage to the neighbouring Schönberg system (it's less than 2km away). If you have read Jono's intro post on this thread, you'll know that our long-term expo goal is to connect our SMK system to the Schönberg, to make one of the world's longest caves. I'm sure that last 1.94 km (and connecting Homecoming to Fishface, and Fishface to SMK..) will be a doddle <imgclass="smilie smilie--emoji"loading="lazy"alt=""title="Grinning face with smiling eyes :smile:"src="/years/2023/./ukcavingblog_files/1f604.png"data-shortname=":smile:"></div>
<br/><br/>After a leisurely (not quite for Ruairidh, carrying far too much) walk up to topcamp with Frank and Nadia following a leisurely morning start from me, Ruairidh and I decided that we could attempt to find an easier, quicker entrance to Maelstrom by following the rift from the surface whilst the other two and Sam were actually in the cave derigging. First we found a large basin, containing what appeared to be a large cave entrance, but upon further inspection, choked out towards the back of the cave. Ruairidh did find a nice complete Gaemse skull though, which he seemed quite happy about. Another potential entrance found further along the rift with a steady flow of water disappearing into the ground which could explain some of the bigger drippy pitches after the lovely squeeze. The rift splits into two further on, with some promising, but inaccessible, looking gorges on the right fork as you follow it. The left seemed less promising from memory but this area is definitely worth another look with bolting kit to make sure. Realising we'd actually got quite close to the col, we decided to simply hike towards the slabs and rejoin the carpark-topcamp path and head back.
<br/><br/>On the morning of my first pushing trip deep within Fishgesicht (5 minutes from camp) the nervous energy carried me up and away through the bountiful faff. After triple checking that we had all the equipment for bolting and surveying a rift that apparently continued but was too sketchy without a traverse line, Charlie, Adam EJ and I traipsed across the plateau for even more faff outside the entrance. After a prompt descent we met the camping team who showed us the way to silverback scoop including a stop at the tap and going down a wrong branch. Squeezing through a pitch head to descend 7m into a dusty tight canyon with a tackle sack full of heavy gear, I did wonder what I was doing, but once the drill was out that fell away completely.
<br/><br/>6 bolts and a bomber handline later, I was round the corner into a section of cave previously untrodden. Whilst bolting is fun and productive, it takes a hell of a long time with a dull bit, so I was happy when the rift narrowed back up to allow clambering and bridging around the many meanders that presented themselves over the next 15 metres of canyon. During this time, the gardening process was intense, knocking off several flakes larger than dinner plates from the walls around me as I proceeded. Rounding the corner to another belled out section was both a joy and a disappointment as it meant that this had potential but also the decision-making regarding rope and how to descend would mean standing around and feeling cold. Charlie led the charge down and further along the canyon, trusting mine and EJ’s amateur one bolt wonder to squeeze into the next section of canyon, assessing what to do with our meagre supply of rope. All of this took us to 7pm and after terminating an almost entirely horizontal pitch, we decided to take our final leg and prussik out, hoping to make it out before August began.
<br/><br/>The prussiking that then was meant to happen was further delayed on meeting the campers once again for a chit chat. After far too long wondering whether the next pitch was the last, we finally emerged into the warm clear night, comfortably into august. Charlie and I lay contemplating existence, and why the hell we bother caving but feeling very accomplished. All that was left to do after the trip was draw up the survey, continue the lead, input to survex, and write a logbook entry with rigging topo. All of that is now complete, see the topo below.
<br/><br/>Woke up to see a sub-optimal forecast. Somehow I was convinced that hiking to Garlic Cave Camp was of course the best course of action to take, so we set off. It was actually dry for the first third or so to fishface gear dump to collect our caving gear, but this did not last. The path is a little treacherous in the wet, so it was a little slow going and slightly miserable and wet but we made it. Adam started shovelling snow, Nathan joined in, then I did. I believe Adam had some grand design in mind but I think we ruined it. We then decided to rig a third tarp up to stop the horrible drip right next to the kitchen, but we rigged a drippy tarp and so the situation wasn't drastically improved. We all went to sleep pretty early without anything else to do.
<br/><br/>After our lovely sleep, we woke up to dry weather, and set off to the top of the ridge above Garlic. Carrying the thick, wet 90m up the mountain was not conducive to good balance so I did fall over in the bunde and struggle to get back up. We reached Buzzard, Adam rigged it, first to the bunde, then hand bolting whilst we waited patiently. The improvement in weather did give a lovely backdrop of the Braeuningzinken for photos. Nathan went down next, followed by Manfred whilst I stayed outside enjoying the view. Upon Adam's return, I swiftly fell asleep, and awoke to find Nathan and Manfred had finished their survey and were finalising some sketches. Adam spotted some interesting holes beneath us on the plateau, so wet set off to prospect (see next entry).
