<divclass="triptitle">Fisch Gesicht, pushing to liquid luck</div>
Pushed past survey station 14C, found the phreatic tube lead to a small chamber (pissing pot) then continued left to a big pitch. Bolted, Rigged. Michael nearly killed Lydia --> called liquid luck.
<divclass="triptitle">Fisch Gesicht, Pushing Urinal and fettling rope/rigging</div>
Mike and Michael did more dry stone walling. More gardening. Followed the free attic opposite liquid luck ledge ti findthe Urinal. Bolted and rigged to an awkward body sized squeezing, thatr smelt of pee, having pissed down B. Boulavard. But possible free attic continuation.
<divclass="trippeople"><u>Lydia Clare Leather</u>, Mike Butcher, Tom Crossley</div>
<divclass="triptitle">Fisch Gesicht, Pushed to Toto and surveyed free attic frys and Urinal</div>
Tom joined Mike and Lydia, surveyed free attic frys and Urinal, found thgat Urinal has a high cieling (40m). Possible connects to Happy Butterfly above. Surveyed to chamber with boulders in the shape of Africa.
<divclass="triptitle">Fisch Gesicht, Found Ulysses</div>
<p>Took photos, Mike and Michael go down to crystal crumble, found stalactites, pretty. Tom bolted coral corner, pretty formations. Traversed round Toto chamber on a false floor to the continuation into conintuation of free attic flys called phreatic becomes meander rift, (bolted) and dind a large opening with left and right junction (very false floor) called odious odium. Taking a right turn along the false floor leads to a vast floor now called Ulysses (after the Frans Ferdinand song Michael was singing). Yet to be dropped due to its very unstable nature. Did some gardening but a lot of work needs doing. Left turn at odium, leads to a true floor, leads to multiple boulder chokes and meander in approximately the direction of Ulysses with short pitches not dropped. More photos on the way out. Michael gets ill. Wees a lot.
<p> lots of pee, very loose, less ice than last year, lots of key-hole passage.
<p>Still to do (by Mike Butcher):
<p>- Drop pitch from entrance chamber to bypass ramp and climb of ice plug pitch = more direct.
<p>- Investigate meander at end of windy tube (?c)
<p>- Possible alternate route opposite pendulum pitch (?c)
<p>- B. Boulavard rope needs changing (40m)
<p>- Leads in Benign Bubble Baby Bypass needs looking into
<p>Spent over an hour trying to calibrate top Camp's collection of distox's (my two, CHECC and ULSA). I won with 0.35 and 0.5. Luke at 0.65 was way off and two Distox's refused to pair with George's PDA. Eventually underground and swiftly to Kathedral Kazam. 2 traverses were still in but short pitch needed rigging. Luke then rigged Wild Honeycomb shaft. Ash has - audaciously - rigged this off naturals last year but it hadn't been surveyed, leaving George and Rachel's Nature Calls surveys at the base floating. George and I followed Luke down surveying, with Luke concerned he'd taken the wrong route, but all was well.
<p>At the base, there's a sort of horizontal level which we rigged a short pitch down (7m) and then what George and Rachel had done as a 13m chimney down which Luke and I declared a pitch. This led to a ledge with a vast, perched boulder next to it. The Hangman.
<p> the pitch had a massive echo and stone rattle. We drilled the pitch head spits but were out of hangers, so headed out.
<p>Luke was off-colour so George and I returned to the Hnagman and I rigged down the pitch then we surveyed it to a spacious ledge, from here the shaft continued (offset) but it looked damp and we were keener on the horizontal otions - a window visable part way down The Hangman's Pitch and, from the base, a climb up on the left and a traverse to the right to s vhossy climb.
<p>George went for the latter option, and got up via some shonky bolts, boulder balancing and clambering. The entered what we've called Hangman's daughter. I followed and we surveyed into what initially looked really unpromising: narrow, catchy, little passage.
