We walked from the car park (kind lift from Phil) via top camp intending to reflect the route from Fish Face to top camp and dump our kit near the entrance.
Setting off bright and early from the stone bridge (11:00), we took tagging and surface bashing kit to Fishgesicht with a firm belief that we would find a second access ot the snowed-in cave.
<p>Whilst Reuben charitably carried some gear to Homecoming (needlessly as they'd taken one of our ropes), me and Corin GPS tagged some likely entrances about the area. We should have written some more information to know which would need rope to access.
<p>Upon Reuben's return we tagged the cave dropped the previous day (tag: CUCC-2019; RH-01) and drew a survey of the little shaft.
<p>Regretting not bringing more lunch, we set off to visit the ~8 sites previously identified - we looked at 3.
<p>The first didn't go beyond the initial horizontal and was not tagged. The second became 'Reuben's Folly' (tag: CUCC-2019; RH-02): Reuben first climbed down a tricky entrance vertical with Corin following close behind, to discovered ~50m of descent passage. After being rescued from an overally ambicious climb, the surface was regained and the directly adjacent shafts investigated. Upon dropping the 3rd shaft, which broke into passage, Reuben commented on the remarkable similarity this 'parrallel rift' bore to the original! Corin, upon following Reuben down, immediately made a climb up to the surface: to emerge laughing from the orignal climb. In hindsight, the similarity seemed more than similar. Corin and I were tickled, Reuben was not.
<p>In dilligent submission, Reuben 'happily' dropped into the small, very orginal (sp?) hole (tag: CUCC-2019; MH-01). Here he was encouraged to diligently survey said cave and not allowed out until properly high-standard surveys were produced.
<p>Encouraged by our day, we left out kit near by to return the next day. Much was learnt by all.
Call from Harry’s phone at 15:10pm saying Harry and Reuben went to top camp to then go to homecoming while Dickon went straight from car park to Homecoming. Harry and Reuben at Homecoming and can not see sign of Dickon or his stuff – plan was to meet Dickon at entrance or just inside Homecoming.
<p> Harry and Reuben cold and wet, inferred they called from Homecoming Dickon’s location was known
<p>Summary at around 15:50pm:
<p>• Harry and Reuben at Homecoming
<p>• Dickon unknown
<p>• Nat, Dan and Becka heading to Plateau initially likely going via carpark to homecoming
<p>• Sarah heading to car park and staying there
<p>• Michael S., Michael H., Michael W. B., Corin and Phil at base camp
<p>• Tom, Rhairidh, Paul and Sam at spa
<p>15:53 – Phil Sargent trying to ring Reuben and Harry every couple of mins. Rang Tom and Rhairidh to inform them and get them back. (Fleur, Pete and Aileen on a drive to see the area)
<p>16:07 – Pete, Fleur, Aileen back, Phil sent Sam text by Phil
<p>Plateu team took tea, layers, sandwiches, first aid estimated they left base camp at around 9:10am
<p>16:15 – Becka calls base and cut off
<p>16:18 Sarah calls base, others setting off.
<p>16:32 – Reuben calls base (on Harry’s phone) But gets out cave.
<p>16:35 – Texts received from Harry. They are waling to carpark confident Dickon is not in cave.
<p>16:40 – we text Nat, Becka and Dan to tell them Reuben and Harry are on way back to the carpark
<p>16:42 – we text Harry – told them that Nat, Beca and Dan walking towards them; Ask to clarify why sure Dickon is not in cave.
<p>16:43 – Text from Harry. Waling back and shouting for Dickon. No rucksack at/near cave hence confident Dickon was not in cave.
<p>(GPS at Homecoming cave. Entrance P2018-DM-07. Lat 47.6943N. Long 013.8053E)
<p>17:02 – Becka calls base. During Becka’s call a text from Dickon also came in saying “I’m Ok”. Becka, Dan and Nat now continuing along track to homecoming to intercept Harry and Reuben on that path. Say less than 10m visibility.
<p>17:15 – Michael set off to drive to car park to collect other cavers
<p>17:26 – Becka called base. She has everyone Dickon, Harry, Reuben, Nat and Dan. They are half an hour approx. from car park. Request to call Sarah.