<br/><br/>After dropping Buzzard, the fours of us decided to drop down the north face of the ridge, heading east at first, then split to form two prospecting
groups, Adam and I heading further east to wrap around to the south face of the ridge, and Nathan and Manfred following the north face westwards to
prospect the large, unknown valley beneath us.
<br/><br/>We spotted an interesting looking hut halfway up the side of the next peak eastwards (Griesskogel) which we went to look at first. It
seems to be some kind of hunters hut; it looks quite new and very well set up, with solar panels, a level, felt platform and even an outhouse.
Borrowing the hut to sleep in could be really useful for prospecting in the area but it looks so nice I'm not sure we should really be staying there.
There are plenty of promising leads we were unable to drop in this area north of the line between Wild- and Griesskogel so this really could be very
useful.
<br/><br/>We headed back towards Garlic, having a look at some of the holes we spotted from the ridgetop and some others, finding some promising looking leads
that seem to follow a rift along the base of Wildkogel, then back to Garlic camp so as to not miss our callout.
<br/><br/>Tuesday was another wet day so a day of top camp fettling was had whilst plans were made for a fish face camp the following day. We had a (fairly) efficient morning, departing top camp shortly after 10 having received a debrief from the previous camp group, who had returned in the early hours, on the state of the latest leads.
<br/><br/>Having been promised a dry day after the downpour of the previous day, Nadia and I were greatly unimpressed when it started raining as we kitted up at the fish face entrance. With several grumblings about the weather we got underground and had an uneventful and efficient descent to camp. We dropped off our camp things and enjoyed the luxury of an underground noodle lunch before heading off for leads beyond the traverse above clap my pitch up. Nadia and Kai had previously found a descent length of phreas beyond the traverse, named Theophlius boon, which we were hoping to continue.
<br/><br/>At the pushing front, there was a walking height passage we could have started with but at Nadia’s reluctance I decided we should start with the crawling C lead to ‘close it out’, assuming it wouldn’t go very far. 40m later, after some rather awkward surveying, we had decided we had had enough despite the small passage continuing, and left it as a C lead, concluding that even if it did go somewhere no one would be willing to drag tackle sacks down it.
<br/><br/>Returning to the much more sensible A lead, we prepared ourselves for our ‘proper’ surveying of the day assuming the walking phreatic passage would continue… we managed one survey leg and around the corner found a deep rift crossing our passage at a junction. After some deliberation it was decided the rift was free climbable and we continued left up the rift to a 3m free climb above which the passage ended. We retraced our steps to the junction and contemplated a climb over the opposite side of the rift. As all our other leads had dried up we decided this climb was manageable and I headed up to see if it went anywhere. There was another junction at the top, with the right hand branch quickly narrowing into what would be a very flat out crawl... not convinced a person would actually fit down. To the left was a crawling passage above the rift below which after 5m turned away from the rift and continued in a flat out muddy crawl. For some reason Nadia could not quite understand, I decided this muddy crawl went and proceeded to slither through in the interests of seeing whether there was anything beyond. After 10m it opened up into walking height phreas so I returned to Nadia, plastered in mud, to inform her of the good news.
<br/><br/>Surprisingly Nadia was not keen to join me in the mud frollicking before our return to camp so we surveyed up to the muddy crawl and decided to return the next day to tackle the mud. On our way back to camp we closed out another previous c lead earlier in theophilus boon, which crapped out after 4 legs. We had a very pleasant evening at camp with Frank and Ruairidh, who had been exploring leads in another part of the cave.
<br/><br/>None of us set an alarm so a late start was had the next morning and Nadia and I didnt leave camp till 12. We returned with reluctance to the mud fest and braced ourselves for the crawl. We took a rope and put a handline on the climb up out of the rift that we had done the day before (we removed this handline on our way out later). The passage was quite pleasant beyond but we were so plastered in mud by this point it was a challenge to keep survey notes clean. The passage continued approx 100m in walking height phreatic passage, with a rift in the floor joining in at intervals along the passage. We passed a junction with a small passage in the ceiling following the direction of the passage below. Further down we found a second similar junction and suspected that these two C leads connected in a subsection of the main passage; it looked small and unappealing enough that we decided not to confirm our suspicion. The main passage gradually became more rifty and ended once it became too small to pass. Along the passage we found 6 interesting helictites, the most impressive one measuring approx 40cm long with a diameter of 5-10cm (there was some debate between Nadia and I on this).