<p>However, it took a draft. We surveyed a loop round (given that George had scooped it) then got to the only proper lead, a small pitchead topped with mostly nasty perched boulders. George heed kicked quite a few down leaving a small hole. We only had one hanger and I dithered about whether to use the massive flake as a backup but used it in the end. The ~15m pitch led to a small chamber. I climbed to the bottom where a ?c crappy hole led down and then -!!!-
<p>noticed a survey station! WHat the hell? I shouted to George who bombed down, forgetting to bring the Dostox so I had to go up the hideous rubby pitch to fetch it. After some searching, George found another station, 7, and we finished the survey. Then tried to work out where the survey had come from. Some shreds of an oversuit on a tiny tube 3m above the floor of the chamber gave it away. The draft through had coated it in catchy popcorn. We took our SRT kits and tried to crawl through, but George didn't want to commit to going headfirst (I told him I couldn't be able to fish him out). He couldn't get through feet first so we gave up and headed out, finishing off the survey of the traverse on the way. At the top section of the Hnagman's Pitch 1 realived the rope had got hooked over a hideously sharp flake of rock and crystal. I wailed at George and down [prossiked until I could un-weight the rope and he could free it. Argh.
<p>"lookfutile.svx" was <ahref="../1983/log.htm#lookfutile">surveyed by Chas and Planc</a> in 1983 following the discovery of the futility series in 1982.
<p>As well as being my first caving trop of the expo, this was also the first Balkon-Tunnock's through trip made. George changed the hang at the top of Mongol Rally, added a rebelay and fixed another at the bottom of MR. Olly began to bolt the right hand wall of Floodland. He got so far down the pitch but didn't bottom due to time constraints.
<p>The connection between Balkon and Tunnocks is very impressive. Large chamber after large chamber.
<p>The Prusik out was a laugh! It was an introduction and a half to Austrian caving. 10/10 would do it again.</p>
<p>Arrived at Pitstop to find George who was in the group in front to have finished bolting the traverse around to the other side. Passage was large walking passage with nice mud formations in floor. Passage ends at a pitch with a dodgy bridge. Half way-ish between the traverse and pitch was a flatout crawl on right. Crawl was unpleasant and sharp (I forgot kneepads!!) and was sloped upwards. Passage (including crawl unitil become too tight) was surveyed. <p>Pitch wasn't dropped. <p>We then head back to Pitstop and then attempt to bolt a rift but then the floor fell beath and scared me and we decided to call it a day.</p>
<divclass="trippeople"><u>Ryan</u>, Alex, Jacob, Pi and Andt (two German cavers)</div>
<divclass="triptitle">Finishing Fish Face beyond Gardening School, discovering Private Pineapple Pitch</div>
<p>The trip was to push Fish Face further following a low-level lead in Gardening School. An exchange was agreed with German cavers whereby they would offer us a trip if we offered them a trip (an agreement arranged by Alex and Jacob during the bottom base camp BBQ). The trip also allowed the German's to experience top camp, both who were incredibly impressed by the arrangement, declaring, "You English are mad!" The international caving group encounted a language barrier in the especilly crumbly and loose passages of the Fish Face entrance pitch and traverse. WHile descending Alex had one of the Germans (Pi) shout "stein!", somewhat confussed he looked up to find the German caver was not offering him a beer, insted a number of rocks had been kicked down. A system was then proposed by the Germans to overcome the language barrier. The sylable count of words would indicate the cave command, therefore the language used would be rendered pointless.</p>
<imgsrc="2018-08-13-table.jpg"><br>Image of the syllable system table</img>
<p>It was also agreed during the trip that signiifciant space woudl be left berween cavers on th epitch/traverse series leading on from another due to the daners of very loose rock and the potential of injury. The gardening school passage was pushed beyond the unnamed and unknown pitch that offered a lead. Originally we believed that a shaft 3/4m down would be best for a rebelay, however on investigation this appeared to be a large boulder wedged between a large rift. Furthermore, the placement of the boulder, nicknamed 'coffin lid', appeared to be only secured by small boulders. The decision was made to drop the Y hang down through a squeezy pitch, although tight, the pitch is easily accessible. The newly found Pirate Pineapple Pitch (PPP) ~50m and decends down further into the rift. Multiple passages can be seen coming of this pitch which may be worth future exploration. The pitch bottoms out in a small chamber ~10m^3. A smaller interesting chamber is to the right, nicknamed 'mud hole', here a variety of interesting geological features are found. ALso at this point a small pool of water has forned. Directly in front of the dropped pitch after a smooth step the rift can be seen to bottom out. However, at this point, we had ran out of rope. An additional 15/20m (unreadble word) have allowed us to reach the bottom. We assume this amy be the bottom as its the collection point for many of the smaller dropped rocks. The rift appears to curve around the corner offering a potential easy lead for those who are willing to push this further.</p>
<p>NB: the pitch was named Pirate Pineapple Pitch due to the consumption of a pineapple by some rugged looking cavers at the bottom of the pitch. The carrying of pineapples to inappropriate places is a tradition upheld by Alex Sterling (sp?) of Nottingham University Caving Club in reference to the Pineapple on Tour (sp?) - a society at Nottingham University which took pineapples up munrows in Scotland. The society was dispelled by the university and folded into other outdoor societies.</p>
<p>While drunk and making friends with some Germans, one of them, Andt, gave me a proposition: "You take me caving and I'll take you caving in an ice cave... with a snow volcano." I liked this idea! Despite the cave being less than 1k from top camp, due to Losser's 'I'm going to kill you with every steo you take' nature we had to walk accross the plateau toward Applehaus and then take that path. After negotiating some traverse, beating some bunde and safely avoiding the caver grinding we arrive at some dead larch... and a misty cave entrance! THis was to be our exit point. Pi headed up the hill to start rigging the top entrance while Andt gave me a quick lesson on how to walk with crampons. When crampon school was over, we too head to the top entrance. An oblong entrance of 10m-ish by 4m wide entrance pitch to the top of the snow volcano was probably 40/50m. When on top of volcano, daylight can still be seen. 'Tis quite impressive. When on top of volcano the size of the chamber starts to become apparent. In the distance ice stalls can be seen glistening through the mist. We continue the descent, this time down the side of the snow volcano for ~3-m until we reach the bottom.
