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<h2><center>CUCC Austria Expedition 1996<br>
Summary for exCS Newsletter</center></h2>

With the promise of easy caving now that 161d had eliminated all that SRT
from Kaninchenh&ouml;hle, the 1996 expedition was the best-attended ever.
First priority, however, was to find the best access to Scarface on the
surface. Recces by Anthony and crew found that the walk via Hochklapf sattel
was, if anything, more serious than from our old topcamp, and nowhere
suitable for a new camp was forthcoming. A second attempt, from above,
engineered a suitable route with the aid of the odd bolt, handline and quite
a lot of hacksawing bunde. All but one rope was later eliminated, and most
people could get to the entrance (or back) in one to one-and-a-half hours
without too much vertical bunde bashing.

<p>Once top camp was populated and caving started, fat wads of passage came
thick and fast, but only for a while - then it pissed down for the whole of
week 2, including 5" of snow at top camp. Unlike 1993, however, it cleared up
again and was pretty good for the busy fortnight which followed.

<p>The climb up where Triassic Park ended so frustratingly last year was
achieved, but quickly led to pitches down, at first apparently heading for
Flat Battery, but now deeper than that with no sign of connecting. This put
the SRT back in with a vengeance, being effectively a 226m shaft. But not to
worry, as this could be readily avoided in the extensive horizontal leads of
"Puerile Humour Series". The holes in the floor here don't go far down, and
the passages ramify to the NE from Triassic Park. Two parties in here found
new entrances within five minutes of each other - 161e from "Yorkshire
Pudding" and 161f from "Completely Loopy" - or maybe they should be "exits"
as they are not terribly accessible on the surface :-)

<p>In this area, one passage, "Where the wind blows", heads out under the
east side of the Hinter, to end further north than Anglia, at a slightly
higher level. "Iceland" is parallel, but must be quite near the surface as it
is pretty much at the "edge" of the hill and contains lots of ice formations.

<p>The wide space between Triassic Park and the "old" cave has hardly been
penetrated, though Mike'n'Tina found "Alternative Universe" going some way
into this area about half an hour before Wookey did, much to his annoyance.
"Fogies' Folly" and "Dr. Snuggles" also go off on this side of Triassic Park,
but are not very extensive. Several deep holes in the floor were descended,
and the link into Knossos was surveyed exactly where expected.

<p>Other holes in Minoan Surprise and off Trifurcation yielded significant
vertical with "Yet another 80m pitch" appearing distressingly often. The
"Bottomless Pit of Eternal Chaos", whose name will be a pain to fit on the
survey, connects to one branch of "Interview Blues" - ending about 50m under
the floor of Knossos. The other branch of Interview is heading steadily
downwards, and at -451m is now the third deepest point in the cave.

<p>But SRT is still optional ! Instead you could visit "Stairway to Hell".
This is the boulder choke found last year which is so loose that they said
"I've never been so scared anywhere underground" and "We're never going back
- there must be a way round". The way round was soon not forthcoming, and off
they went through "Whimper Way" into "The Forbidden Land", finding passage
heading south under the Vord. and almost certainly connecting with parts of
Steinschlagschacht - explored in 1983 and 84. The dreadful weather in the
final week of expo prevented this from being re-rigged to see, and this will
be a priority next year. The explorer's minds were so numbed by the general
looseness of the way in to this series that inspiration deserted and passages
were named "Elin Algor" and "Tirolia Werke" after the fridge and the cooker
in the Potato Hut!

<p>But enough of this caving - did we go on holiday just to survey 5km of new
passage (club record) ? Of course not, hence the presence of hang gliders,
bikes, windsurfer, diving bottles, michelin-man dry-suit, canoe, and up to
ten crates of G&ouml;sser *per day*. Julian H, keen to try out AndyW's new
canoe, almost immediately found himself turned into the current with a snap
decision between bailing out or going over Hilde's weir. Andy having made the
wrong choice earlier and gone over outside the boat, Julian elected to go for
it and made a fine descent, only to find that everyone had leapt into a car
to drive down to Bad Aussee to recover the body. Boats generally got their
own back on him later, when he mangled his toe in a pedalo at Hallstatt.

<p>Julian Todd got disgruntled when, despite a posh kite and various techie
instruments, he found that Helen, a novice with a crap glider from CUHGS, got
higher than him no less than three times on one flight. However, she failed
to stay higher than the trees on a later flight, and the Feuerwehr had to cut
one down to get their ladder to reach her fifty feet up in another one. They
were probably concerned that she didn't do Julian's party piece of puking on
Grundlsee from a great height...

<p>With 38 members present, the expo dinner was bound to be riotous, so we
were a little disconcerted when Hilde told us that it would be attended by
the Mayor of Bad Aussee, 'cos we had been going there for so long. However,
the deputy mayor and the head of the tourist bureau, having presented all the
old lags with "our valued guest" badges, bought us some beer and beat a hasty
retreat before it got too noisy.

<p>Wookey was to be seen wandering everywhere on the plateau locating old and
new entrances with a GPS "which always knows where it is". Unfortunately,
Wookey doesn't know where it is, so if anyone finds a GPS which isn't lost
but appears to have mislaid its owner, can they send it home please :-)

<p>So, 5.4 km of new cave and as many new question marks as old ones
finished. There were enough 1995 question marks near the entrance that no-one
has actually used the Knossos connection to get to Chicken Flied Nice this
year. This means that there is still huge scope for new stuff next year, and
still lots with very little SRT to do. If none of the above means much to you
any more then (a) it is high time you came out to expo and had a look round
the cave - do it next year ! or (b) 1996 journals available from CUCC
(contact James Hickson, c/o Pembroke College) cost <20>4.50 plus postage. High
quality A0 sized Kaninchenh&ouml;hle surveys at <20>2 plus postage from Wookey
will keep you adequately informed. The journals cover two years, and are
jolly thick, so don't whinge about the price ! You only get a full survey
once every five years or so, and these are very good, so cough up at once.
Failing that, start a virtual tour of the cave at
<a href="../../smkridge/161/triasp.htm">http://www.chaos.org.uk/cucc/expo/smkridge/161/triasp.htm</a>.
Work is [<i>at the time of printing this article (now finished) -
webmaster</i>] already in hand to add this year's stuff (the work-in-progress
is on Andy's webspace), and it might be done by BCRA time.

<hr />
<!-- LINKS -->
<ul>
<li>1996 Expedition info:
<ul>
<li><a href="index.htm">Index</a> (more detail than in this list)</li>
<li><a href="log.htm">Logbook</a></li>
<li><a href="report.htm">Cambridge Underground report</a> (this link dead - not yet published)</li>
<li><a href="bcracc.htm">BCRA Caves and Caving</a> Report</li>
<li>Wookey's Compass Points <a href="gps.htm">article on GPS usage</a></li>
<li>This year's <a href="sponsr.htm">Sponsors</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="../../pubs.htm#pubs1996">Published accounts</a></li>
<li><a href="../../index.htm">Back to Expedition intro page</a></li>
<li><A href="../../../index.htm">CUCC Home page</a></li>
</ul>
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