<br/><br/>We returned to the traverse above clap my pitch up and due to some misunderstanding believed that all the other leads beyond this point had crapped out so Nadia derigged the traverse. This was a bold move requiring a pull through to derig the last section… shame it transpired to be not as helpful as we had thought. We had a frustratingly slow ascent of the red line pitches as our jammers were more mud than jammer by this point so once back at the tap we had an srt kit cleaning session before making our way out. Nadia found the rope near the bottom of tk maxx was core shot and tied this out. Our way out was otherwise uneventful, getting back to top camp for about 1:30.
<br/><br/>Nathan ran off to homecoming to try and catch Becca and Botch before they went underground - Adam Aldridge ran after him to take him to the pushing
front if they had already gone, apparently they were still there, so Adam left to go prospecting somewhere in the intermittent rain.
<br/><br/>Camp fettling was suggested to me before they left - I changed out the old drippy tarp for a slightly bigger, and importantly, waterproof tarp.
After this I started drystoning an extension to the kitchen platform. Had fun digging out part of Garlic for materials. Dropped a large rock on my
finger which hurt. This did slow progress but I finished the intended extension, hopefully it holds until next expo. Adam returned, quite wet. Nathan
did also later. I took some photos and made some shoddy diagrams of the tarps. Good day of fettling.
<br/><br/>Following a swift departure from Garlic in the morning, and an even swifter (and sweaty) hike across the plateau carrying the thick 90m rope with
all my other kit, I partially completed the garlic camp guide. Only the badly taken photos and badly drawn diagrams to add. I think I'll redraw the
diagram before I add it to the website as I can't face the embarassment of such a poor product. My head hurt afterwards but I'm glad I got all the
typing out the way. Hannah convinced me to try a Goesser. Not bad as far as beer goes, but not sure I'm quite converted yet. I think this will change
with continued expo attendance in future years, should this be the case.
Blog Author: PhilipSargent<divclass="bbWrapper">Survey writeups continue, today we passed 4km of surveyed passage this expo (we don't count splays).<br>
The website currently on shows 3,233.2 m <ahref="https://expo.survex.com/wallets/year/2023"target="_blank"class="link link--external"rel="nofollow ugc noopener">https://expo.survex.com/wallets/year/2023</a> but the new data update later this evening will show over 4km.</div>
Everyone was chased down the hill by a forecast predicting a lot of rain and a temperature of: feels like -2 on the plateau. (Everyone except a few young new arrivals and one crazy returnee to show them the way. They headed up during peak storm to get soaking wet before experiencing one of the coldest nights as their first night. Youth…) After a night at basecamp everyone was keen to make the most of the sunny day forecasted for the day afterwards and we wanted to head up to top camp to pack and have an early start for an underground camp trip.
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Arriving at top camp we realised that we had misjudged the weather. We all shivered, too cold to think about packing for our underground camp. Overnight everyone shivered in their sleeping bags as the wind whistled by. Waking up in the morning I saw the sun outside which motivated me to leave my less than warm sleeping bag. Unfortunately the sun was sporadic and it wasn't actually warm outside. We begrudgingly packed for our underground camp while wishing we could bask in warm sunlight.
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Having never been down to the camp before I was intimidated by the depth as I struggled with my two tackle sacks, one normal sized and a massive but light one with our underground camp sleeping bags. My intimidation was needless because it turns out going up with only one bag is easier than going down with two.