<p>Ice is hit.
<p>Rope free.
<p>Wow!
<p>This chamber would be impressive even without all the ice. We wander around for a bit and I amazingly manage to remain standing I literally cannot stop smiling. Some of the ice pillars were easily 15m high! Eventually, Im forced to live by the call of nature. We exit through what was once called the Elephant Arse - cos there was a formation that like an elephant but has sadly melted since. I emerge from the cave, breathe, appriciate life and then have a piss!</p>
<divclass="triptitle">Tagging Surface Trip and Lighting Storm descent</div>
<p>Went 100m NW of top camp to put a tag on a possible cave (located previously on 8-9/08 by Nat and Paul) numbered 2018-NTU-01. We practiced hand bolting to install the tag and picked wild chives.
<p>As water was needed at camp, snow was collected for the bivy. While Ryan efficiently poured 5 tackle sacks of snow into the rain tarp, Nat and Alex and Ruairidh proceeded to practice drilling a Z-rig to try to haul an overfilled bag of snow vertically (see separate write up). While taking 2 ropes each down the mountain, we successfully crosses the plateau in fabulous perfect weather, only to be hit by a sudden bad storm at the col. An hour of super heavy rain and lightening was upon us. We were forced to emergency shelter in our double-bivy baf near a rock.
<p>Several very close lightening strikes (with 0 second gaps) reminded us how quickly the weather can turn against you on the mountain.
<p>Lost 1 and half hrs of time waiting for lightening to subside, so final hour of walk down was in darkness and driving rain and winds.</p>
<p><b>REMEMBER: Check the weather, kids!!!</b></p>
<p>We aimed to re-locate several caves that had been recored in 2004/5/6 and were within 300m of Top Camp. How hard can it be???
<p>Well, 8 hours later, lost and dehydrated, we managed to get back to Top Camp just 20 minutes before our callout!
<p>Entering the coordinates into the GPS and walking in a direct heading was met repeatedly by either thick bunde or sheer cliffs going up or down! While we were lost we found several new caves, which we duly recorded and surveyed. They are very close to the path to Tunnocks, so we suspect they were either ignored or not recorded when first explored. We left the big pitch for another time and surveyed the small free-climbable hole. Then we got lost again looking for 2004-18.
<p>Finally we located it and 2004-16 and -17. <p>The next day we returned to 2004-18 with Wookey and descended it. Luckily the spits were in place so we just had to chuck a rope down and a rope protector. A huge snow cone met us half way down on a ledge we could walk around. Paul drilled two holes and installed 2 hiltis and rigged the way down. We climbed down the ice slope (with rope) and landed on the boulder floor at the base of the snow cone. My first ice climbing experience - and I hope my last! We got hypotherimc while rigging the cave (Eiskeller - Ice House) and we got heat exhaustion while on the plateau. Lovely day at expo! Wookey was very helpful while we located 2004-18 (on an easy path not far from Top Camp) and again while rigging the cave - always great to have an experienced oldie on the team!</p>
Derig was going to be a big job. Tonnes of rope still down several holes, and most people had already buggered off, and a fair few of those still around had buggered themselves in some fashion! So we had maybe 6 decent cavers to do maybe 20 bags worth of rope from 3 different entrances in two days. The real hard nuts had done most of Balkonhole on a camp/push/derig the day before, and half of that group were quite deservedly taking a day off. Ruaridh's broken arm had mysteriously 'Got better, honest' until we made him prove it by climbing into the Animal house, so he was out. Fishface/Fischgesicht was the next biggest project, with ~300m depth and vague rumours of a drill left at the bottom for the "unclimbable" leads.
