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.
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<p><b>The descent</b></p>
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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.
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<p><b>Unknown Territory</b></p>
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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). 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.
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<p><b>It begins</b></p>
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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 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.
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.
<divclass="trippeople"><u>Harry</u>,Charlotte, Alice, Chi, Will </div>
<divclass="triptitle">Surface - Rope carry to Homecoming + Trial walk from Garlic Cave to Car Park on painted track</div>
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>After a carrying day on the 2nd, we suspected ff would be snowed in. A faff morning of aquiring shovel. We got to ff with shovels, discovering it did need digging. Jonty got particularly in to this, producing quit the snow trench.
<divclass="triptitle">Fishface - Carrying rope to Fishface and failing to rig entrance </div>
<p>After the complicated operation of handling the solar panels out of the storage cave, the six of us packed kit, rope and a rescue bag and st off for Fishface. It was a hot but pleasant walk and the route was well marked. We arrivced and stashed bags under a nearby overhang then entered through the hole dug through the snow the previous day. Janis and Ash did not go down the cave, instead heading back to top camp, but were a great help hauling rope to the entrance. It was only when we reached the first pitch that we realised that (contrary to what we'd been informed) hangers had not been left in the cave. [Ed. This a lie]. Plus, we hadn't realised it was all bolted with spits so even if we had brought hangers, we wouldn't have had the bolts to rig it.
<p>We decided to sit and sulk for a while. Joel contemplate running all the way back to top camp to get bolts + hangers, but given the weather forecast of rain latert, we didn't want to end up caving too late. After ~20 minutes, we left the cave. Mealy kicked an icicle at Jonty on the way out. We left the rope underground, by the head of the first pitch and left our caving kit under the small overhand near the entrance, then headed back to top camp.
<divclass="triptitle">Surface - Reflecting the Homecoming -> Fishface route, scoping out a Homecoming to col route </div>
<p>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 solar panels and cables) to my rucksack, ready to carry from top camp to Garlic Cave.
<p>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 Homecoming and Joeal and Lizzie put reflectors down for the route from Fishface to Homecoming.
<p>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 part of the route and Philip had a siesta.
<p>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 Bunde, turn left, then climb down ~1m onto some limestone slabs. Turn left and follow the limestone along, past a snow plug. You hit the Hunter's path just before a cliff - you'll see cairns and white and green painted stripes.
<p>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 panel stuff near the entrance and we began scoping out a route across the plateau towards the col.
<p>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). We found a few holes to return to with gear and rope on a later day, including a particularly promising one (big entrance, goes briefly vertical, but then horizontal (I scrambled down as far as my comfort zone would allow to have a peak around the corner), with a big-looking passage. Excited to return.
<p>Overall, progress was a bit slow - it took ~3 hours to get back to the col, hope we can get it down.
<p>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.
<divclass="triptitle">Plateau - scoping out a route from col to Garlic Cave </div>
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p> Just after, we found a loose wellie which now acts as another cairn. The final pathwe made is quite nice except for one climb over a ravine that 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.