After finally arriving at camp Botch and I headed over to a lead called gerbil hole, due to the small and apparently very tight squeeze that leads you into a reasonably sized rift passage. Botch had been their previously with Becka and Luke. Luke had been so terrified of returning through gerbil hole that he carried on through the exposed rift to find an alternative exit. Luckily for him he found a hole to pop out of in a previously explored connecting passage. The route he took looked too sketchy for Becka and Botch to follow so they returned through gerbil hole. <br>
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Botch and I's mission for the day was to bolt down what Luke has previously free climbed and then head on to the leads down the other side of the rift. Unfortunately, this proved more difficult than expected because Botch didn't know what level Luke had been in the rift or how far along we would have to go. We eventually made it to the connection but not before running out of rope making the continuing leads inaccessible. We surveyed the passage that we had come down and headed back to camp a bit disappointed and a bit early for a cold night at camp.<br>
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Curry and gnocchi for dinner cheered us up as we waited for Kai and Rob to return from their trip. They brought great news of a new traverse into a phreatic window with a few unexplored junctions. After dinner we settled into another cold night made better by the memory of an even colder night before. At least it wasn't as bad as the night before. <br>
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Waking up had me worried because even with all my layers and a thick sleeping bag I wasn't warm. But coffee coaxed me out of bed and the movement and hot food warmed me up. We all headed off to the traverse they had found the day before. Rob's plan was to rig the pitches below the traverse (clap my pitch up) while the rest of us explored the horizontal leads. Rob went down first and said he was out of the way and we could carry on the traverse. This turned out to be false. He was directly below and the mud was thick and clumpy, and try and we might, we could not prevent it falling from our boots. Rob, increasingly annoyed by the mud whistling past his head, eventually decided to seek cover. We later found out that he managed to find new phreatic passage in his search for shelter. <br>
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Eventually making it to the window, we got our survey equipment out and decided to head down the least promising lead of a small phreatic tube. About half a metre wide. We figured we would quickly tick off this lead and save the best for last. After about 4 legs we found an excellent bat skeleton and another junction! We carried on 'straight' to a walking height rift with small flowstones and crystals in the ceiling. We also found a 30cm stalactite that had small crystal hairs. A photo was taken but the camera is at top camp so I have no photo to share.<br>
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After about 20 legs Rob had finished his rigging and came and collected Botch to survey the new passage he found while hiding from our traverse. Kai and I carried on a little longer until we got to another junction and decided to end our day at this promising location. We later uploaded the data and learned we had discovered 125m of new cave that trip! We headed back to camp, packed up and started our long prussik out. We returned to top camp at midnight pretty tired and glad it wasn't too cold finally.<br>
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(In a subsequent underground camp trip I returned to the same area but Hannah will be telling you about that adventure. I brought my down jacket to underground camp and found that to be a game changer. Not only was I warm at night, somehow that heat carried on to my caving trips. It was amazing)</div>
Blog Author: h_collings<divclass="bbWrapper"><b><spanstyle="font-size: 18px">Fishface Camp - Muddy Goons</span></b><br>
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I’d arrived at expo in the early hours of Monday morning having done a straight drive from the UK with Nathan. I made it up to top camp Monday evening after catching up on some sleep, excited to get underground. Unfortunately the weather was very (very) wet on the Tuesday, continuing the theme of this years expo it seems, so a day of top camp fettling was had and plans made with Nadia for a fish face camp the following day.<br>
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<divclass="bbImageWrapper js-lbImage"title="1691349022774.png"data-src="https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?attachments/1691349022774-png.16392/"data-lb-sidebar-href=""data-lb-caption-extra-html=""data-single-image="1"data-fancybox="lb-post-378360"data-caption="<h4>1691349022774.png</h4><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ukcaving.com&#x2F;board&#x2F;index.php?threads&#x2F;cucc-austria-expedition-2023-blog.30743&#x2F;#post-378360" class="js-lightboxCloser">h_collings · Aug 6, 2023 at 7:22 PM</a></p>"style="cursor: pointer;">
Considering we had a whole day to pack for our camping trip we thought we could depart the next morning in good time, but alas the faff gets us all. After a debrief of the current leads with the previous camping team, who had returned in the early hours, we set off from top camp shortly after 10:00. We had an uneventful walk across the plateau and descent to camp. I’d heard great things of the legendary fish face camp… kitchen sides… taps… and mud free passages. And I hate to admit it, after my stubborn commitment to Balcony’s muddy depths last year, but it’s actually quite nice. We dropped off our camp kit and enjoyed a noodle lunch before heading off to the pushing front.<br>