<p>
I'd always known it was goin to be a little bit cheeky turning up just for the end of Expo and still hoping to get a chance to push something, but as it turned out I wasn't even the most jammy of the lot! I'd had a couple of days to acclimatise to camp life and reacquaint myself with the hypothermic delights of Alpine caving when Radost finally arrived (Actually, he had been there earlier, but was just showing his Dad around and wasn't caving), making two of us who hadn't pushed anything. So, the priorities for this trip were to be
<ul>
<li>Derig a metric tonne of rope.
<li> Retrieve the drill
<li> Check whether the sod who left the drill hadn't left other vital equipment too
<li> Show me (Christopher) and Rad how to bolt, and do a little bit of surveying
<li> Maybe do a rigging guide to speed things up next year
</ul>
<p>
Anyway, after the standard intrepid hike across the plateau, all looking super-cool if I don't say so myself, we change and Luke and Rad zip down while Max waited for me to get changed. Max and I had already been all the way to Ulysses earlier that week, so he assumed I remembered the way and shot ahead. I have a terrible memory for complex junctions and my light casts a very sharp throw-pattern, so I still got lost a couple of times and found them all taking a leisurely rest at that nice picnic spot, below the free-climb pitchy thing, where left goes to the way on and right to that disgusting traverse across Ulysses (which Max had derigged two days before and left 70m in a pile in case people wanted to bolt leads below).
<p>
There was a brief discussion of what we should expect, and we settled on the priorities listed above. Luke declared 4pm(?) to be our turnaround time. He wasn't keen on taking more rope deeper into the cave, but given Rad's and my keenness to push the two of us decided to pack it anyway once Luke and Max went ahead. It was only ten minutes later that the shout was relayed to us "Guys! There's more rope down here anyway! DEFINITELY don't bring that other rope!" I duly returned the bag to its original position and retrieved the survey gear, which I had of course forgotten to put back in the bag.
<p>
The lower shaft of Fischgesicht is a truly marvellous black hole - One of those can't-see-the-bottom, can't-see-the-top ones. In stark contrast to the rest of the cave above, it was extremely poorly rigged. Well, I suppose it could have been worse, but even on the way down I was thinking "Should I retie that knot? It really looks like it rubs. No, it's probably just me being a wuss and it's like that for a reason". This was looking at a lop-sided, 2-metre wide Y-hang that required a sort of acrobatic climb down to access. New rope, at least, though it was quite dry and required a lot of patience to avoid glazing. Plenty of time to look around the blackness and ponder the geological mysteries of metamorphosed Carboniferous sediments.
<p>
We needn't have brought in a drill battery, as together with the drill there were 3 high-capacity ones already there. Rad informed me that Luke and Max had gone up the slightly more obvious (right turn at both junctions) of the labyrinthine passages in this new horizontal level to check that the dead end really was one - apparently the small climb Max did crapped out very quickly. We met back at a junction, I picked up the survey gear from the previous junction, and we headed off (left at second junction) to check the other end of this slightly-larger passage. Everyone agreed that this was a cracking horizontal level. Very nice walking-sized!
<p>
The previous group (whose identity remains to me as nebulous and vague as their cave descriptions) had apparently concluded that "you'll need bolts and rope to push any of the leads". Total bollocks. We did find a quite sketchy looking climb overlooking the virgin passage floor, but there were two different crawling ways to bypass it! After this initial reccy we reconvened and distributed survey gear. I was to get to grips with the CHECC disto, entrusted to me by Luke that morning. Rad wanted to do the drawing. I had forgotten to pack any station-marking stuff, but luckily Luke had some nail varnish in his pocket. We reckonned we had an hour and a half to push, and with no bolting necessary, the excitement of potentially hundreds of metres of 3x3m phreatic tube became evident in everyone's voices.
