<divclass="trippeople">Reuben, <u>Corin</u>, Michael H.</div>
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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.
On arrival, the entrance was under several metres of snow. Assessment of old (2018) pictures of the entrance gave us a good idea of the exact loction.
By this point, Michael had dug in several places near the entrance in a desperate manner. He had been talking about FGS. for a year and we had coeheol (sp?) at the very promising survey and description the previous evening and gotten rather excited. Tom, Dickon from the Honeycomb team met us and it was rapidly decided to drop FGS. as an objective. Reuben helped to carry to Homecoming whithe we pekal (sp?) about.
We did some prospecting in the ear. We dropped a shaft on naturals which chocked (tag: CUCC-2019; RH-01) and fegged (sp?) it.
<divclass="triptitle">Balkonhoehle - Rig entrance and push Myopia</div>
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Andrew and Ruairidh had ferried 2 tacklesacks to the entrance and reflected the route (with the bypass to the snow fields) yesterday and we took up 3 more tacklesacks in the morning. Andrew and I shared the entrance rigging including a new deviation, then we headed to Honeycomb Pitch via the 2 traverses and short pitch wich were all rigged to find... Honeycomb was also rigged... and now we had shed loads of extra rope (2 x 80m plus others for Honeycomb and Hangman's), none of which it turned out was needed. I emailed Luke, George and Wookey who'd done the Balkon derig trip last year to check what they'd left riggd since there'd been no log book write up, but they couldn't remember but Luke though Honeycomb and Hangman's were derigged. So now we had ~200m of fat, useless 10mm rope that we didn't need. We also found 40m of lose rope dumped at the top of Hangman's and the pitch into Myopia and the Myopia traverse we al still rigged. So it was unclear to me whether the 'derig' last year actually removed any rope. At the traverse in Myopia we put in an extra bolt as it was a bit too exeiting (sp?) otherwise and then Andrew put in 4 bolts on the pushing front on the straight forward start (a bit of a ledge) to cslere (sp?) it got wetter and more verticle then we headed out.</p>
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.
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.
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.
Regretting not bringing more lunch, we set off to visit the ~8 sites previously identified - we looked at 3.
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.
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.
Encouraged by our day, we left out kit near by to return the next day. Much was learnt by all.
At the time of writing, I am sat in the Tatty Hut at Base Camp in Bad Aussee. It is day five of expo and a lot has happened.
We discovered on Sunday (day one - 07/07/2019) that our Top Camp, Steinbrueken, was full of snow:
Meanwhile, Base Camp preparations were well underway:
he beer tent was being hoisted (above) and the new rope (thanks to UK Caving and Spanset for the sponsorship!) was being soaked, coiled, and cut into usable lengths ready for caving.
The next few days consisted of Expo members undertaking multitudes of carrying trips up to top camp,
and a few hardy folk doing their best to fettle the bivvy for habitability. Tuesday (09/07/2019) night
saw the first people sleeping in Steinbrueken. Mostly,
they described the experience as "chilly" but one person went as far as to claim he had been warmer there than at Base Camp.
Also on Tuesday (09/07/2019), a new route was devised and cairned directly from Heimkommen Hoehle to the tourist path on the coll.
The idea being that Homecoming could be close enough to push from Base Camp rather than Steinbrueken. This came with the discovery that Fischgesicht
Hoehle's entrance was under two to three metres of snow:
On Wednesday (10/07/2019), Expo split into three groups. The majority went to Steinbrueken to commence the final push towards habitability
while some went to investigate Balkonhoehle. Three of us (Dickon Morris, Daniel Heins, and myself) went to Heimkommen to rig to the pushing
front (the decision to concentrate
on Heimkommen and Balkon having been made for us by the plateau).