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<divclass="bbImageWrapper js-lbImage"title="1691348617096.png"data-src="https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?attachments/1691348617096-png.16391/"data-lb-sidebar-href=""data-lb-caption-extra-html=""data-single-image="1"data-fancybox="lb-post-378360"data-caption="<h4>1691348617096.png</h4><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ukcaving.com&#x2F;board&#x2F;index.php?threads&#x2F;cucc-austria-expedition-2023-blog.30743&#x2F;#post-378360" class="js-lightboxCloser">h_collings · Aug 6, 2023 at 7:22 PM</a></p>"style="cursor: pointer;">
The report on the state of leads from the previous camp group was not overwhelmingly positive, with some promising leads having been abandoned due to wetness. However a lead that Nadia had found on a previous camping trip (described above) was still left for the taking; named Theophilus Goon. We headed across the traverse above clap my pitch up and off to the junction at the pushing front. We had a choice between walking height passage ahead or a small tube which would make for awkward surveying, so when given the choice by Nadia I naturally chose the small tube. The logic was that we would quickly close out this lead before getting onto the good stuff, but after 40m the switch backing crawl was persisting on so we abandoned it as a C lead and returned to the junction. With falsely high hopes for our walking height passage we set off again, managing one survey leg before turning a corner and finding the passage intercepted by a rift. After a short climb down we set off along the reasonably sized rift, still feeling hopeful, only to find it ended after several legs. We retraced our steps and contemplated a climb up that we had previously been unconvinced by, but now out of options was looking more appealing. Nadia waited below while I headed up to see if it actually went anywhere. At the top I found a crawling height passage that ended in a flat out muddy crawl. Shouting down that I wasn’t sure if the passage went, Nadia said to go ‘a bit further’ to check before she followed me up the climb… I misinterpreted this statement and disappeared off through the mud about 20m to find a walking height phreatic passage beyond. I returned to Nadia to tell her the good news… that she considered less good looking at the state of me plastered in mud. Understandably Nadia was not keen to get covered in mud before returning to camp, so we surveyed up until the crawl and agreed to return the next day. <br>
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<divclass="bbImageWrapper js-lbImage"title="1691349456465.png"data-src="https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?attachments/1691349456465-png.16393/"data-lb-sidebar-href=""data-lb-caption-extra-html=""data-single-image="1"data-fancybox="lb-post-378360"data-caption="<h4>1691349456465.png</h4><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ukcaving.com&#x2F;board&#x2F;index.php?threads&#x2F;cucc-austria-expedition-2023-blog.30743&#x2F;#post-378360" class="js-lightboxCloser">h_collings · Aug 6, 2023 at 7:22 PM</a></p>"style="cursor: pointer;">
<i>Ruairidh and I trying to stay warm at underground camp.</i><br>
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A pleasant evening was had in camp with Ruairidh and Frank, who had been exploring leads beyond coconut shy. We returned the next day with some lacking enthusiasm for the mud which was in my opinion worse than Balcony, which is really saying something! The crawl was only 10m long but once covered in mud it was challenging to keep survey notes and disto clean. Nadia later commented that most people would probably have considered this crawl as ‘not going’ but I think my over enthusiasm got the better of me, it was my first trip of the expedition after all. Despite the unpleasant start to the passage, the rest was very pleasant with some interesting helictites found. The most impressive of which came horizontally out the wall approx 40cm, with a diameter of 5-8cm (much debate was had on these dimensions) and three crystallised bulbs along it… unfortunately we had both forgotten a camera and so no one else is able to appreciate these sights but we have made sure to tell lots of people about it! After 100m the rift passage became impassable, and with only two unpromising leads we suspected connected up in a subsection of the main passage, we turned around. Nadia aptly named our finds for the day Muddy Goons.<br>
<i>A sketch of the interesting helictite (almost as good as a picture...)</i><br>
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The pitches back to camp were painful, despite their shortness, due to our mud caked jammers. We reached the ‘tap’ near camp with relief and had a good gear cleaning session before making our way out. We were greeted on the surface with the impressive sight of an almost full moon, bright and low on the horizon, which lit the first part of the walk back before slipping below the mountain peaks - I have definitely missed life on the plateau since last year!</div>
Blog Author: nobrotson<divclass="bbWrapper"><b>Connecting FF to SMK - a step further</b><br>
Two weeks really isn't long enough to spend on a caving expedition. You really have no chance to think, it's all just go. Well, that was certainly Stangroom's approach to driving anyway, reaching giddying speeds on the Autobahn as we pressed on towards Bad Aussee. We had chosen a poor weekend to depart, the first of the school holidays, and so despite arriving in Dover two hours early we had to settle for a ferry two hours later than planned, which also stank of fish, in a bad way. One absolutely mad woman chose to embrace the stench and tucked into fish and chips at 2:30 am! This experience caused us to want to move away from Dunkirk at great speed, with only a brief stop en route in the Frankenjura to go for a swim in a very fast flowing river.<br>