<p>
So, on to the description itself. The phreatic tube trends uphill, with a vadose trench in the bottom taking the water gradually deeper and out of sight and earshot. Where the passage jumps up a dodgy climb, the safer way on is through one of two little holes down and to the left - the leftmost a low crawl, and slightly to the right of that a narrowish slot. After these, a small chamber with boulders on the floor
<p>
Crawl. We managed to shoot the lazer straight through a tiny window, avoiding the need to survey the crooked oxbow crawl round the right. Now in another small chamber, but open both forwards/left up a slope, and vertically/right into the big tube, where we were later able to survey the loop (seems to be a near-oxbow of the phreas, which was undercut to make this 3-way big junction with a fourth crawly way that we had just come through). We progressed forwards up the slope, and the 3x3m tube meanders around for m. The floor of the tube is covered with sandy mud that seems to have a darkened crust. Very easy to follow the path established by the first person. About halfway along Luke dropped his nail-varnish, so we resorted to scratching in the mud on the walls. There is a bit of a climb up before a steep slide down a sandy slope. Take care to avoid falling in the hole at the bottom - it looks like a soft landing because of the pile of sand, but I've no idea how you would get out of that chamber - it looks a bit like the whole tube has a false floor in that area. Anyway, the tube continues, eventually changing in profile to more of a tall 2x5m elipse. The noise of the stream can now be heard again - far below, but I suppose cascading more steeply and so making a louder sound. Eventually we reached a sloping-sided hole in the floor, obviously wet at the bottom, QMc, with the same old tube heading up to the right, QMa, and a bottomless traverse on the opposite side of the hole, QMb. All of these will require either bolting of a traverse across the hole or a spiderman-like grip and balls of steel. I would prefer the bolted traverse option.
<p>
We still had over half an hour to go, so we returned ot one of the side passages we had noticed earlier. Climbing back up that steep sandy slope was interesting - everyone had a different method; running full pelt, desperate scrambling, chimping up the wall, etc. Rad was about to zoom off when I called him back - "You do know I won't be able to do anything from up here, don't you?" he observed. "Yes, but I don't want to die alone!". Cautiously attempting to disturb the sand as little as possible, I delicately levitated myself to a position of safety.
<p>
It was only a couple of legs into the side passage that it started going crazy. A-leads to the left, A and B-leads to the right, leads below - way too much to do any justice to in the time we had left. Clearly the polite thing to do was to leave it for some lucky bastard next year. There's enough down there for two simultaneous survey groups.
<p>
Derig - I was to go up the big pitch with one bag of rope, Radost to follow with the drill and batteries, then pass it to me to put in the top of the 70m bag at Ulysses. I was so mentally beasted from prusiking with a palpable twang on every bounce, at least until I passed the rub-point, and then He-Manning it past that rebelay, that I completely forgot about Rad's bag until I was about to go past Ulysses. I backtracked and hauled his bag up the little pitch for him, packed it in the top of the rope bag there, and with two heavy bags proceded up the free-climb. I had a bit of a sense of humour failure at the top, and having overheard Max "so how many bags do you have, Rad?""At the moment, precisely zero!" I foisted the heavier one back onto him, selfishly thinking that it would be better for the first person to travel light and quick. Even one bag on that traverse was troublesome, and so when at the top of the next pitch I heard Rad swearing his way through with two, I decided to redeem myself and took back one of them.
<p>
It was slow progress up the rest of the cave, barely keeping ahead of the deriggers (Luke and Max). At another free-climb I reaslised after >10 minutes of struggling that it was much easier to just throw the bags up and then chimp up after them. At the surface, I debagged and lay looking at the stars for a couple of minutes, before returning to the first pitch to take Rad's bag. He was decidedly less talkative than usual, and had the look of a man who needs a break - "it's just quite a heavy bag for a first trip" - I was inclined to agree. I saw another 3 meteors in the space of 20 seconds before going back to sketch a rudimentary diagram of the entrance traverses and take one bag from Max, and then back again for another. Realistically, it was the easiest bit of the bag carry, but it was hard thinking of Luke and Max doing all that work and not rying to help out.
<p>
The decision to leave all the tackle sacks at the entrance was endorsed unanimously. I poured myself a large Schnapps and followed everyone in double-curry dinner and falling asleep immediately.</pre>
<divclass="trippeople">Philp Sargent, Chris Holt/div>
<divclass="triptitle">115/Schnellzughoehle</div>
<p>On the way back from KH entrance, Chris and I detoured to 115 to get 6 litres of water as we were very thirsty. Also took out the museli and flapjack. Left ~4 litres of water and a orange polythene swirl (sp?) bag.</p>