<p>17:29 – base calls Sarah to inform her that Dickon and Phil a way back and Michal S on his way, but now not needed
<p>17:48 – Michael S rings from carpark and is updated on above progress of rescue party
As Crossley stated, he, Dickon, and I rigged to the pushing front of Heimkommen on July 10th.
<p>
[photo]
caption: Dickon rigging the entrance series
<p>
On a second trip (July 12th), Andrew, Crossley, and I went down to investigate the leads and improve the rigging. The air blows strong, and many bolt holes were drilled, though a miscommunication left the actual bolts behind, to be placed another day.
<p>
[photo]
caption: Crossley concentrating intensely on drilling holes, dust blowing away by the power of the drafting cave.
<p>
The way onward continues along this long rift, to a section of beautifully decorated passage, and onward to another long (and slippery rift) in need of more rigging. The air blows strong, and a large chasm calls for dropping.
<p>
[photo]
caption:
Andrew looking at a wonderfully decorated section of passage.
<p>
Weather has been a bit rough thusfar, but we are heading back up to top camp this evening (July 14th) and hoping for a return to good weather to push a number of exciting leads in Homecoming (along with a fair bit of rigging to add and tidy).
<p>
[photo]
caption:
Dickon and Crossley returning to the col from Homecoming
Dickon and I went down Homecoming to the start of the Second Coming (after the airy Gromit pitch) and did a 2 bolt climb into a small lead that turned out to be a bit of phreatic passage heading generally east. ~200m of survey (including a short 15m pitch and a bit of clambering about) has resulted in a new area of the cave (dubbed 'Propane Nightmares') breaking away from the main passages. Most of this section was straightforward and linear, though an area centered around a surprise sump has a maze of cutarounds. Onward we have left one notable lead in one passage climbing upward, and another pair of leads at the end of another leg, with a good lead continuing on top at phreatic passage, and another lead dropping down a rift.
Crossley, Sarah, Michael, Harry, and I went down to Propane Nightmares to rig some climbs/a more user friendly cut around to the leads. Crossley did some further rigging on the entrance series as well. I showed the others the leads Dickon and I had found to spread the knowledge for future pushing trips. Cold temperatures and misplaced nail varnish limited surveying to one of the cutarounds.
Back down the hill to basecamp. Jon has arrived suddenly to Expo, and discussing his efforts last year at Homecoming with Dickon and myself has only increased our confusion about the large drafty leads deep in the Second Coming. Another trip shall resolve this.
<p>
My phone is bricked, so unfortunately I have no more photos to contribute.
<p><i>« Last Edit: July 18, 2019, 03:45:00 pm by DanH » </i>
I went into Homecoming with Jon, who on a whim returned to the expedition, to sort out some confusion at the far pushing front where Andrew and I had gone. As it turns out, he and Haydon had in fact pushed, surveyed, and rigged the 'long slippery rift in need of rigging' I had mentioned, but at ceiling level rather than where Andrew and I had gone. Misunderstandings had led us to believe that this traverse was left in place when it was in fact de-rigged last expo, and so Jon and I set out rigging the traverse on the existing bolts. We had just enough rope and I was able to stretch the hangars/maillons just enough to reach the end of the traverse, where another pitch down will access this pushing front. This whole area was named the Lizard King, and we eagerly await the data from last year to better illuminate this front.
<p>
At the same time, Dickon went down Homecoming with Reuben and Aileen to push Propane Nightmares. They went on the upper level phreatic lead, which continued horizontally and then dropped into downward pitches of phreatic passage, in need of more rope to continue pushing.
Dickon went down Homecoming with Reuben and Aileen to push Propane Nightmares. They went on the upper level phreatic lead, which continued horizontally and then dropped into downward pitches of phreatic passage, in need of more rope to continue pushing. [Dan]
As I had not done any prospecting this expo and Jon wanted to feel warmth again, we decided to head west to prospect on the plateau beyond Homecoming. Much bunder bashing and karst scrambling was done, and many chocked holes and snow plugs were clambered down into. Amongst all of this though, we found two quite promising prospects in need of dropping. Jon has photos and a more clear understanding of location (as he logged them on the GPS), but as he is still up the plateau I will describe them in brief.