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So it was that on Saturday evening we found ourselves alongside the river Traun and rolling into the usual gravelly expanse opposite Gasthof Staud'n'wirt which is almost a home from home for me in Austria now. Chips on the go in the Bier tent, Wiessbier in the fridge - always nice to return. Though the real home from home is on the sea of late Triassic limestone 1000 m higher, among which hide many alpine plants (about which I learnt a lot this year from Botch) and below which hopefully we would be able to connect Fish Face to the main SMK system via a nasty bit of passage called Razordance. This would not only increase the length of the system by around 7 km, but would also provide much easier access to some tantalising leads which had been left in the Silk Road, just above Razordance, 15 years before. However, this year the weather had other ideas...<br>
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Straight up the hill the next day, and after a couple of days fixing rigging in both FF and Homecoming it began pissing down again so we headed down to make a plan in the relative comfort of the potato hut. Nadia and I decided we would camp with Botch and Kai, it being the first underground camp for both of them. I won't repeat the story of the freezing cold and forgotten utensils, though the shuffle across the '<ahref="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVnzn1aB0fk"target="_blank"class="link link--external"rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Delicate Steve</a>' traverse was a highlight of the expedition (even if it was derigged prematurely due to miscommunication from Luke and Becka about the quality of the leads left on the branch that Nadia and Hannah didn't visit). Less ideal was the discovery that Kai was much more dyslexic than I had thought, to the point that when we returned from the camping trip and were typing in the data it transpired he had got '7' and '0' the wrong way around on clino readings multiple times. Either way, between us Luke (caving on the bounce) and I rigged Clap My Pitch Up and Apis Medicus, though I had to fix a lot of my slap-dash rigging from last year (I blame Makita 14 V drills and modified cells - I bought a new Bosch ahead of this trip, best decision of the year alongside quitting that PhD).<br>
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<divclass="bbImageWrapper js-lbImage"title="1691618472462.png"data-src="https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?attachments/1691618472462-png.16423/"data-lb-sidebar-href=""data-lb-caption-extra-html=""data-single-image="1"data-fancybox="lb-post-378511"data-caption="<h4>1691618472462.png</h4><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ukcaving.com&#x2F;board&#x2F;index.php?threads&#x2F;cucc-austria-expedition-2023-blog.30743&#x2F;#post-378511" class="js-lightboxCloser">nobrotson · Aug 10, 2023 at 8:21 PM</a></p>"style="cursor: pointer;">
<i>Me (re)surveying beyond Delicate Steve. Why are so many cavers dyslexic?</i><br>
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After another night at base camp sitting out some rain, we returned the next evening and departed for camp that night to beat the faff, arriving just after midnight. Tomorrow was the only definite good weather day before I returned to the UK, so if we were to make the connection it had to be then. A team of five this time: myself, Luke, Becka, Botch and first-time (very) happy camper Lea, who was hoping to go further than her previous deepest point in FF, reached at the 'flaque verte' or 'green puddle' which was the anticlimatic end to Perseid Showers. Next morning we tried hard to stay in bed, but at around 10:30 Luke, Lea and I were on our way towards the pushing front, Botch and Becka going to look at another wet lead left last year, Keanu Breeze, which seemed to be heading towards Homecoming (see Harry's post - sadly it was too wet for them to make any progress, so they surveyed in northern FF instead). Although no rain was forecast for the day, it was significantly wetter in the stream passage which followed the big pitches than it had been during last years drought, so my hopes weren't particularly high for the connection. After a bit of sniffing around in the rift after the final pitch we dropped last year, we noticed it was much larger passage a bit higher up, though much muddier. I crept along the sticky mess above the yawning slit below to reach a large pitch, and decided we should stick a rope in, so retreated and began bolting across while Luke headed back to the pitch for the extra rope we had left there.<br>
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<i><divclass="bbImageWrapper js-lbImage"title="ug_camp.png"data-src="https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?attachments/ug_camp-png.16424/"data-lb-sidebar-href=""data-lb-caption-extra-html=""data-single-image="1"data-fancybox="lb-post-378511"data-caption="<h4>ug_camp.png</h4><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ukcaving.com&#x2F;board&#x2F;index.php?threads&#x2F;cucc-austria-expedition-2023-blog.30743&#x2F;#post-378511" class="js-lightboxCloser">nobrotson · Aug 10, 2023 at 8:21 PM</a></p>"style="cursor: pointer;">
A morning at Camp Kresh. First, wake up, though preferably after Becka has already been awkwardly prowling around for 40 minutes waiting for you to pay heed to your alarm. Take some more time in bed to admire your camp crocs, if you have them (well done Luke and Me), then eventually spring into action on the coffee <i>(we only accept freshly ground at this camp)</i>. Once you have fulfilled your caffeine needs, tend to your other needs and pack them away carefully in the Jape drum. Luke was very proud of how small his was.</i><br>
