<p>An early 7:00am start resulted in a marginally cooler walk up to the entrance of 107 after dropping off first load we returned immediately down making good progress, we collected another rucksack worth of rope and returned to the entrance entering the cave at 12:00. The first pitch had a precariously hanging 2 tonnes of snow hanging on the side of the wall, (this was ignored!) trip continued the first 5 ropes where rigged. A quick return to the surface to warm up, and then re-entered with more rope making it all the way to Twin Pitches at which point all the rope had been exhausted, returning out the trick was to ignore the fact that the block of snow/ice was disintegrating above you showering pieces on you (this would have to be sorted).</p>
<p>A return with the rope required and drill to sort out the sketchy rigging resulted in the arrival at the top at 12:00 after a more relaxed start. The first task was to destroy the ever melting snow which was achieved in 30 mins. The down trip involved sorting out multiple rigging issues and everything was made much safer. Water flow had increased dramatically since yesterday. Making it to Too Bold For This Spit, we halted, rigged it but had to turn round because of lack of hangers and quantity of water flowing down. Exitting the cave was much more pleasant without the loominh iceberg.</p>
<p>Lucky Luke had been persuaded to go down 107 again with the promise of large cave to be seen. Rigging 'Too Bold For This Spit' wasn't so wet but still not nice! Some new bolts were put in and then we set off for China. We went into 161 searching for the mysterious missing rope - didn't find it but enjoyed 161 which has a very different character to 107. Thedre are some lovely "stone mushrooms" down there (take a camera next time). We had a look down a 'C' lead on the west wall of China ..... Will have to go down and survey tomorrow (Luke).</p>
<divclass="trippeople"><u>Anthony</u>& Mark D</div>
<divclass="triptitle">Tunnocks Entrance Rig</div>
<p>Headed up to Tunnocks with enough rope for the entrance pitch and maybe Caramel Catharsis as well, plus drill in case entrance rig fettling was required. I rigged down following the trail of reflectors which made finding the bolts easy, making only minimal changes to the 2014 rig. There was a substantial pile of snow at the first choss slope (completely bare last year as I recall) and also at other points lower down. At the second choss slope, I spent a while swinging around with skyhooks to see if I could find a way to avoid it completely, eventually concluding that it would be very acrobatic for little gain. I put in an extra bolt for the next descent to replace the Y-hang with bolts miles up in the air on the far wall with a Y-hang on the near side of the drop with an immediate deviation off the far wall. Continued down until the trail of reflectors seemed to indicate an airy-fairy route across the wall. I elected to descend directly to the floor which was covered in relatively fresh snow. There is still some very old ice down there which would make the original route very tedious. Ducks on Ice is open, however, albeit with a higher snow level than I recall from last year. Mark descended the snow slope and discovered an enormous ice stal hanging like the Sword of Damocles right above the way on. Something needed to be done about this, so we retreated to plan our next move.</p>
<p>At Ducks on Ice we had discovered an enormous ice stal. While not blocking the way on physically, it was judged to be a serious hazard. The first job of the day was therefore de-icing. Something that two blokes who live in Scandinavia ought to be well qualified for, right ?</p>
<p>[illustration to scan and insert]</p>
<p>[caption for illustration:] 6:1 mechanical advantage system<br/>Specially designed ice-lassoo, brought from Scandinavia and usually used to catch reindeer!</p>
<p>Anyway, the ice stal broke into 1 million pieces, leaving the way on clear of danger. Using the formula for the volume of a cone we calculated the volume of ice and hence the weight of the stal.</p>
<p>V = 1/3 pi r<sup>2</sup> h<br/>r ~ 0.3m, h ~ 5m<br/>V ~ 0.5 m<sup>3</sup><br/>density of ice is 0.8 kg/l<br/>=> weight ~ 400kg. Not good if that landed on yhour toe!!!</p>
<p>After the de-ice, we carried on. Rigged traverse & handline down to start of Caramel Catharsis, then the long traverse & pitch itself. Rope was too short but we "borrowed" a small rope from a handline. Then on to String Theory. Mark didn't like the traverse round "Usual Suspects" but we made it to the top of String Theory after Anthony's fine words of encouragement. Most of String Theory was rigged by Anthony and we exitted feeling pleased with ourselves. Just madde it back to the Stone Bridge before a big storm broke.</p>
<p>[full page rigging diagram to scan and insert]</p>
<p>[there is an arrow captioned "more info" but no clue as to where it is pointing...]</p>
<p>Returned to C lead in China with Matt, to survey the pitch that we dropped the previous trip. Unfortunately only compass/clino so a depressingly small amount of passage was surveyed despite 4½ hours spent surveying. We didn't get cold and "much fun" was had.</p>
<p>Having looked for the bag of rope for over a year, I was happily surprised to find it ...... ! It is now residing at (in a tackle sack) "Too Bold For This Spit". The technical and intellectual info for this trip will now be supplied by Olly (or perhaps Jenny) [continued]</p>
<p>We went through the connection from China into Blown Away / Out and round to Bundestrasse, finding (as Joe said) the errant tackle sack at the junction into the Runnelstone. A small rift on from the last survey station in Bundestrasse had clearly been explored already (by Anthony, Rob + Rob, it seems) but they hadn't realised the big pitch at the end was Korea. Jenny & Joe were able to lean out enough to recognise the pitch head at the end of Land of Confusion, and Disto an approx connection.</p>
<divclass="timeug">T/U: 11:45 Olly & Jenny<br/>9 Luke & Joe</div>
<p>Continued entrance rigging and showed Frank around the bottom. At the bottom of the big hang there is a traverse to move the last pitch away from potential rock falls</p>
<p>[big diagram of 2015 rigging needs scanning and inserting]
<divclass="trippeople"><u>David</u>, Frank & Rachel</div>
<divclass="triptitle">Balcony</div>
<p>Rachel rigged the 'Natural High' traverse. This is getting slippy so a rope should be left in place. We then pushed the A lead at the end of Dark Arts. After ~20m of passage we hit a large shaft. It looked like the phreatic passage continued requiring an easy traverse...</p>