The Banana Hole is a deep pit in a large expanse of sloping limestone pavement up a hill. The bottom is beyond what can be seen with a caving light in day time, but dropping rocks gives roughly 4 seconds of free fall, before ricocheting further down and unknown amount.
The Boop-Boo-Da-Boop-Da-Boop [exact spelling pending confirmation] complex is an area of multiple very large holes surrounding a small flat expanse of karst, half surrounded by cliffs. Two of the entrances are extremely appealing, with one a few meters wide and unknown depth (again, the rocks take long to go down, a disto would've been helpful), and another similarly wide and quite deep and clearly going diagonally into the hillside, reducing likelihood of being choked.
Both of these leads really require photos to better explain (and someone with more awareness to convey their geography) but represent very exciting prospects in a fairly untouched region of the plateau.
A brief foray into Happy Butterfly found a Y-hang with a dangling hangar, and we could not locate the hilti to screw it back into, and so we turned back around to avoid descenting a one-bolt-wonder.
<divclass="trippeople"><u>Pete Tallins</u>, Michael Holliday, Fleur Loveridge</div>
<divclass="triptitle">A* lead heading west from Safe and Comfortable etc</div>
<p>The team headed down to Pitstop, on Pete’s only pushing trip of his 3 week expo
(bitter, wot?) But a great trip + lead.
<p>We went to Safe and Comfortable, and then to Lipstick Dipstick traverse/pitch
line. There were 3 leads. The final one is A*
<p>1. <u>Where’s the milk:</u> The lead is short distance down Lipstick Dipstick
and comprises steeply upward trending phreatic tube. Mike put on a short handline.
This led up to a cross junction. Left was eventually found to connect to Drunk drivers.
Rightwards is a short climb upwards that needs a few ( less than 5) bolts but no
draft.
<p>2. <u>Drunk drivers:</u> This is an upward phreatic ramp that starts just before
Lipstick Dipstick’s first rope. A steep upward ramp leads to a climb over some dodgy perched boulders, and into a chamber with cross rifts. Left is a 10-12m bolt climb up a wall to a 3m phreatic tube (QMC). Right is a traverse into a large rift that ascends. The traverse will need at least 4-5 bolts, but interesting (QMC)
<p>3. <u>Custard Cavalry (Michael’s Climb):</u> This is the A* lead that is open,
climb rigged and heading west. Very drafty.
<p>The start is an ascending and then descending phreatic tube, located in Safe and
Comfortable, further back towards Pit Stop.
<p>This phreatic tube goes up, across a watershed, and then downwards to a 8m pitch.
The pitch was rigged off two threads and a single bolt.
<p>This leads to a chamber below a drippy aven which has a very small stream. The
stream goes down a descending rift beyond chamber, with a couple of 5m pitches (QMB
– good but wet)
<p>But Michael climbed ~8m up into the continuation of the phreatic tube. This up-pitch
is now left rigged off 2 bolts. The phreatic tube is large, drafty and reaches a
junction. It is very drafty and left ongoing westwards – A* lead.
Last years left-at-camp list looked manageable for a team of two so we headed off with 4 tacklesacks (but I had
a horrible suspicion that we would find more rope abandoned given what I had found elsewhere)
and, sure enough, the bastards hadn't bothered derigging Rubberman so we ended up having to go down to -550m to get that out.
<p>
I cut the rope at the up climb as otherwise it would have been too scary + taken too much time so
there's a few hangers and rope left in,
possibly from approx rubberman (8 <squiggle>.) The rigging was horrific - single bolt hangs over sharp edges,
worse than I'd remembered, likely as we now had big bags.