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Soon I was dangling above a drop into a very noisy, wet chamber formed along a big fault. Partway down, I decided that I needed to put in a rebelay to bring the rope out of the spray behind us, so climbed out left some distance and flicked my skyhook over a small knob of rock. While I was hammering to find good rock for the next bolt this popped off and sent me swinging at speed about 15 m across the shaft. Without thinking, I decided to use my hand to stop the swing, which really hurt. Skyhook held next time though and the bolt went in to land us on a large ledge with many enormous car-sized boulders upon it. The streamway slunk off out of sight in a small canyon formed in bedrock below the bouldery matrix.<br>
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A cautious inspection of the very mobile and friable surroundings in which we found ourselves revealed that there was basically no solid floor to stand on. We considered beginning to bolt around the side of the shaft, but decided that we could spend days doing that (it seemed to have no end, and we only had the one day), so I decided to embrace the misery and follow the water beneath the huge mound of choss we had been standing on just before. I hammered the flaky rock gingerly: the knowledge of the size and precariousness of the boulders above, combined with the constant noise of the stream, was quite disquieting. I could almost feel the rocks pressing down upon me and the water rising up my spine. On beginning to abseil down the drop, it became clear that there was no way of avoiding the water entering from an inlet on my left, though I put in a pathetic deviation anyway to stop myself from landing in the pool at the bottom. Ever since I first caved in the Alps, the dangers of water and associated hypothermia had been repeatedly drilled into me, as had the dangers of loose rock. For good reason. At the bottom of the pitch my 'exploration fever' ebbed away and I realised I was cold and wet, could barely use my right hand now after the skyhook smash incident, and was far from home. Another 5 m drop headed down to a calmer looking streamway below, willing me on towards Razordance. We had to be close! But I had already decided that we had come far enough and that I couldn't risk dampening (literally) Lea's psyche and potentially getting everyone, rather than just me, into a shivering mess. So I derigged and left the lead for a year where it doesn't rain as much.<br>
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Luke already had the Jetboil on for me like the sweetie he is, so I was soon treated to some noodles eaten with a pencil, luxury! We then started the tedious process of pulling all the gear out. We filled a bag with rope, maillons and hangers, then I took that and the drill back to camp while Luke and Lea began to PAELLA the rope out from the bottom of Apis Medicus. We returned to finish the job the next day after a small bit of exploration beyond Delicate Steve, and headed out to arrive at the surface at around 11:30pm. My hand appeared to just be badly bruised, so that was a bonus. I would need it when derigging some particularly interesting rigging in Homecoming the next day, but that's a story for another time...<br>
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<divclass="bbImageWrapper js-lbImage"title="leasyke.png"data-src="https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?attachments/leasyke-png.16440/"data-lb-sidebar-href=""data-lb-caption-extra-html=""data-single-image="1"data-fancybox="lb-post-378511"data-caption="<h4>leasyke.png</h4><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ukcaving.com&#x2F;board&#x2F;index.php?threads&#x2F;cucc-austria-expedition-2023-blog.30743&#x2F;#post-378511" class="js-lightboxCloser">nobrotson · Aug 10, 2023 at 8:21 PM</a></p>"style="cursor: pointer;">
<i>New passage 'Dentelle de Caca' in FF. Lea was fuckin psyched about the lacy textures on the cave walls. Possibly because she was dressed like she was working at a festival and was channelling the energy that comes when you're doing the litterpick at the end, pocketing all the bags of treasure the rich punters have left... Finding big caves is better though.</i><br>
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And that was it for my exploration in FF. Lea continued the trend of french names for our new passage with 'Dentelle de Caca', named as the walls of the passage had thin lattices of calcite which looked like lace, covered in a veneer of shitty mud. 8 m vertically and 50 m horizontally to make that connection now. Luke and I have almost definitely decided we won't be back next year, but we'd like to connect the caves before we're 30, so it all hinges on 2025...<br>
Blog Author: El Stobbarto<divclass="bbWrapper"><b><spanstyle="font-size: 18px">The Tempest Diaries*</span></b><br>
<divstyle="text-align: right"><spanstyle="font-size: 10px">*(Posted over a month after the actual events, mostly because I forgot I’d written this)</span></div><br>
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a new cave for Expo! Admittedly one that only kept us occupied for a grand total of five days, but an interesting development nonetheless. Before crapping out, this felt like a very promising cave – a large initial entrance pitch sheltered by the peak of a small hill, with promising leads both to the left and right of the base unobscured by fallen rock. Given that much of the caving this year has revolved around deeper leads, it was helpful to have a shallower project for less-experienced/lazier cavers to take the pressure off those leading deeper trips. It was a significant point of pride for me that this project was almost conducted in a large part by first-time Expo-goers – evidence, if it is needed, that inexperience does not equal incompetence. The bolting, rigging, surveying and pushing all felt like a showcase of what those involved had learnt in the past three weeks.<br>
<i>The entrance to Tempest. Note the rather sharp deviation (definitely not rigged off a bit of baler twine Ely found in his bag), which was fortunately later adjusted.</i><br>
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Situated around 100 metres south of the entrance to Fishgesichthöhle, in a depression at the centre of a tiered limestone knoll, Tempest was discovered by myself, Emily, Lizzie, Tom and Merryn at the end of a delirious day of prospecting under the hot hot Styrian sun. Stumbling blindly into a dense patch of bunde, we discovered an impressive-looking crack in the side of the rockface in a patch of lush vegetation reminiscent of the Lost World. Mabbett began bolting a traverse but we were chased off by impending weather, and were discouraged from continuing by a multiple-day stint festering at base camp.<br>
<i>Initial bolting of the entrance to Tempest. Everyone looking very serious. Lizzie “helped”.</i><br>
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Returning to our efforts on Monday, a small team comprising myself, Lizzie, Tom and Ely completed the traverse but were halted in further efforts by Tom exploding the drill. Successive efforts pushed the more promising lead down a 45° slope of scree and snow which reached a choke that again continued in two directions, a short downwards pitch and a chossy ledge to the left. The team installed a short traverse and dropped on a single bolt into a chamber which became known as Narnia due to the sizeable frozen waterfalls and other ice formations dotted around.<br>
<i>Big Tom and myself in Narnia. Chossy death to the left, and sexy ice formations to the right. (Photo credits: Lizzie)</i><br>
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The following day we were joined by Ash and Zac, who began surveying a horizontal passage reaching out from the base of Narnia while the original team began surveying the sloping chamber surrounded by ice formations in the opposite direction. The former group had considerably more success, bagging a grand total of 100 metres of horizontal walking phreas before Ash, true to form, promptly killed the lead. Meanwhile, Team Narnia made excruciatingly slow progress surveying down to another pitch around 30 metres away from the main chamber, which they then bolted (excruciatingly slowly). I was dealt one of the biggest disappointments of my entire life when Big Tom eventually dropped down this hole of choss, frozen waterfall and ice chunks to announce that it was completely choked at the bottom. After days of telling ourselves it surely wouldn’t go anywhere, with this latest discovery we had dared to dream only to be crushed a short while later. But at least we had found some nice ice formations.<br>
<i>An example of said formations. Some even survived Tom's crowbar-assisted efforts at improving pitch safety. (Photo credits: Lizzie)</i><br>
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However, the saga did not end there... determined not to let this be the end, I descended down next to Tom and began casting wildly around for some continuation in this latest bit of cave, a vertical tube roughly two metres in diameter floored with fallen rock. I discovered two small holes to the left and right, barely big enough to fit a head in but deep and echoing when rocks or primal screams were cast into them. Lizzie by this stage had decided any further effort was futile and, abandoning the hapless males to their desperate scrabbling, prusiked gracefully out of the cave. Not to be dissuaded, I managed to haul enough rocks away from the left-hand entrance to reveal a squeeze just large enough to accommodate a caver. Tom tried it first and quickly decided he didn’t fancy it, so I stripped off my SRT kit and wriggled in to ascertain that the floor of the chamber was in fact a wedged boulder over a large rift. I got no further as Lizzie was waiting for us on the surface and another storm blowing in, but we left feeling vindicated; Tempest was continuing, and Tomb Raider was born.<br>
Our final day in Tempest was also conveniently our last day on the Plateau before leaving Expo. Having espoused the virtues of our baby to the others at Top Camp, we managed to convince a small tourist team to come and visit while we beavered away at Tomb Raider. We had it in our heads that a rope was needed to get down the rift, and throwing caution (and cave conservation) to the wind, we planned to extend the opening with hammer and chisel to enable entry on-rope. After Ely and myself had blasted away for an hour, we realised that it was actually quite possible to down-climb the rift safely without needing the rope. All our effort was for nothing, but at least we’d had fun, I told myself through gritted and gritty teeth.<br>
<i>Merryn doing unspeakable things with a disto at the end of Tomb Raider rift.</i><br>
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Having assembled a crack surveying team of the smallest members of the party, we clambered into a deep and narrow rift with another impressive frozen waterfall at one end. I bounded ahead, squeaking excitedly about drafts and continuations, before sadly discovering that the lead crapped out in every possible direction. Disappointed but content with what we had achieved, we whipped round with the disto and collected photographic evidence before hauling out the ropes and saying goodbye to Tempest for the last time.<br>
<i>Returning to the top of the rift, we were greeted by Tom "frozen wizard" Phillips. He was only mildly hypothermic.</i><br>
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All in all, this was a fun project to have for our last week. It was a shame not to leave further leads to be explored on the second half of Expo, but we still left satisfied; I felt especially pleased to have found the rift in Tomb Raider, demonstrating that blind obstinacy sometimes bears results. Ultimately, the whole escapade goes to show that prospecting can be just as fun as deep caving, and provides a good environment for expedition newcomers to hone their skills.<br>
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<i>All photos mine except where credited.</i></div>