<p>
Back at Little Boy camp we tried our damndest to eat
everything there - 2x curries, 2x noodles, 2x soups, then derigged to the bottom
of Mongo Rally, by then we had 4 heavy [incomplete scan - taken from <ahref="/expofiles/writeups/2019/stuff-left-at-topcamp.pdf">/expofiles/writeups/2019/stuff-left-at-topcamp.pdf</a>]
The second half of Expo picked up a lot: the sun came out and most of us ventured up the hill to stay at top camp. See Reuben below in the bivvy:
[photo]
<p>
I spent a deal of my time practicing my rigging skills in Homecoming but my last two trips were into Balkon with Radost.
<p>
We went to explore a lead that Rad had assured me was going to be spectacular. The lead was an aven reaching up from a cavern just off the side of the trade-route away and out of sight above us. Water dripped down one wall and down through an impassible hole in the floor.
<p>
We adopted the tactic of Rad climbing up a short distance, attached to one end of a rope. Then we would pass the bags up one by one on the rope before Rad made an anchor for me to prussick up too. We repeated this twice before Rad decided that he would like a bolt in for the next bit of the climb.
<p>
So up went the rigging equipment, bit by bit. Only when Rad shouted down "Crossley, do we usually have to hammer the Hiltis in?" did I suspect we might have made a mistake... As it turned out, we were now 15m off the ground with an 8mm drill bit and 10mm HKDs. Oops.
<p>
We decided to call it a day from there - but on our return to the ground thought it might be entertaining to try to fit through a constriction in the right hand wall. I went first, pendulumming around to the squeeze and wriggling through. It went! We had emerged into another aven, larger than the last. On the left hand side was a sloping wall with lots of holds that must surely lead up to above the drippy pitch we had previously been ascending. We brought the rope through the squeeze, leaving one end tied to the anchor that we had just been abseiling off, and Rad began to climb again.
<p>
This time, we had no bags with us so the going was easier. We regrouped on a shelf just above yet another big hole in the floor and from there, Rad traversed along and up until he came to a boulder choke. Through the boulder choke, he set up an anchor and belayed me up the climb (my climbing ability and confidence being much less than his). The chamber we were in showed no signs of crapping out - indeed it only got bigger as you went up.
<p>
Finally, we were both through the boulder choke and directly above our initial aven. We had a brief poke around at the leads: phreatic continuations in both directions, holes in the floor of the meander, and two intersecting streamways. We decided to call the chamber and general area "\" in an attempt to upset the sensibilities of our surveying software (it did, a little too much. We had to rename it "the_backslash" to avoid melting the system).
<p>
Now for the last challenge: to retrieve and sensibly rig the rope. Rad rigged the rope off some handy naturals and I abseiled down it until I was level with our original anchor. From there, I undid the anchor and swung over to the squeeze to pull the rope though that. Once the dead end of the rope was in the big chamber, Rad pulled it up through the boulder choke and to the top of the pitch, where he re-did his natural rigging and abseiled down to level with me, tied a rebelay, and went down to the ground. I grabbed the bags from where we had left them tied to a handy spike and abseiled down to join him.
<p>
The next day, we returned to the lead (with a 10mm drill bit) and I set to work rerigging the pitch to avoid the worst of the rope rub and spare the rope being tied directly around any rocks (opting for slings instead).
<p>
After warming Rad back up with some noodles, we started to survey our way up the pitch. We tandem-prussicked, with Rad on Book and Instruments and me as the Dog - handing precariously on my sky hooks to paint survey stations on handy rock points.
<p>
Once at the top, we took some splays of the chamber and decided to follow one of the streamways up. This involved yet more of Rad lead climbing and then anchoring me up. At last, we came to a section to steep and drippy for Radost to comfortably climb and we resorted to bolt climbing, discovering (as have many before us) that setting Hiltis one handed while standing in a sling through a sky hook is no mean feat.
<p>
After two bolts, we made it over the lip of the climb and into yet another aven. The streamway showed no signs of constricting as it went up but we were both ratther cold, damp, and tired. We decided there to head out and back to camp.
<p>
And that was the end of my Expo this year, I hope to come back to this lead in 2020, and hopefully to push it to the top (and ideally to a new entrance to 1623/264-Balkonhoehle). I'm afraid I didn't have a camera with me on these pushing trips else I would have posted some pictures. Instead, here are some that Rad took on the surface:
