@@ -66,7 +65,7 @@ Tarp is partly up at side of hut as there was a caravan parked there ye
With an afternoon of festering well on the way after arriving back from our FF rope @@ -211,7 +223,7 @@ Isaac.
We were tasked by Antony to rig the entrance series of Balkonhöhle so that he could go and rig Mongol Rally (presumably a more interesting rig).
@@ -237,7 +249,7 @@ rapidly approaching. Luckily we made it back to camp 5 minutes before it startedIt turns out that Garlic Camp is a really good idea. 1h58 from the car park, under 20 minutes from Homecoming, so I'll be spending more time there.
@@ -296,7 +308,7 @@ Walked back to Bad Aussee. Had coffee having missed last bus.@@ -319,7 +331,7 @@ charlotte was the bull and this was the red rag!
@@ -330,7 +342,7 @@ TU is a guess - two hours less for me
@@ -460,7 +472,7 @@ Jacob
@@ -484,7 +496,7 @@ Let's see if he gets a parking ticket as he sprints back down the hill...
@@ -599,7 +611,7 @@ Isaac
@@ -625,7 +637,7 @@ The tofu curries were consumed when a prospecting trip returned. I was sad.
A canyonning trip was suggested, and as I'd done it a couple of +times before and thus knew where it was, and what to look out for, it +was easy to blag my way on. We had this idea a bit later in the day +than was ideal, because Strubklamm is miles away (most of the way back +to Salzburg), but it also meant that I was able to collect Tess from +the station before buggering off like a very naughty husband. I had +brought my new wetsuit and was eager to find out if it made Strubklamm +into a much less cold-and-miserable experience than previous +attempts. I was also able to borrow a (kayaking) helmet and neoprene +booties from Julia, which, combined with some sandals and spare caving +gloves, was enough kit to canyon (as this one doesn't actually need a +harness if you can manage an 8m jump).
+ +We were going to take my van and Charlotte's car but Tess wanted +the Van, and it's a long way to take two cars, so when PhilB appeared +we pounced on him and made him drive all 5 of us there (Charlote in +the boot). This was very kind as it's about 1hr40 mins each way, and +he doesn't even get to do the canyon. Having a driver avoids all the +shuttle-faff too, which is great, especialy as it turned out the +huttle-road was closed for works, so there was quite a long +drive-around which would have made us even later.
+ +This was Isaac and Charlotte's 1st ever canyonning trip, and +Marie's 2nd (after the disastrously cold 'Haute Borne' in the +Ardeche), but we were a crack team of potholers with two harnesses +between us so what could possibly go wrong?
+ +In fact the descent was very smooth with everyone having fun, at +least to start with. The water was quite a pleasant temperature, +although every inlet was much colder so we got a chilly bit every so +often as they came in. However it is longer than I remember and there +is a _lot_ of swimming, with a long section in the middle starting +with a canyon, and then a couple more long swims. Clearly the local +canyonning school uses it a lot so there were lots of in-situ ropes +for getting to good takeoffs and dealing with any slippery bits, or +just abseiling if you didn't like the bigger jumps. (Marie skipped the +biggest one).
+ +Much jumping fun was had, with Charlotte of course taking to the +game with gusto, although neither of us was any good at keeping the +water out of our noses on impact, and I managed to bite my tongue on +one jump, which was dim. Everyone avoided broken ankles or being +impaled on trees, just some coughing and spluttering.
+ +I hardly recognised any of the 2nd half as obviously my brain had +shut down with the chilly misery on the previous two attempts after +the 1st long swim. This time it was all rather lovely - it is a _very_ +pretty canyon. Marie found herself a bit short of stoke after the 1st +half, partly due to the baggy 2mm wetsuit and partly not having +evtirely recovered from the great chunder trip. 1.4km of canyonning +(with ~400m of swimming) over 3 hours feels like quite a long +way, and it was a relief to swim round a corner and finally see a +slackline being rigged and a footbridge with a beach which marks the +escape.
+ +Phil was even there to rescue us, so that all worked out +nicely. Good trip, and it's a lot nicer with 5 than 10 but still takes +a solid 3 hours. We got back about 7pm.
+@@ -732,8 +810,75 @@ The tag for p2018-dm-04 is in the foreground, the tackle sack is near the beginn
Walked up to top camp in the evening ready for trip down +Balkonhoehle to get Mongol Raly rigged with Jono. I was somewhat +perplexed to find no sign of Jono, and still not as it went dark. He +eventually turned up about 10am the next morning. We had our gear to + carry over so it wasn't a particularly early start.
+ +I had forgotten a load of the upper passages, but did at least +remember the obscure left turn for Honeycomb/Mongol Rally. Soon enough +we arrived at the end of the rigging part-way down hangmans, complete +with a rigging diag, some rope and a drill. Jono did this one, +complaining at the bottom that the bolts didn't match the diagram, +rigging a 2-bolt rebelay as a rather peculiar deviation. We realised +that we were starting part-way down the rigging diagram, not the top, +so he went back up to put it right whilst I continued to start Mongol +Rally. Dragging the gear through was the usual faff (someone should +just take a spade and make that crawl bigger).
+ +So now it was my turn and I suited up with Anthony's nice new drill +and 125m of rope. The 25m didn't quite reach across the traverse with +a big thread round a boulder, so I put a bolt in the roof to improve +the rigging (another one just over the hole in the floor would make +the traverse line a lot more useful, I later realised). The rock was +impressively cheesy, with about 20mm of goo to remove before getting +to actual rock.
+ +The rigging diagram suggested another bolt near the top so I added +one about 6m down on a nose to the right, only to realise that one had +probably already been done some previous year. I also realised at this +point that the tape on Anthony's drill bit was set rather too short +for reliable bolt-setting so adjusted it to give an extra 10mm of +hole. I then added another bolt on the left, replacing one in the +maximum rub-spot just under a lip (very odd placement). This finally +removed all the rubs on this top slope and actually made the +changeovers nicer, so I think it's an improvement.
+ +Next dilemma was whether to use the bolt on a nose (with hanger +left behind) or the reflectored bolt on the well-used muddy route. The +nose was harder to get to but gave a nicer hang (and was suggested on +the rigging diagram). With a sling to help the changeover it actually +worked quite well, although maybe the obvious route would also work +fine - there is no way of knowing without trying both and I had faffed +enough by now. Continued down for another hour or so rigging +rebelays. The rigging guide is accurate. Hummed and hawed some more at +the odder bits of rigging trying to work out what 'better' might look +like. Left one bit (with a nearly horizontal deviation) some extra +rope to come back to and add a bolt if time allowed but pressed on +until the rope ran out, just on the same ledge that had had a knot +pass in 2022. Looks like that is where 100m gets you to.
+ +We were out of time so called it a day and headed off out, only +realising on the way out that the rope bag we had left contained a +note 'top of mongol rally' in it so we had used the wrong one (misled +by the '25m' rope in the top matching the '25m' rope marked on the +topo for the traverse. Oh well.
+ +Got out around 11:30, having had a very satisfying trip, Jono had +finally got underground and enjoyed himself. It was a chill trip with +almost zero stress, and we'd done enough to make a camping trip +feasible next time.
+
@@ -796,7 +941,7 @@ We were greeted by a few rays of sunshine when we finally exited around 5pm befo
@@ -846,7 +991,7 @@ ADDENDUM 26th July:
@@ -886,7 +1031,7 @@ We got out of the cave at midnight and Sieds walked to Garlic camp and I walked
@@ -920,7 +1065,7 @@ Mark Shinwell arrived in an electric van (hired) and in the early evening Jono's
@@ -935,7 +1080,7 @@ I need to go caving.
@@ -946,7 +1091,7 @@ Lesson learnt: Be wary of Jono's ideas. Ask more questions.
@@ -973,7 +1118,7 @@ Nope: the duplication problem is still happening on the server (but not on the d
@@ -991,7 +1136,7 @@ So as for training in survey technique, for recording the data this counts as a
@@ -1027,7 +1172,7 @@ Aidan's Note: Unfortunately there was a loop closure error of 13%. :( A week and
@@ -1170,7 +1315,7 @@ Jono
On the day of expo dinner a rag-tag group of cavers gathered under the tatty hut tarp. These cavers were all here for all the wrong reasons. Firstly, supreme leader and trip planner Marie had bailed on caving in preference of washing her undersuit. Next we have Wassil who was both procrastinating his masters thesis and feeling sorry for himself about killing his own lead. Finally we have Dickon who decied to go on a caving expedition despite hating caving, and as a result elected do go canyoning. Proceeding the formation of this glorious trio, Chi decided to show his face following a disasterous camping trip which did not result in a camp occurring and was at a lost end. Apparently Marie, Wassil, and Dickon looked like a suitable group to go canyoning with and somehow they decided Chi would be a suitable accomplice.
@@ -1200,7 +1345,7 @@ Sarah, Nat, Zac and Phil drove up the loser. We then hiked up to the Col. It bei
-I am very proud of my loaf, and indeed Marie said that in her opinion it was "the best bread so far"! Jono reports however that Marie told him she hated it... So I guess the question that remains is: -
-How well do you trust the expedition leader? -
-The walk started off simply, and we soon found the bolt to mark the divergence from the official paths. The route description got us up to the Bunters Bulge, with the absence of any red markings mentioned. From here, the red markings were still not present, but there is a smattering of cairns to lead the way. A small amount of being lost later, and we were scrambling down to the original entrance, an impressively large entrance. The scramble towards Elephant entrance was helped by some stemples, and we soon found ourselves in the frigid draft, looking at a snow plug. -
-Kitted up with ice axes and crampons, we headed down the snow slope and into the Schneevulkanhalle. Wow, just Wow... The chamber itself would be impressive enough, but the ice formations were incredible. We wandered around and spent some time photographing the place. Some scrambling around, we found various pools of water in the glacier which we decided to not fall into. The far end of the chamber had an impressive false floor, which i walked over to to go underneath it, but was stopped by the ice under my feet sounding quite hollow, so I noped out of there. The next adventure was Harry and I climbing up the snow volcano, with Aila looking on disapprovingly at the Boys being Morons. I stopped half way up, deciding that it was quite steep. Harry, with less of a sense of self preservation, made it to the top, and some more photos were taken. Harry had a fun time coming down, the only time I've heard him admit to being scared. -
-After this, we headed back, creating a GPX track to make it easier for future expoers to find. We were told that sadly, impressive as it was, the formations were a shadow of their former selves. Go sooner rather than later. -
-The entrance series flew by, and I was having a great time reminiscing. Soon we headed up the small pitch into Propane Nightmares, and pressed on through the crawling (I had been promised minimal crawling), down and up some pitches and climbs, until we got to a patch of mud (I had also been promised no mud.) Not long after this, we got to Strained by Gravity. -
-At the bottom of this epic pitch series, I saw Harry and Ailas lights disappear down a passage, so I headed to it, finding a traverse that Aila would not have done without loud complaining, so I turned back. Chi told me that the way on was down below, so I opted to climb down an alternate way. Suddenly, my head was below my feet, and I tumbled 3m down a climb, landing on a bouldery floor. A distinct amount of swearing occurred whilst I tried to figure out what was broken. Chi rounded a corner at speed, highly concerned about my wellbeing. Rescue from here would not be fun. Although I was in a not insignificant amount of pain, nothing seemed to be broken, Chi fed me some sweets, and we pressed on. -
-The traverses were alright for my long legs, but Ailas short legs didn't enjoy them at all. We soon got to Camp, and set up the tent and sleeping bags. It was less than ideal, but we could squeeze in four. Then it was back up the pitch to start down Flowstone Canyon (thrutchy and awkward), Alpine Showers (traversy and awkward) and down some pitches (with awkward pitchheads) to the pushing front. -
-Chi set about bolting a traverse whilst Harry, Aila and I got the surveying kit out, finding a numbered station. The disto was produced, and I started to get ready to shoot the first leg, but noticed that the Disto was in calibration mode. Shit. We tried to get it into the proper mode but nothing we did worked. Double shit. -
-We deliberated on what to do, and finally settled on scooping and then coming back to survey at a later date. Aila was trained in surveying, with Harry showing her how to take notes, and me making up numbers, leading to a very odd cave. Chi dropped a pitch, which I followed him down, but the bottom led to more pitch, so Aila and I decided to head to camp. It was a long slog back to camp, and we arrived at 2330. Some pasta was had, and we turned in. Harry and Chi came back at 0100, and told us they'd dropped some more pitches and killed the lead. Arse. All that for nothing. -
-The next morning, we slowly got ready, dismantling camp. It was going to be a long slog up, and starting on the traverses was a tiring way to start. Strained by Gravity went by vaguely quickly, and soon we stopped to fill up bottles and have noodles. We got up the entrance series relatively quickly and exited finally around 1730 on the 28th. Not the best trip, but no one died. I'm sure there will be other trip reports for this trip. -
-Rosa placed the first bolt for the traverse line - her second ever bolt! - and I rebolted the pitch head (there were two spit there already but I couldn't find any nuts for them anywhere around HC or GC so lovely new fixe expansions it was! I dropped the 20m pitch down into a fair sized ledge with two ways on - I first opted to go the shorter dryer way with the hope it would connect round to the rest of the big aven, using less bolts and rope. One side of this pitchhead is a drilled thread, the other a lovely bolt. This got down to a perfect end of the 25m rope and lead to a 2m climb.This later turned out to be Snagged and Shagged. There wasn't any clear promising leads here so I left Rosa and James to make the rigging topo for me and explore the area while I went on to continue bolting the pot. -
-A perfect height pitchead was placed which felt a very reasonably distance from the ledge. Unfortunately, with the nature of the rock there was immediately some pretty shit rope rope. The next 15 minutes was spent trying to figure out how to ameliorate this. Lots of time was spent trying to create a deviation below and right, but nothing was far enough back to fix the hang without then making me abseil straight into a pool of water. While this faff was going on, a rock ((tatty hut little printer sized) which I previously been solidly heel hooking and holding decided to come loose, missing me but being very exciting when it hit the tacklebag and then hitting the deck. I abandoned hopes over here and decided to swing the other way into the drippy aven and found a nice fault for a ledge for my feet so placed a rebelay and then used that to help me swing across to a nice ledge in a dry area where I bolted a traverse across and then rigged a short pitch down to the streamway below. -
-It should be noted that while I'm doing this Rosa managed to almost climb down snagged and shagged into the bottom of the pot, except she got stuck and from the walls I could see her light and hear her shout for me to come and help her - not something I was in much position to do so James went to her aid. She also didn't sound like she was in any real peril, just mabe unable to get her way back out so I figured I could always head back up with the drill and rope if it were really necessary. -
-We named the pot Tiered Gerkin and the Streamway Bannaboat Streamway at the time, but since then and the time of writing this up we've renamed the pot Saruman. The streamway is unfortunately too short to be worth naming. - -Note for clarity: the streamway was too short because it immediately descended into the two pitches that precede the Eye of Sauron. -
-Turning up at expo on the night of The Dinner, I had expected a few days of festering, fettling, and carrying, but found myself agreeing to a 4 day camp with Nat D after he spotted me inspecting the Balcony map. -
-The next day we faffed and faffed some more, then set off well after noon in Sarah's car. The day was hot. I soaked myself in the waterfall to start the walk,carrying all of my camping and caving kit with trepidation. I loudly announced to the group that heat gives me diarrhoea- already feeling quite unsettled in the tummy. My previous walks in 2022 had left me dreading the length of the plateau walk. Fortunately the dread made the reality feel shorter than remembered. A breeze kept us cool as me Nat Sarah and Zak slowly trundled to top camp, nattering with Nat about all sorts of gossip. -
-We faffed some more at top camp, waiting for Jacob and Lara to join us from garlic camp, and I sat on the gryke hoping to shit as much as possible pre cave. -
-We set off for balcony in the early evening, and struggled under the heavy loads. We split into 2 teams: Nat Lara and I, Zac Jacob and Sarah (SEE ZAC'S REPORT OF HIS TRIP - FEATURING HAND JAMMERS AT HIGH VELOCITY). I said farewell to the light and was VERY happy to find the big balcony pitch rope thinner than 2022's - the Stop cramp only had to be relived every 40 seconds! -
-Then began the wiggling, sliding, slipping, and thrutching, descending and changing, clipping and crawling. -
-I had a mixed relationship with my 2 tackle bags, which I named The Toddler (small red) and The Teeneger (Becka's massive bag that matched my oversuit and apparently looked just like me - CAN I ADD A PICTURE HERE?). We had many disagreements in the crawls, and they enjoyed resting upsidedown on every ledge. NAt's 'purple juice' (meths) was resting at the very top of the teenager, and I've no idea what miracle kept it flying out onto Lara below. It defied gravity until it finally slipped out at rest at the very bottom of Mongol Rally. -
-We reached the camp sometime around midnight. I was shattered and provided very little help to Nat's attempt to bolt in 2 hammocks. The wind steamed down the passage and stole any remaining heat. By the time the other 3 turned up I was shivering strongly. -
-Then the first 'accident' was discovered. I had been putting off my urgent need for a poo for all evening. We looked around for the poo drum... kept looking... kept looking. And no one had it. We looked at our supplies. Resealable freezdried meal bags: perfect for shitting in. Porridge sashes: sort of papery. Deciding they made a decent 'glove' for wiping, we emptied all the porridge bags. Only after walking 10m up the passage did I discover the pile of biobags left there! Still the porridge sashes were required. I would not review them highly: more plastic than paper, but desperate times.... -
-I woke in the night even more uncomforatble than before, with a feeling of dread. I visited the 'toilet' and found blood every where. O dear. I hadn't been due my period for 2 weeks but life has its ways of punishing you. Explains how awful I felt the day before, and then. 4am wasn't the time to deal with this fact, so I returned to me sleeping bag, shattered, and restless for everyone to get up. -
-Get up they did, and I brought up my inconvenient fact. I felt mixed feelings to learn that Nat, Sarah and the first aid kit had a handful of tampons between them. I had never used a tampon. I did not think I would learn to use them in a grubby cold cave 100s of meters under ground. It did not go very well. -
-Feeling exhausted, sick, pained and cramping, I dragged myself through the day. I followed Nat and Lara to push an A lead in the north of Southern Pitstop -(SEE ZAC'S REPORT FOR THE OTHER TEAM'S DAY OF PUSHING). My attempt to do my bit was far more of a burden than a help, and I had tampon related disasters through the day, as well as the dreaded period poos, greatly exceeding the quota of 1.5 porridge sashes a day. -
-I did however bolt properly for the first time. I should probably have said no when Nat asked me to bolt a descent but I said alright. I suspended awkwardly over a large drop, struggling to find the arm strength to hold the drill out and install 3 bolts. I'm sure the others were very cold by the time I got to the bottom but it was, at least, a good learning experience. -
-I got changed for a piss by the waterfall - this would come back to haunt me later, then we ascended up the other side. -
-More slipping an thrutching. I was ready to turn around, but held on to the pushing front. We had some noddles and began to survey. -
-Despite sometimes hating caving, I do in fact love surveying. Although I probably failed to give the impression that day, I was very happy to take part in the surveying of 'Tampon turnaround' - aptly named for events there - with the honour of painting the red splodges. We turned an A lead into lots of Bs and Cs, but it kept going. I was very very close to my limit, and kept saying I would head back soon. After point 23 I pushed ahead a little bit, and a little bit more, and found the high passage narrowing to a puddle, and over the puddle to a toddler sized crawl. This final push ripped my PVC oversuit :,( and I was definitely beyond my limit, and decided to head out. -
-A rest at the snake stop, then I plodded back, struggling up the slopes under the weight of the drill. It crossed my mind that I normally find it hard to move with my stop on my D ring. I looked down. My stop was not on my D ring. Ah shit. -
-I trudged back to the snack stop - no sign yet of Lara and Nat, looked through all the bags. No stop. I headed back through the rifts, up the slopes. No stop. I looked again through the drill bag. No stop. -
-Ah well. Strongly suspecting (hoping) what had happened, there was nothing for it but to head to the rope and down prussick. Down prussicking was NOT fun. The rope was thick with mud, and every movement took an age to free my jammers. I had a small private cry halfway, for my period pain, but made it down. There was my stop, thanks be, at the point I had changed earlier. -
-Onwards, up the rope: stand, yank through the chest ascender, sit, repeat, with jammers refusing to grip. By this point Nat and Lara had caught up, so I waited and incredibly kindly they offered to take my bag. -
-I headed on as they derigged. This was my next mistake. 'Don't get lost' Nat said. I got lost. After the white aven there were many ways on. I follwed the muddy footsteps across and up, but grew suspicous. I decided it was safest to turn around. I turned around but did not find myslef back at the white aven. Two more tries and I was at a slope that looked familiar, so I headed up and reached two ways. I followed the muddy footsteps up, but grew suspicous. On your own it is very hard to trust yourself. I turned around, shattered, concerned. And, thank goodness, met Lara and Nat. I took back a tackle bag and we headed up the other junction, which we soon realised was wrong and returned up my way. Trudge, sigh, plod. -
-We reached the camp. The others were there already. Dinner. Jacob kindly said that, if no one else was willing, he would be happy to go out with me a day early. I was so grateful as there was no way I could stay longer. Shivering. Bed. (waking for toilet visits :,( ) -
-Rising at 9:40, the plan was revised: Zac would also leave too, using a microtraction as a jammer (having lost both hand jammer and pantin). Porridge. Noodles. Packing. Washing our gear in the muddy puddle. We headed off. I somehow managed to get lost finding the bottom of mongol rally, but eventually did. I heard zac calling from above, in pain. It took an age to dig out the ibruprofen, and I was shocked how slow I could prussick. It was misreable. Pantin uterly useless. Rope refusing to feed. Stand. Drag thtough chest asecnder. Sit. Ascenders slip. Ascenders grip. Repeat. I haven't prussicked this slowly since my first time. My tackle bag tangled itself in the down rope at a rebelay and I had to down prussick, to some strong words. A shocking anount of time later I reached zac on his ledge and got him the ibruprofen. And he taught me how to properly frog, and drag the rope through with your feet. I'm an idiot for never having learnt to do that before. Mongol Rally was slighlty improved. -
-We headed up, and up, and up, and finally huddled in the bivvy at the top. Hangman's was impressive (and cold). Honeycomb was much longer than I remember. Debating the way, succesfully, I was rather shocked to realise we were at the junction with hilti a plenti. I hadn't thought to imagine reaching the end. -
-Sarah's weather report had predicted a thunder storm that evening. We were fully prepared to huddle at the bottom of the entrance. But, to happy suprise, the drips were slow. I went last (regretting this offer, and desperately uncomfortable). But I had lot of time to sing as Jacob and Zac ascended. The happiest feeling of all, to see the shadow of light from the penultimate pitch, to haul off the final rope, to crawl out into a blue sky. -
-The evening was utterly beautiful. The forecast was wrong. Pink light filled the horizon, silhouetting mountains. The evening air still warm. Why would you go underground from this? To appreciate it more I suppose. -
-I was dizzy trudging back, Jacob kindly, patiently accompanying my stumbling. We reached Stoney Bridge as the light faded and stars brightened. Big Tom and Becka in residence, and Tom a saint making us food. Unbelievably happy to bin the tampon I had been using for far too long (I will never use one again - awful things!) and have some proper toilet paper. -
-We slept out under the shooting stars and milky way. Every time I woke, relieved, to have escaped balcony, and see brightness in the night's dark, under starlight. -
Lucy having already covered much of the trip in I will only fill in the gaps alluded to
--
Sarah, Jacob and I gave the other group a decent head start into Balkon which we soon extended by getting 'navigationally challenged' at the bottom on the entrance series. However, over-coming this we powered on towards the trident and honey-combe. There was a small incident just before the water refilling station where, due to our bags being so overly packed, a gas canister rolled out the top of Sarah's tackle sack. It stopped on it's own before I could grab it but still gave everyone involved a minor heart attack. There was some minor faffigating after the trident but we soon found the top of Honey-combe. From there it was a nylon highway. I struggled a little at the bottom of Honey combe and need Sarah to reel me in. We then extended the rope to make the next descent easier. It was at the bottom of hangmans that the trouble started. I had just done the traverse and was using my hand jammer to ascend to the crawl. I then unclipped it and moved it the next traverse line (as I had my hand jammer on my long cows). I then removed my long cows tail and watched in horror as my nice golden hand jammer plummeted onto the slop and slid down into the giant hole. There were a couple of seconds before I heard a loud 'chink'. Reconvening after the crawl (made fucking difficult by having to haul a giant over stuffed tackle sack) we agreed to keep going and possibly drop the hole tomorrow to look for my jammer. -It was then a short stroll to the top of Mongol Rally, which starts quite nicely but soon becomes several large pitches over a titanic drop. It was at the last rebelay that I had my next incident. When unclipping my foot loop from my snap gate, I had forgotten that I had my pantin on the same snap and so watched, again, in horror as another of my ascenders plummeted into a giant hole. -Absolutely furious at having lost over £100 (new) of kit I stormed into camp with the others to find Nat fettling with the hammocks. -After some noodles and smash, I all but passed out into a fitful nights sleep. -
-Having arrived into camp at 1:30 the night before, needles to say it was a late start the next day, made even later by all the faffing. Me, Jacob and Sarah would push a more vertical lead while Nat, Lucy and Lara would push a more horizontal one. -Kit assembled, the three of us headed out along the piss soaked Southern Pit-stop. Then was some Faffigating and a few wrong turns before we reached our lead. Jacob set the first two bolts leading to the pitch while I then took over and bolted and rigged the Y hang at the top of the pitch. It took ages to find two spots suitable amongst the cheese like rock. But once we had, and Sarah had re-tied my Y hang, I descended to the ledge bellow. Here I swiftly put in another bolt and fixed it with a fig-8 before clearing some space for Sarah to follow. Together we then looked for a suitable place for the next bolt to finish the Y hang and begin drop the next small pitch. The first bolt I tried set was fucked by virtue of the fact that the bolt it's self bent as I was hammering it in (probably because I was hammering at a different angle to the one I drilled). The bottom of this pitch didn't go anywhere save for a narrow horizontal rift. Surveying time. I had to ascend both legs to fulfil my role as dog and mark the first survey station. From there, I slowly re-descended with Jacob in tow operating the SAP. Once at the bottom again, I shimmied into the rift and was near frozen by the dramatic draft. The rift tightened after five meters into a sideways crawl which led into a narrow squeeze. I gardened some rubble out of the way to get this far. Beyond the squeeze was an even narrower (too narrow to pass) hole in the floor. This was the source of the draft. I dropped some rocks down and heard them clatter for ages. I even swear I heard one splosh. Once the survey was complete, we headed back up, Jacob de-rigging. Unfortunately, two of the bolts at the top of the pitch couldn't be loosened, even with a pair of pliers. This meant we lost two hangers. -Surveying done, we headed back to camp where we were the first back. To occupy ourselves, me and Jacob looked for loose rocks we could use to cover the mud slopes around camp. Unfortunately, when the others returned our efforts did not receive the thanks we had anticipated.
-It was another late start the following day. Having made the effort of getting down there (and scared to ascend) I wanted to try for another day, but Lara pointed out that I looked fucked, and, to be fair, I was. So I joined Lucy and Jacob on their early ascent. Using a Micro-traction I'd borrowed from Sarah as a hand jammer, we packed what we needed and set off to the wash spot. I led the way but after the first two pitches of Mongol Rally had to stop as my arms were killing me. I removed my Elbow pads as they were limiting my movement and then waited for Lucy to catch up so I could pinch some Painkillers. They worked wonders and it felt like no time at all before we reached the top of Mongol rally. -All our cleaning work was undone by the small crawl to the base of Hangman. I also had a look down the hole that swallowed my hand-jammer only to find that it was far to deep to drop. We then made our way out mostly at my pace. The rigging on Honey combe being a particular bastard for passing up. It also seemed to go on much longer than I remembered. From there it felt like a quick jaunt to the entrance series, the second pitch of which was a right bastard after 50 hours underground. -I was so happy to find that we had made it out in time to catch the sun and spent the night out sleeping on the plateau.
--With not much to do - no desire to explore a drippy lead with a very uncertain forecast and it being too claggy to achieve much prospecting we resolved to landscape garlic when we realised we were potentially going to be short on sleeping sports when the Watershed camp emerged that evening. We managed to level and expand the two person annex, build out the main areas width so there's more space, battle two camp beds, and Dickon leveled a one bed space down in Gollum's Hole where he setup a bed, read some of my book on the Geology of Snowdonia, and did a lot of napping. -
-In the evening, when it finally brightened up a bit, James, Dickon and I summitted the Kleiner Wildkogel. Dickon enjoyed tumbling the big loose rocks down the slope for the hell of it and it gave us a very interesting view of the plateau and an insight into the comples nature of the folding in the rock. We tried to assess new prospecting areas and it looked like along and up from Balkon and don the plateau to the thick Bunde areas would be the most promising. This was with a view to help Dickon with his prospecting the next day. -
-Upon waking, the inevitable morning faff ensued, accompanied by the perpetual roar of the gas stove. Bags packed & plans made, we left camp just before 11:00 on the 30th. -
-We split into 2 teams, with Chris & Jono going to bolt a pitch near camp, and Ellie, Becka & myself heading for Tartarus, where the previous team had stashed the second drill, along with the promise of draughting leads. -
-Making good time through Northern Powerhouse & Medusa's Maze, we arrived at an unnamed 4 way junction, where Becka said "There's some QMBs around here, maybe we should take a look in case we don't fancy the Tartarus leads" -It turned out we were in the wrong place, so after a bit of a mooch about, we continued down the passage, passing through the bottom of a big chamber and down a short handline to a very different passage type, interconnected parallel ramps with a Swiss-Cheesy nature. -This was the location of the leads Becka had mentioned, and she & Ellie soon disappeared up a rift to the North to investigate a QMB. -Whilst stood at this junction, I noticed some definite air movement, which was quickly attributed to an upwards ramp with a distinctive 'frog spawn' texture to the floor. -
-We followed the ramp, reaching a slippery step over an intersecting rift, with a climb down marked as a QMA on the left, and the ramp still continuing in front of us with a QMA marked at the top. -The far side of a second, more precarious step-over brought the exciting sight of untrodden mud, at the foot of a large boulder choke with the draught still beckoning. -
-A careful shimmy to the edge and & bridge across put me in uncharted territory, and after ducking under an arch I was in much bigger passage, 2 huge blocks looming over me blocking the way on, with an enticing black void above. -This presented an obvious barrier to further exploration, but after the echo coming back from a couple of shouts it was immediately clear we needed to investigate further. -
-I wriggled around under the choke for a while, finding a chimney narrow enough to bridge across, which I thrutched my way up, gaining the top of the first large block. -The further into the chamber I got, the bigger it seemed to grow (along with my excitement), whilst Becka & Ellie watched proceedings somewhat apprehensively from the floor below. -
-A second, much safer climb onto another jammed boulder entered the chamber properly, where I began to take in the scale of the place, trying (failing) to light it up, and bouncing echos off the walls. -I returned to the deck completely buzzing, trying to communicate what I'd just seen, and insisting we must return with a drill & rope asap! -
-This meant somewhat reluctantly slogging off to Tartarus, where we decided we'd make the most of the day checking out some leads in Ichthyes. We spent a while trying to work out the way to the pushing front, clambering up and down in the rift, before deciding we were liable to run out of time to do anything useful. We then returned to a QMB we had passed on the way, resulting in a very quick and satisfying loop closure between 2 leads, finding a hole down and the continuation of a draughting rift behind a pillar, before returning to camp. -
-A planned early start the next day was stalled slightly by Jono's alarm failing to go off, but we made up time with some much more direct route finding back to the foot of the boulder choke. -Becka & Ellie started surveying the connection, whilst I climbed back onto the large boulder and set about bolting a route up for them to follow. -I took my time with this, knowing I would be shortly marked on my work by Becka, arriving on the deck at the same time as Ellie came round the corner armed with the nail varnish. -
-We headed into the chamber, celebrating with snacks whilst deciding how to tackle the surveying. We chose convenient stations on top of the Tatty-Hut sized boulders, sending legs as far as the SAP could manage. -A large downwards rift forms the Western continuation of the chamber, but the rock of both walls at the would-be pitch head is fairly crap, so this will require some thought. -
-Back at the entry point, heading East across more boulders revealed more promising leads; a "black hole" downwards spotted by Becka whilst surveying, and a mouth-like opening with a strong draught in the Northern corner which captured my attention as soon as I found it. -Grabbing the drill & our last scraps of rope, I rigged and descended the awkward pitch head, sliding between the waterworn 'teeth' into the (horizontal!) passage below, naming this the Dental Floss pitch. -
-There were 2 ways on from here; the continuation of the main passage straight on , and a small hole choked with mud to the right, which I promptly dug out to reveal a short drop to a second pitch, and some audible water dripping somewhere ahead. -
-Heading along the main passage, we reached a junction with a pillar; left leading down a steep slope covered with a thick layer of virgin mud, & right upslope leading to another junction with a switchback connecting to the small hole with dripping water described earlier. Here there were some interesting mud formations which we duly protected with the scrap of conservation tape we had remaining, before turning left up a short scramble to another right hand bend. -
-Upon turning this corner, we were immediately hit with the strongest draught I have felt in any cave, setting the tone for the next few steps across a pristine white traverse, the passage rapidly enlarging as we went... -
-This spat us out on a ledge overlooking a hole which left me totally lost for words; a pitch plunging away below, and an aven towering above. -Much whooping and revelling in the echos followed, before taking some photos and surveying as far as we could reach (very little!). -
-Underequipped and running out of time, we returned downslope, following the ramp back past the junction we'd entered from, for some very slippery surveying on the thick mud. -Reaching the bottom, I spotted what looked like freshly gardened rocks, and Becka then noticed the climb up on the right, which was the QMA we'd left immediately before entering the boulder choke that morning! This resulted in a very satisfying loop closure to finish the day, at which point I deployed the tactical miniature cave whisky, which I'd been saving in my oversuit for exactly such a moment. -
-Returning to camp in good spirits, we passed the evening with many noodles and the remainder of the hot chocolate, setting an alarm for 6:30 for the trip out. -In the morning, Becka & Jono raced ahead, whilst Chris, Ellie & I plodded up, arriving at the surface around 17:00, just in time to get stuck in a thunder storm at top camp. -
-Having vowed I was done with deep caving for this expo after the prussik up, it took all of 12 hours for the rose tinted glasses to go on, and back at base camp planning began for a return to the newly discovered shaft... -
-I am a very sad man with too much time on his hands... -
-James and I surveyed what we thought was the final pitch while Aidan added a deviation. I complained greatly while surveying much to Aidan's entertainment who had bolted it. Once in the stream way bolting kit was packed up as we prepared for an easy surveying waltz down a stream way. -
-Aidan found another pitch where I asked if I could bolt. Of I went expecting a short pitch nice and easy. I got to a re-belay and started yelling it keeps going as there was another hole below me little did we know how big it actually was. I got to the ledge and started to prepare to abseil into a rift bolted the pitch head and then went why am I doing this walked over to the edge of the ledge to set up a much nicer hang, very scary. - -I shouted at James and Aidan that its huge and keeps going and we don't have enough rope. Neither quite realised how big. I kept asking if Aidan wanted a look and he seemed uninterested until I pestered him enough where he promptly looked over the edge where he told us that we didn't realise how cool our find was as we had found a 80m hypo-genic tube. Our 30m rope got barely a 1/3 of the way down. -
-I was sent out of the cave to tell people of our find and collect food, water bolts, batteries and rope. With eguipment acquired I ran back to homecoming to see the others exiting. Bags were packed flapjack was eaten, cooling down was required and once everything was ready to go I had to try and get a call out. After much hair pulling and phoning round I got a call-out so we were good to go. James had decided he wanted to go back to base which was probably a sensible decision so me and Aidan pushed on. -
-Aidan added an extra bolt to the top of the eye of Sauron where he handed me all the heavy bolting kit in case he needed to prussik out. Our 40m rope which was now down the pitch was still very short so a 30m rope was taken down by Aidan. Much bullying was required to get Aidan to go down the pitch as he was being a wus his words not mine he thanked me alter so its all good. Once the rope was free it was my turn where I was equally terrified but couldn't back down after bullying Aidan down. Descending was relatively straightforward until the knot pass. Doing a knot pass 40m below a pitch head and 20m above the floor makes a simple manoeuvrer terrifying. At the bottom of the pitch Aidan asked me to swing over a boulder where I was like, what do you mean, as I'm hanging in free space. I descended onto solid floor which was a relief where we clambered onto the boulder to make another pitch down into another big chamber with a false floor. -
-The new pitch head was bolted with a combination of me and Aidan resulting in lightning bolting. This is where we decided to call the series Welsh Engineering due to all the people bar James, sorry James, were from a Welsh university. At the next pitch another deep hole opens out into nothing where we has high hopes of going deeper than the rest of the cave which was not to be. midway down the next pitch as I was looking for a re-belay. I spied a bolt in front of my face to much confusion and annoyance. I quickly realised I had been here before as I was at the bolt traverse I had pushed with Dickon 2 days before. I proceeded to have a 5 minute tantrum that our lead did a big loop collected myself and dropped to the bottom of the pitch to say I was at the bottom. -
-This bottom bit was bolted badly due to my frustration although it is still safe. We promptly called it a day and ran out of the cave trying to conserve energy. Exiting at 11:30. The eye of Sauron is pleasantly easy on the way out even with the knot pass. Resulting in an exit in less than 45 minutes. Once at garlic we clattered around trying to get to bed as quickly as possible waking Adam and disturbing Fiona sorry guys. -
-At the bottom of the streamway and along about 10m we found a small sledge with a 10m pitch down to another ledge and a seemingly bottomless space below. Colin bolted the way down while James and I surveyed. We joined Colin on a ledge with a prow of rock sticking out into a seemingly bottomless hole. My torch's light on boost mode couldn't make out the bottom! I was incredibly psyched about this find - we were in a massive vertical hypogenic phreatic tube!! This could surely only mean there was a massive lead waiting for us down at the bottom! -
-Unfortunately, when we lowered the rest of our 40m rope down from the pitchead we could see the end dangling in space, looking not even halfway down! It was very very scary looking down such a void from such a small prow of rock! -
-We decided that we certainly needed more drill battery, bolts, and rope to push this and that would require us leaving the cave. That and James wanted a lift down the hill that evening, which we'd already arranged. Colin set off first on the way out, with the goal of heading straight to GC to get the needed resources while James and I followed him out. We left all the bolts, rope and kit at the bottomless hole so speed our ascent out, but not before James and I tried to survey it - but we were thwarted by endless 'Laser Reading Failed' error messages when we fired down the hole. -
-James and I made our way out and within a few minutes of James surfacing, Colin had arrived with more kit and some more food!! I started packing the rope bags and bolts while James dekitted and Colin rekitted up. We check James knew what he was doing before we parted ways and he started to walk across the plateau and Colin and I descended back down. When we got back to what we would later name The Eye of Sauron, we re rigged the traverse into the pitchhead using the 11m rope, I placed a second bolt for the pitchhead (being quite nervous of the drop by me all the while) we rigged it and again hand over hand lowered the rope down to see how far it got. 38m of hanging rope and still no end in sight. I rechecked the rigging, armed with a 30m rope in a tacklebag, and after a lot of whimpering/complaining and some bullying from Colin I descended down. It should be noted I had no bolting kit on me because I knew for a certainty I couldn't reach a wall tom place a rebelay and I didn't want the extra weight on me if for whatever reason I had to changeover and head back up. -
-When I got close to the knots in the end, with a locked off simple and not much joy in what I was doing (only fear and trepidation) did I join the ropes together to form a knot pass and hand-over-hand lower the end of the 30m rope down to the bottom. It was hard to figure out if the rope touched the bottom. Committed to the pitch I abbed down to the bottom and called rope free. To my dismay I had landed on a rocky floor with only a tiny C-lead style rift ahead. Nevertheless I let Colin head down because if I had to reascend this, he had too! -
-As I was waiting I realised the big boulder I had spotted on the way down was only a few metres above me and I thought I had seen a big space beyond, so with some spotting from Colin as I made some moves up the snappy rock to the boulder and was relieved to see that there was large passage that continued on. We bolted as a team here - me with the hammer and bolts, Colin with the drill and tube and we got 3 bolts in 5 minutes ready for the short descent onto the boulder-y false floor below us. In the same style we placed a bolted for a descending traverse line to a pitchhead at a narrow rift with a clear load of space below. Since I had the honours of descending the big pitch we agreed Colin would do the next pitch. -
-To both our dismay, when Colin was roughly 20m down he shouted he could see bolts! and then had a small tantrum when he realised this was the bolt traverse he had belayed Dickon across the other day!! -
-A little disheartened we decided to keep dropping the canyon, using the bolts from the traverse to make a very wide rebelay, and to see where we ended up. This ended on a big old rock wedged in the canyon, forming a nice ledge. With it being late and our bags now significantly lighter with many less bolts and metres of rope, we made our way out. Colin being a trooper took out most of the bolting kit. I believe, being pretty lightweight, it took me only about half an hour from here to get to the surface. -
-Before I had left I'd told Colin I'd wait 45 mins for him at the surface before I got concerned. Well Cutting-it-close Colin lived up to the name and with 7 minutes to spare! We both dekitted and in silent, tired awe at what we had found that day walked up to GC where we stargazed and enjoyed some mobile data before disturbing Fiona and Adam in bed around midnight in the camp - we were too tired to manage being remotely quiet so we just tried to be loud for as little time as possible. -
-What. A. Day. -
-In packing my stuff, I discovered the dark chocolate caving snack in the barrels and by god after a taste I knew it would be one of my go-to snacks this expo, on the side of gorp. -
-We walked down to Homecoming, Fiona and I this time not taking our walking poles with us, and started our descent. The coolness of the cave, even at the entrance, was a great change from the stifling heat of the surface, especially in all of our caving gear. -
-I went through the cave system following the others, so did not take as much notice of the names of the pitches as I should have done, which would have made future descriptions of the cave far easier when trying to figure out routes. I believe the route we took in was called the Welsh Engineering Route. In any case, after the first few entrance pitches, we deviated from the main route by taking the a white rope instead of a green rope (upon checking the description now, a few days later, this pitch appears to be Radagast). Instead of going straight down, we followed a rebelay into a traverse into a small phreatic chamber, where we waited for the rest of our group. Here, I put my buff fully on, covering my head as well as my neck, anticipating the further cold. From here, we found a junction where we went right. We came across another downhill junction where we took the left. At the end of this I believe there was a very downhill pitch head with a short traverse section and a deviation rigged off a natural very early on. We popped down and immediately went down a small dusty crawl, taking the next left. A traverse bolt on the left of the wall and a Y-hang on the right, we came into the pitch head for Saruman (with all the pitch head names aside from Eye of Sauron, I'm just taking from the description now). A few more pitches followed this one, which I can't recall too clearly, but at some point there was an upstream pool where Aidan advised us to dip our descenders into to cool them down. We all did so. -
-After a traverse to another pitch, we came to the Eye of Sauron. In hindsight, it feels a lot like Mount Doom. There is a traverse and then a rope leading straight from one side of the wall to the pitch Y-hang. This rope hangs over a small walkway, the cave itself almost leading you to the great drop below. I should have brought my One Ring prop so I could re-enact one of the many endings of Return of the King! Alas, I didn't. So we went down, having little trouble with the knot pass most of the way down the rope. Descending to the very bottom of the Eye of Sauron isn't the way to go, as there's a big climb following. The goal would be to descend to the top of the climb and use the rope to pull yourself over, as the rope is bolted there too. -
-This is where we started our surveying. Luckily, there was a nice platform where I could sit and put my bag as I put my coat and balaclava on, as well as have some of that amazing dark chocolate. Definitely buying some for myself! I acted as the instrument for the surveying, with Fiona acting as book, Aidan as dog. Colin forged on ahead for some bolting work, to meet us at the bottom. -
-The surveying was cold work, but all straightforward. Sometimes the vertical readings didn't function at all, the SAP refusing to work. So we just put them as question marks. In addition, the SAP had a scrolling option that worked by tilting. You could tilt either way, but it would only scroll one way. A bit annoying, Every now and then I found myself in settings, at which point I just had to turn the thing off and on again. We got to a false floor, so on surveying we always were clipped in to a traverse line. At the end of this section, I tried getting a vertical distance down the pitch but the SAP wouldn't have it! So we called it there and just went straight down. -
-The wall was a bit muddy and had a few rebelays. In addition, there was a rope protector attached as otherwise the rope would be sliced on a particularly sharp section of rock. We got down to a large rock where Colin was waiting. It was a large chamber with a few leads and a nice streamway ahead. We named the rock Urinal Rock. Not the nicest name, but nature called. -
-I liked the look of the rift going off to the left, hoping to visit it again. -
-We headed back up, eventually getting to a rebelay named Rivendell. This had a green rope traversing to the left that lead to the main route. This had many awkward, horizontal passages. I remember shuffling on my butt to the left for a good while, trying to keep my position good whilst also not getting my bag stuck. At one point, we had to go down again to go up again! I should really know the names of the pitches here. Eventually we came back up Radagast and, being very tired, I was very happy to hear that we could see the other rope for the Welsh Engineering Route. We came out and saw off Colin and Aidan, who were heading down the hill. We updated our callout with basecamp and set off, getting to Garlic camp safe and sound, but still tired from the cave and the plateau walk. Curries never taste better than after a caving trip. -
-On going down the Eye of Sauron, I told Fiona to wait and shine her headtorch down the great pitch after a minute of descent, at which point I leaned over the hole, attached to the traverse line of course, and took a picture with my own light off. All the while very worried I'd drop my phone. Fortunately this did not happen and we got a really good picture out of it, though I'm disappointed at the actual camera quality, but what can you do? -
-We arrived at Urinal Rock at around 1:30pm and we looked into the rift that we had seen the day before. I remembered on the journey down that the rebelay onto the rock had some coiled up rope at the end and so instead of starting our rigging at the rock, we simply extended the pitch down to the rift. We used the hammer on various sections of rock on our way down, but neither of us liked the sound of them. Eventually, I got to a small platform in the rift. I walked to the edge of the platform and tried the hammer on two opposing rock walls. Success! The rock sounded good! I got to work drilling the bolts and setting up a Y-hang. I made some small mistakes during this, such as not flattening the rock properly for the anchor and bolting at a slight angle. Simple and really annoying stuff. It ate much of our time as I used the sharper end of the hammer to correct my mistakes. After I rigged these, I descended from them to a further platform down below, wanting to be the very first to know if my Y-hang was insufficient. Fiona then followed me down and took the bolting gear to set up the traverse along the rift. At the first traverse bolt, the rope had ran out and we set to work using the short rope we'd brought down with us. As Fiona bolted, I ascended to Urinal Rock to grab some more gear. As I did so, I noticed a glaring problem: the rope rubbed. The thought of someone being on this rope I'd rigged and it snapping would haunt my dreams, so I knew a deviation was needed. We didn't have the gear for a deviation at this time, but I still tried to find a suitable natural. There was a sizeable flake that I liked the look of, but I wasn't sure. I tried climbing up to it to get a closer look and pulled on it. -
-The damned thing came off in my hands. About twice the size of my head, heavy and sharp. I sat back in the rift for a few seconds just in disbelief and then told Fiona to stand well back and that I was going to drop the flake. After she stood well out of harms way, I dropped it down the rift and it smashed into pieces into the streamway. We'd have to find something else for the deviation. -
-Fiona then continued bolting, eventually bolting three sections of the traverse. She used her jammer to look round a bend, finding a big chamber! I can't recall how large it was, but it certainly a surprise to me. My past experience with bolting traverses in expo has led to... well more rift. The fact that this one actually led somewhere was exciting. Unfortunately, the rope we had was not enough to set up another section of traverse and then descend into said chamber. The last bolt was already pushing our time and I did not want to be out after call out, so we resolved to come back and properly survey our findings at a later date. The day prior, however, I'd promised the SAP to Todd, so it would have to wait at least a few days. -
-For the name of the section, we came upon Brandywine Overpass. -
-As we prepared for our journey out of the cave, I noticed that I had left my pantin in my bag at the top. I was annoyed, but only a little. I'd survived the last expo without a pantin at all, it'd be fine. -
-The out journey without a pantin was no problem, but I did make some dumb mistakes, largely involving not looking where I was going. Twice I hit my shoulders on sharp rocks whilst prussiking and not looking, one time I prussiked up and hit my head very hard onto a flat ceiling. Annoyed at myself, I stopped to make sure I hadn't bitten my own tongue or cheeks in the process. -
-My ascent of Eye of Sauron before Fiona had given me a bit of headway, so I took a small break at the top of one of the later pitches to sing some Cavetown. None of his songs involve actual caves as far as I'm aware. After a few of these, Fiona caught up with me and we exited the cave at 6:45pm, 2 hours after we'd started to leave. -
-A good trip, we'd made progress though not nearly as much as I wanted to make, my main goals for the next trip were to survey it and to rig a deviation. Due to me giving the SAP away for the next day, the former would prove difficult. -
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This is a magic button that will take you to the bottom of the page!
--The day started slightly sadly after a night at Garlic: Harry had consumed ice cream illadvisably (and maybe was ill on top of that). So his stomach and his fever meant it was decided it was unwise for him to join us. Colin was stolen from Todd and Aila to become an extra mule for the many many metres of rope we expected to carry out. The plan was simple: Watershed ended in a sketchy duck and the lack of enthusiasm for pushing it meant we should really remove all the rope up to Strained by Gravity. It was going to be around 300 to 400m and probably some strenuous prusiking. Chi and Harry had also realised the disto was in calibration mode on their last pushing trip so our extra task was surveying the lead they had slightly killed. -
-We went in down Aidan's new Welsh Engineering route, guided by Colin. Though it was very pretty (cool 60 meter freehanging pitch down a tube) it was deemed probably not safe for a main route. The main pitch was in a noticeably drippy and it was a bit snaggy. This was a bit of a shame because as much as Wallace and Grommit have grown on me against my will Welsh Engineering was definitely more efficient. Let it also be noted that the water was very low at this point and the streamway peaceful and quiet below Grommit. -
-I took over the tour guiding at this point and showed Colin down Watershed, Chi and Liam nattering about something technical at the back. At the bottom of Strained by Gravity I instructed him to walk quickly through the section Chi calls 'The Gauntlet'. Colin looked at me like I was being silly: 'Its not even that drippy'. -
-After a fair bit of Caving we reached Chi's new traverses at around 3:30 and were pretty chuffed at our expediency. Chi and Liam arrived soon behind us in time for me to begin apologising as doing book was so slow. This theme continued but it was fun to see the new passage and seeing the duck at the end was a nice reward for finally getting down all the data. It was more promising than expected; a nice draft coming out of it and quite a few B leads which had potential for bypasses. -
-Our turnaround time of 7 had crept up on us so we had to leave the very bottom of watershed and contemplate the long derig out. This is where things stopped going to plan. -
-Chi began on the bits he and Harry had bolted, while I zoomed to the bottom of My Favourite things to wait for the bags to be passed out. Colin took a full bag and went on ahead. During this time feeling slightly guilty I decided I would offer to do the next section, up to the top of Alpine Showers. A slightly daunting task as I hadn't done any derigging on bolts and was pretty green at derigging in general. Ah well, I'd give it a go. -
-Eventually Chi and Liam turned up, went up the pitch and I began. The first pitch was fine, but the second bolt at the top started spinning as I undid the bolt. I abandoned the hanger and continued along the traverse, aware I was being pretty slow. Somewhere along the traverse, undoing a maillon I noticed the roaring of the waterfall - I always get paranoid at water noise. Better just check though: 'Chi! Is that getting louder'. He surprised me with a matter of fact: 'Yes, it is'. Oh fuck. -
-Having read Becca's trip report I checked my watch: 8:20. Apparently, as I learned later, 40 mil of rain started pouring on the surface at 7. At this point I should have abandoned the derigging and got the hell out of dodge but my decision making wasn't working perfectly. I sped up, shoving maillons and knots into the bag and not being as careful with points of attachments as I should have been. Chi shouts round the corner something about the waterfall getting bigger. He was going to get up it and out of there. I kept derigging, pretty frantically, one more bolt started spinning on the traverse and another at the top of the tiny pitch after the bottom of Alpine Showers, this time almost as I'd taken the hanger off. I cursed as I fumbled and dropped the nut on the next bolt. The noise of the water was deafening. Chi was shouting something at me down the pitch, so was Liam but I couldn't hear a thing. The waterfall down the bottom pitch was a torrent and at this point I was pretty goddamn scared. At least I had my layers in the bag with me, I could get through this. -
-At some point before expo I had a vague memory that Kai had made me promise not to ascend a pitch in a flood pulse. I knew what the middle pitch was like, pretty splashy at the best of times, it needed a deviation we'd never put in and I'm bad at avoiding water. Maybe I shouldn't so something stupid here. I finally gave up on the derigging, Chi was shouting at me something. Maybe: come up? I shouted 'IT'S TOO WET' a lot of times and heard clearly 'I KNOW!!'. Great. -
-At this point I'd resigned myself to at least a few hours alone at the bottom waiting out a flood pulse, no group shelter but I had warm clothes and I wasn't wet yet. The bottom of the rope I'd just derigged landed on a nice dry ledge: that's where I wanted to be. As I reached to put the maillon back in and rig it again I realised I couldn't use a spinning bolt with the nut almost off it. I was just contemplating the rope rub by rigging of the previous bolt and quietly singing My Favourite Things to myself when I saw Chi's light at the top of the pitch. He really wanted me to come up. Okay, plan change. -
-I ditched all the rope onto the ledge, knots with maillons and hangers in the pile with everything else. After a glance to check my layers were there I got going. Chi shouted something about not swinging into the water: okey dokey. I half prussiked half clung to the wall, relieved this pitch wasn't as wet as it looked. The waterfall was roaring right next to me but I was fine. I reached Chi, very very relieved to no longer be alone. -
-Chi leaned in to be heard, he was wet from the waist down but impressively calm. Right, we were going to get through this. I de-weighted the traverse so he could rerig is looser so it didn't pull you taught into the waterfall. He told me to watch what he did. In essence: climb up the right ledge as far as possible swing round the waterfall, now gushing like a split pipe out the right hand wall around three metres up the pitch. After that, prussik like hell. The ideal was to only get soaked legs. Chi swung but ended up in the waterfall, he was soaked but got to the top of the pitch. 'Not like that', okay I shouted, 'I'll do it my way'. My way wasn't better. -
-Steps one and two went well but my pantin and footloop popped off just under the waterfall, exactly as they had the last time I'd got dripped on on this pitch. This time it was a lot more than the splashback spray. Chi was shouting GO GO GO, and I wasn't moving up the rope. At this point I decided there was nothing for it and reached down to put back on my footloop. The waterfall was pounding on my helmet - I had to get out. I frogged like hell fresher-style and got up the pitch, completely soaked but not drowned. -
-Chi and I came to the same conclusion, abandon the derig, cave fast and get the hell out. Liam had also got soaked below the waist and this was dangerous. I met Colin along the rift and he greeted me with a cheery 'I'm completely dry!’*. Despite the look I gave him he and Liam were brilliant: cajoling me up pitches where my SRT was shaky with adrenaline. There was a lot of checking up on each other. -
-Up flowstone canyon I was a lot calmer but worried. I was properly exerted but only lukewarm and I knew Chi got hypothermia at the drop of a hat. At the junction I raided my layer bag to the dregs: Chi got my pufferjackets, I got spare thermals and a waterproof and in surprisingly high spirits we kept going. -
-The way out was shivery but cheerful. Moral was pretty high and we even stopped for noodles. Poor Liam and Colin were roasting at the pace we needed so there was a lot of sitting very close at pitchheads and transferring warmth. Still we laughed at the clusterfuck that had happened and kept caving out making not terrible time. -
-Chi's D and B was brilliant as always up Wallace and Grommit and for once I was looking forward to long pitches where: rather than the normal experience of sweating in no layers, this time I got back to a nice temperature. The final push and walk back to Garlic was very welcome. The first thing we did when there was reassure Harry we hadn't died. He knew that we’d headed into active streamway and watched the weather forecast change. -
-It sounds crazy but it was a brilliant trip, fun in adversity becomes more fun and we all got out safe. For one thing, Chi looked very funny in a green and purple jacket all the way round his head. Still, I'm definitely avoiding waterfalls for a little bit. -
-
-* addendum: Colin (fairly) pointed out that he was responding to me asking if he was okay and all irony was unintentional. -
-It was midday by the time faff and the walk to Homecoming passed, and we were off down the entrance series. It was a bit of time before we got to the corner traverse that we were going to drop down from. I scrambled down the rift to see if it could be climbed, but it ended at a 10m drop. We decided the best point was from the traverse, so Isaac set about bolting whilst Aila and I started to survey. -
-It didn’t take long to drop, and soon we were treated to the sound of Isaac whooping and saying “Hello my sweet prince!” Reunited with his descender, we set about looking at what was ahead, which was a few spacious chambers (including Cupids Cavern, which has lots of heart shaped formations), and a few rifts here and there. Around one corner was a phreatic tube, which we set about traversing into. Ahead it kept going at roof level, so we went a little way along, before deciding that the survey would have to take precedence. -
-Unfortunately and fortunately the SAP battery died, and we realised that we were at our turnaround time. So we headed out having surveyed ~100m of passage. -
-We headed to Homecoming, with Fiona and I walking ahead, veering off to the right, following the cairns and, at times, the spray paint. This was a mistake. We soon realised that we were not at all on the right track and that we were instead following the hunter's path. We saw Chi shouting to us from the actual Homecoming spot and for a bit we tried Bunda Bashing our way to them, but it was apparent that we should just walk back to where we were on track and carry on from there. Indeed, that's what we did. When we arrived at Homecoming my main goal was to figure out logistics, which involved setting up callout and getting the times sorted. I called basecamp and managed to secure an 11pm callout, having a similar time for getting to the Loser Alm for a pick up by Sarah. Isaac was apparently fine with this as well, which he confirmed when he arrived. If he was earlier than us, he'd try to get a ride with Jono. Else, he'd be with us. -
-I grabbed the relevant gear for the trip, cutting a good length of cord and getting a drill bit from Harry, who felt ill and was staying on the surface. Colin said he was doing a bounce trip and had gone in before anyone else. I took pictures of a Welsh Engineering description from Lara's phone to get a better idea of where to find the rope. After this, Lara and her group went in after Colin. We soon followed, wrapping our drill in my jacket as we didn't have a foam covering. The delay between Lara's group and Fiona and I was too, great, however. They would be going fast so they wouldn't be able to show us the way to the junction. -
-After Radagast, getting to the phreatic tube, I opened the description on my phone and began to read. I quickly realised it was useless to us for what we wanted. We want a way to get off the Welsh Underground route, whereas this was just a description of that route, plain and simple. Useful for that, but nowt else. I could therefore not tell where the junction would be. It was out of scope. -
-Fiona and I eventually descended onto a platform with two pitches. Facing the wall, the one on the left led to Welsh Engineering. Right? We went down to see what we'd fine. There was a climb followed by a very narrow squeeze which we quickly realised wasn't the way. As a result, we headed back. It became apparent to me that for our time constraint, we couldn't use the rope. -
-When we got to Urinal Rock, we started unpacking the bolting gear. It was at this point I realised another mistake: I'd left the drill bit at the top! We'd not be able to bolt a new deviation, though it did mean it was good we bailed on the rope. As such, I found a new natural to rig a deviation on. This time, it was a bridge of rock where I could pass a cord through. I stood at the bottom of the pitch with Fiona adjusting the knot to make the deviation more pronounced. When we were satisfied with how much it pulled the rope we tested it. First with my weight and me ascending, then with both of our weight. It held true! I was very pleased with this, but seeing as we needed to come back for a proper survey anyway, I was also keen to properly bolt it. -
-Fiona then drew a grade 1 survey of the Brandywine, including where we'd put the bolts. Worry not, this will be properly surveyed! After this, Fiona started to prussik out of the cave and I stayed behind to adjust the bolts of my Y-Hang. After I was satisfied, I followed. -
-The most frustrating part of the ascent was bashing my shoulder on the exact same spot on the exact same rock as the day before! That, I think, drove my frustration even more than the actual pain did. -
-But in any case, I got out in 2 hours at 5:30pm, popping out of the cave entrance a bit after Fiona did. We noticed the rainclouds appearing and quickly began packing out things away. As we did, I noticed a small hole in the bottom of my dry bag, not doubt a result of the metal ring breaking off my tackle sack. I made a mental note to contact Petzl about that. I put the drill into the dry bag alongside my caving clothes and put it in a further plastic bag under another waterproof cover, just to be safe. I took the battery back with me and found the drill bit on the ground where I had left it! -
-10 minutes after leaving, rain started to pour down. Even further into our hike, we saw flashes of light and the distant rumble of thunder, some of it being worryingly close. We knew, however, that it was faster to just walk back to the carpark from where we now were on the plateau. As the rain continued and we got more and more soaked, our spirits got more and more dour. We got a tad lost a few times, but these were trivial compared to our prior mistakes and we got off the plateau in only a few hours. After an hour of stoic walking against the wind and rain, we arrived at the Loser Alm at about the same time as Sarah, being very glad of the sight. The walks across the plateau had pained my knee greatly, the downhill track to the Loser Alm being agony. I was glad to be going down to Basecamp for a couple days rest. Hopefully the next journeys on the plateau would be less agonising and we'd be able to push our lead further! Next time, the callout would be 8am. -
-Armed with a crowbar and a lump hammer our plan was to investigate a promising dig that Nat and Sarah had found in the previous days. -
-The last 100m of navigation proved quite painful as thick swathes of bunde seemed keen to stop us reaching our destination but the devilish trees eventually yeilded and we found the hole as described under a large pine. -
-We got to work trying to remove the boulders but the rock wrestling was rather sheepish on account of the seemingly quite large drop directly underneath us. -
-Around this time Zac informed us that the distant thunderstorm in the datchstein direction was looking a lot less distant at that current moment and we decided it best to leave the large metal tools at the cave and return to Top Camp before it was upon us. -
-Cue a rather exciting plateau walk with sound of thunder encouraging quite a brisk pace all the way back to Stone(y) Bridge. -
-The day started slightly sadly after a night at Garlic: Harry had consumed ice cream illadvisably (and maybe was ill on top of that). So his stomach and his fever meant it was decided it was unwise for him to join us. Colin was stolen from Todd and Aila to become an extra mule for the many many metres of rope we expected to carry out. The plan was simple: Watershed ended in a sketchy duck and the lack of enthusiasm for pushing it meant we should really remove all the rope up to Strained by Gravity. It was going to be around 300 to 400m and probably some strenuous prusiking. Chi and Harry had also realised the disto was in calibration mode on their last pushing trip so our extra task was surveying the lead they had slightly killed. -
-We went in down Aidan's new Welsh Engineering route, guided by Colin. Though it was very pretty (cool 60 meter freehanging pitch down a tube) it was deemed probably not safe for a main route. The main pitch was in a noticeably drippy and it was a bit snaggy. This was a bit of a shame because as much as Wallace and Grommit have grown on me against my will Welsh Engineering was definitely more efficient. Let it also be noted that the water was very low at this point and the streamway peaceful and quiet below Grommit. -
-I took over the tour guiding at this point and showed Colin down Watershed, Chi and Liam nattering about something technical at the back. At the bottom of Strained by Gravity I instructed him to walk quickly through the section Chi calls 'The Gauntlet'. Colin looked at me like I was being silly: 'Its not even that drippy'. -
-After a fair bit of Caving we reached Chi's new traverses at around 3:30 and were pretty chuffed at our expediency. Chi and Colin arrived soon behind us in time for me to begin apologising as doing book was so slow. This theme continued but it was fun to see the new passage and seeing the duck at the end was a nice reward for finally getting down all the data. It was more promising than expected; a nice draft coming out of it and quite a few B leads which looked promising for bypasses. -
-Our turnaround time of 7 had crept up on us so we had to leave the very bottom of watershed and contemplate the long derig out. This is where things stopped going to plan. -
-Chi began on the bits he and Harry had bolted, while I zoomed to the bottom of My Favourite things to wait for the bags to be passed out. Colin took a full bag and went on ahead. During this time feeling slightly guilty I decided I would offer to do the next section, up to the top of Alpine Showers. A slightly daunting task as I hadn't done any derigging on bolts and was pretty green at derigging in general. Ah well, I'd give it a go. -
-Eventually Chi and Liam turned up, went up the pitch and I began. The first pitch was fine, but the second bolt at the top started spinning as I undid the bolt. I abandoned the hanger and continued along the traverse, aware I was being pretty slow. Somewhere along the traverse, undoing a Maillon I noticed the roaring of the waterfall - I always get paranoid at water noise. Better just check though: 'Chi! Is that getting louder'. He surprised me with a matter of fact: 'Yes, it is'. Oh fuck. -
-Having read Becca's trip report I checked my watch: 8:20. Apparently 40 mil of rain started on the surface at 7. At this point I should have abandoned the derigging and got the hell out of dodge but my decision making wasn't working perfectly. I sped up, shoving maillons and knots into the bag and not being as careful with points of attachments as I should have been. Chi shouts round the corner something about the waterfall getting bigger. He was going to get up it and out of there. I kept derigging, pretty frantically, one more bolt started spinning on the traverse and another at the top of the tiny pitch after the bottom of Alpine Showers, this time almost as I'd taken the hanger off. I cursed as I fumbled and dropped the nut on the next bolt. Chi was shouting something at me down the pitch, so was Liam but I couldn't hear a thing. The waterfall at the bottom pitch was an absolute torrent and at this point I was pretty goddamn scared. At least I had my layers in the bag with me, I could get through this. -
-At some point before expo I had a vague memory that Kai had made me promise not to ascend a pitch in a flood pulse. I knew what the middle pitch was like, pretty splashy at the best of times, it needed a deviation we'd never put in and I'm bad at avoiding water. Maybe I shouldn't so something stupid here. I finally gave up on the derigging, Chi was shouting at me something. Maybe: come up? I shouted 'IT'S TOO WET' a lot of times and heard clearly 'I KNOW!!'. Great. -
-At this point I'd resigned myself to at least a few hours alone at the bottom waiting out a flood pulse, no group shelter but I had warm clothes and I wasn't wet yet. The bottom of the rope I'd just derigged landed on a nice dry ledge: that's where I wanted to be. As I reached to put the maillon back in and rig it again I realised I couldn't use a spinning bolt with the nut almost off it. I was just contemplating the rope rub by rigging of the previous bolt and quietly singing My Favourite Things top myself when I saw Chi's light at the top of the pitch. He really wanted me to come up. Okay, plan change. -
-I ditched all the rope onto the ledge, knots with maillons and hangers in the pile with everything else. After a glance to check my layers were there I got going. Chi shouted something about not swinging into the water: okey dokey. I half prussiked half clung to the wall, relieved this pitch wasn't as wet as it looked. The waterfall was roaring right next to me but I was fine. I reached Chi, very very relieved to no longer be alone. -
-Chi leaned in to be heard, he was wet from the waist down but impressively calm. Right, we were going to get through this. I de-weighted the traverse so he could rerig is looser so it didn't pull you taught into the waterfall. He told me to watch what he did. In essence: climb up the right ledge as far as possible swing round the waterfall, now gushing like a split pipe out the right hand wall around three metres up the pitch. After that, prussik like hell. The ideal was to only get soaked legs. Chi swung but ended up in the waterfall, he was soaked but got to the top of the pitch. 'Not like that', okay I shouted, 'I'll do it my way'. My way wasn't better. -
-Steps one and two went well but my pantin and footloop popped off just under the waterfall, exactly as they had the last time I'd got dripped on on this pitch. This time it was a lot more than the splashback spray. Chi was shouting GO GO GO, and I wasn't moving up the rope. At this point I decided there was nothing for it and reached down to put back on my footloop. The waterfall was pounding on my helmet - I had to get out. I frogged like hell fresher-style and got up the pitch, completely soaked but not drowned. -
-Chi and I came to the same conclusion, abandon the derig, cave fast and get the hell out. Liam had also got soaked below the waist and this was dangerous. I met Colin along the rift and he greeted me with a cheery 'I'm completely dry!'. Despite the look I gave him he and Liam were brilliant: cajoling me up pitches where my SRT was shaky with adrenaline. There was a lot of checking everyone else was okay. -
-Up flowstone canyon I was a lot calmer but worried. I was properly exerted but only lukewarm and I knew Chi got hypothermia at the drop of a hat. At the junction I raided my layer bag to the dregs: Chi got my pufferjackets, I got spare thermals and a waterproof and in surprisingly high spirits we kept going. -
-The way out was shivery but cheerful. Moral was pretty high and we even stopped for noodles. Poor Liam and Colin were roasting at the pace we needed so there was a lot of sitting very close at pitchheads and transferring warmth. Still we laughed at the clusterfuck that had happened and kept caving out making not terrible time. -
-Chi's D and B was brilliant as always up Wallace and Grommit and for once I was looking forward to long pitches where: rather than the normal experience of sweating in no layers, this time I got back to a nice temperature. The final push and walk back to Garlic was very welcome, where we reassured Harry we hadn't died. -
-It sounds crazy but it was a brilliant trip, fun in adversity becomes more fun and we all got out safe. Still, I'm avoiding waterfalls for a little bit. -
-The walk to the ice cave is one of the more frustrating plateau walks and at points not entirely clear but we had luckily aquired Todd's GPS track to follow and after an hour and a bit we arrived. -
-We kitted up for the cave, I in Wookey's crampons and Liam in Harry's, and we trudged down the snow slope to the cave below. Liam's first response to the small icy mole-hills near the entrance were "fuck we've missed them, they've melted...", however turning the corner we were happy to find that was not the case. -
-Towering sentinels gathered in council rose up from the icy floor towards an impossibly high roof as the two of us wandered between their ranks. Liam started arranging lights around them and I got a bit distracted taking photgraphs instead of enjoying the sights but I eventually put my camera and phone away. -
-After a bit more wandering and contemplating how long I'd last in any of the icy-cold pools dotted around the chamber we decided we should probably head out if we wanted to back at basecamp at a reasonable hour. The walk back would've been uneventful were it not for the second thunderstorm of the day catching us halfway. Now truly sodden we made it back to the car park where we had a short but lovely conversation with the Loser sheep herder before a jolly Christopher, blasting his pirate music arrived to drive us down the hill. -
-Enthusiasm was surprisingly high at the entrance but had mostly been extinguished once the actual derigging commenced. Harry did a heroic job derigging the shockingly dangerous traverses beyond Swiss Cheese and we each headed out with a sizeable bag (Colin took two because he's young and 'ard). -
-The positive outcome of the trip was the realisation that the traverses may well have been unnecessary in the first place as the rift that passes through Swiss Cheese drops a short distance to a pleasant descending canyon which will probably connect to the base of Salamander Queen. -
-After a heroic day huddling from the rain, we set out to finally prospect, trudging up to tunnocks col, down, and back up again. James W, Zac, and Risa arrived first and successfully bullied the massive boulder out of the entrance to Nat and Sarah's promising shaft. -
-Rosa bolted and headed down first. Meanwhile I explored James W's nearby (10m awaY) discovery. I wriggled over a boulder that he had kicked into the entrance, gardened rocks down the slope, and found a very pleasent chamber - completly chocked out - that I decided would makje an excellent camp for anyone my sized. It even has a nice ledge in the entrance for storing gear. I did a sketch survey and named it Mercurial Mine in honour of the glistening water on the walls. -
-Back to the initial hole, rosa had arrived back at the surface without too much promise and a bit cold, so I went in. A dodgy single bolt descent took me into a lovly. very wide shaft (very slowly on the thick rope) and down onto the ice plug. Had ome fun slipping around and swinging across the roiom on the ice. I put a deviation directly on a spike of ice, and tried desending down a hole at the edge of the ice. After two meteres or so I decided it was a bit too dodgy. I shouted down and the echo was very unpromising. I could see 4 or 5 meteres further down, ending in boulders on a floor. I could imagine it is possible a crawl could lead on horizontally a meter above the floor, but there was no wasy of testing this without descending below some dodgy ice. Did a sketch. headed back out. shooted the disto down to the ice and measured an avarega of 21m vitrical hight. -
-rosa and james went off to survey pelvis pot. its a large open hole with a climb down on the north and south sides, there is a continuation on the east side which continues down a climb past a pelvis (gemze?) to a chossy end with a small tube on the left which also chokes out. -james taught rosa some surveying which ended in tears! -
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-We headed off towards the Promised Land. Very excited about the area that had apparently 'made backa smile'. All in all it was a bit hopless. Lots of masive long, deep rifts - around 7-12m deep, 2-6 m across - that would all appeared to chock out at the bottom. No evidence of anything horizontal. The most promising spot was a nice arch at the bottom of a wide rift that Rosa and I scrambled down to, but this did not go more than a few meters deep. I walked above all the major rifts and scrambled down into a few, witrhout promise. -My opinion is that the beds in the promiosed land are all poor in caves. And if there were any minor caves they would pop out very quickly. Searching on the northern side of the ridge may be more promising where the beds can be intercepted. -
-Some of the group explored Stoney Arch up there, then we headed back. Me James and Rose decided to return in a straight line by taking a bearing to Stoney Bridge. The platau monster did not approve of this decision and punished us with forests of bunder to swim thorugh. -
-We did however discover a very promising cave entrance. Turns out it was found by becka in 2004, and surveyed in 2013 by Alex Crow et al, but there is some ambiguity about whethjer it was killed off, and may be worth returning.The whole area around there appeared highly promising for cave entrances - though seems to be well prospected in the past. -
-Arrived at stoney as the first rain drops fell, througoulyu punished for our hubris for attempting a 'short cut'. - -
-I have uploaded a gpx file of my approximate path this day, made 3 daya later, called 'Prospect_day_3.8.24.gpx' -
-With some down time at base camp before the big de-rig we were looking for a non-strenuous activity to engage in. Inspired by Jono and the Balister's visit to Halstadt, we thought we'd visit the Altaussee equivalent. -However, several people wanted to come who had other priorities (Dickon and Harry), namely, retrieving kit. This meant we had to wait for them to finish, which was estimated to be around mid-afternoon. -
--The kit collecting team were done by early-afternoon so Tom, Rosa, James, and I rushed up to meet them at the mine. However, after Dickon rather bluntly asked "Do you speak English?" to the receptionist she explained that the next tour was for children and we'd have to come back at 4. -So we bummed off down to Altaussee for some Ice cream before heading back up. -
--Having forked out 22 euros for ticket, we were all marched through a turnstile and handed a overall jacket and trousers each. While putting these on, Dickon joked about how it felt like we were being sentenced to hard labour. Once changed, we were expected to wait in a small theatre room until everyone was ready, at which point a film about the mine explaining it's history and contemporary use was played, at the end of which the screen rolled up and the curtains behind brushed aside to reveal the entrance to the mine. -Our tour guide then stepped out and, in a pattern that would be repeated for the rest of the tour, explained first in German, then in English, about the mine and what we would be doing next. -
--In single file we marched into the mine where the air became colder and colder. After 350 meters, we were through the limestone layer and had made it to the salt. Magnificent multicolour layers of rock spiralled and swirled around each other while small formations bristled from between the seams. After a further 350 meters we reached another theatre room where we watched a video about the two salt extraction methods. The first and oldest, involves simply mining the salt and grinding it down. In the second method, bore holes are dug hundreds of meters into the salt and then water pumped in. The water dissolves the salt becoming brine which is then pumped out to a processing facility where it is dried back into pure salt. After the video, someone in the crowd asked how much salt was left and how much longer they could mine it for, to which the guide explained that they had dug bore holes over a thousand meters down and still not found the bottom of the deposit meaning they could continue to harvest for 2000 to 3000 years. -
--From the theatre room, we were marched onwards to a large chapel built from salt blocks in, what felt at the time, like a large chamber. Religious murals and decantry were strewn everywhere in classic catholic fashion. The guide explained that it was the miners chapel to saint Barbara, the patron saint of miners, and that he himself had been married there 24 years ago. He also explained that we should have been smelling a wonderful aroma of pine needles and salt but instead we had the even more wonderful aroma of cured pork as they were drying meats in a neighbouring room. -After the chapel, we moved to another room which housed an underground cabin that would put deep sleep to shame. Here there was an exhibit on the Nazi use of the mine as an art store and how it was all nearly destroyed but for the courage of the miners removing eight bombs just before the end of the war. -We then went down our first slid. Dickon, Tom and I were grouped together in a threesome and achieved some considerable speed. At the bottom of the slide, we marched through a tunnel of projected art works to the top of the next slide which dropped us into a truly vast chamber. This chamber housed a lake with an island in the middle adorned with musical paraphernalia. We were then all asked to be seated for a show during which the cavern was illuminated in a spectacular display of lights and sound. -It was at this point the tour was concluded and we were all marched back out of the mine. Many comments were made about how much warmer we got as we approached the entrance. Back in the mine buildings we changed out of our overalls and were handed a complimentary thimble of salt. -
--I had a brief conversation with Tom after which we both concurred that it was a worthwhile experience for the amount we had paid. There was also much conversation within the group about the possibility of a cavers tour and seeing even more of the mine. -Overall a good afternoon out. -
-- At around 4 pm we reached the eye of Sauron and came across the same issue Colin, Aden and I had earlier which was the survey device wouldn't reach the bottom. Regardless we continued down and ignored this slight issue. -This pitch was my first knot pass and i managed to get myself into a bit of a tangle. Using multiple mystery knots and a foot loop which included my cows tail to get below it . -
-By the time I got to the bottom it was around 5 pm I was quite damp and not happy. When the others got down the surveying continued and after a short pitch i began a decent on a longer pitch. -
-About 5 m down Lucy shouted 'don't risk getting wet'. -I was confused the pitch was pretty dry and looking down at the bottom there wasn't a stream way. -I then heard Lucy shout 'the waters coming! -CLIMB!!' -
-I had previously been listening to a relatively quiet cave, but i began to hear the sound of rushing water. It took a second or two from standard cave noise before this sound reached its maximum volume (which was very loud). -
-Some of the fastest SRT i have ever done got me to the top of the pitch where we then got into the group shelter. -
-Apparently Lucy's had initially thought the SRT i was doing was just really loud before realised it was water. -
-The first shelter set up was on a slope where we were all sat ontop of each other; there were a few bags beneath us for insulation. We had 2 shelters the second shelter was used to block the gap in the down hill slope. Other than the shelters i had no other warm gear , I was already wearing all my layers(as well as my under suit I had a skin on). I was also very happy i had been greedy that morning since i had 8 chocolate bars and a bag of sweets on me. -
-One of the big worries we had was that we didn't know if we were in the way of the flood. But we didn't really discuss this or other water related stories instead our time was taken up by talking about extractor fans. -
-At 7 pm the water had not died down but Lucy wanted to take a look around: So, she headed down the pitch i had hastily climbed up earlier. She returned 30 minuets later having deriged the pitches, but she was soaked. Supposedly she was regretful that she didn't manage to survey the pitches. -
-We then move the shelter to flatter ground, Lucy announced we couldn't miss our call-out so we should all climb up the eye of Sauron and out. The plan consisted of Lucy first, me second, Zac de-rigging at the back, don't stop or you will freeze. Lucy would also be taking the smaller shelter. -
-At 8 pm Lucy left, the shelter immediately got colder. About 10 m up the pitch she shouted at us 'dont follow me, i will change your call out to 8 am, you may have to wait many hours'. -
-At about 10 pm Zac announced we should do some engineering so we made a flat platform and got back in the shelter. Initially we were at opposite ends of the shelter. But we did end up spooning :). I was big spoon :( . -
-At 11 pm the sound of water got quieter on the pitch bellow but above us it was still as loud, we decided to wait longer. -I'm not sure if i was hearing cave trolls or something but i kept hearing occasional clicking. It also felt like mysterious water tubes were opening above us as the sound of gurgling water changed. -
-At 1 am I began shivering. Zac had already been shivering for some time and he decided to put another layer on. This was good for him but the communal warmth of the shelter did get lowered. Around this time we decided we would leave at 5 am. -
-Between 1-3 am we both also managed to get some sleep which surprised me since i thought i was awake the whole time. -
-At 3 am we decided it was too cold so we headed out. The amount of water coming down the eye of Sauron had not decreased since 11 pm. -
-The pitch took me about and hour. My hands were numb on the lower section where the rope swap was. My light also went into battery saving mode, and I had forgot to charge my emergency light. A quick battery swap solved this at the top of the pitch. -
-Near the top of Radaghast i remembered how we had not linked our survey up. -
-At 5 am i got to the surface just in time for lighting up, followed shortly by Zac. -
-We had managed to de-rig 4 pitches, had created an unlinked survey and spent 10 hours in a emergency shelter. -
Walked up to top camp in the evening ready for trip down -Balkonhoehle to get Mongol Raly rigged with Jono. I was somewhat -perplexed to find no sign of Jono, and still not as it went dark. He -eventually turned up about 10am the next morning. We had our gear to - carry over so it wasn't a particularly early start.
- -I had forgotten a load of the upper passages, but did at least -remember the obscure left turn for Honeycomb/Mongol Rally. Soon enough -we arrived at the end of the rigging part-way down hangmans, complete -with a rigging diag, some rope and a drill. Jono did this one, -complaining at the bottom that the bolts didn't match the diagram, -rigging a 2-bolt rebelay as a rather peculiar deviation. We realised -that we were starting part-way down the rigging diagram, not the top, -so he went back up to put it right whilst I continued to start Mongol -Rally. Dragging the gear through was the usual faff (someone should -just take a spade and make that crawl bigger).
- -So now it was my turn and I suited up with Anthony's nice new drill -and 125m of rope. The 25m didn't quite reach across the traverse with -a big thread round a boulder, so I put a bolt in the roof to improve -the rigging (another one just over the hole in the floor would make -the traverse line a lot more useful, I later realised). The rock was -impressively cheesy, with about 20mm of goo to remove before getting -to actual rock.
- -The rigging diagram suggested another bolt near the top so I added -one about 6m down on a nose to the right, only to realise that one had -probably already been done some previous year. I also realised at this -point that the tape on Anthony's drill bit was set rather too short -for reliable bolt-setting so adjusted it to give an extra 10mm of -hole. I then added another bolt on the left, replacing one in the -maximum rub-spot just under a lip (very odd placement). This finally -removed all the rubs on this top slope and actually made the -changeovers nicer, so I think it's an improvement.
- -Next dilemma was whether to use the bolt on a nose (with hanger -left behind) or the reflectored bolt on the well-used muddy route. The -nose was harder to get to but gave a nicer hang (and was suggested on -the rigging diagram). With a sling to help the changeover it actually -worked quite well, although maybe the obvious route would also work -fine - there is no way of knowing without trying both and I had faffed -enough by now. Continued down for another hour or so rigging -rebelays. The rigging guide is accurate. Hummed and hawed some more at -the odder bits of rigging trying to work out what 'better' might look -like. Left one bit (with a nearly horizontal deviation) some extra -rope to come back to and add a bolt if time allowed but pressed on -until the rope ran out, just on the same ledge that had had a knot -pass in 2022. Looks like that is where 100m gets you to.
- -We were out of time so called it a day and headed off out, only -realising on the way out that the rope bag we had left contained a -note 'top of mongol rally' in it so we had used the wrong one (misled -by the '25m' rope in the top matching the '25m' rope marked on the -topo for the traverse. Oh well.
- -Got out around 11:30, having had a very satisfying trip, Jono had -finally got underground and enjoyed himself. It was a chill trip with -almost zero stress, and we'd done enough to make a camping trip -feasible next time.
- -My adopt-a-cave for this year was GMH (Guten Morgon Höhle), having failed to sort it out last time I was here in 2022. And this was the last day available to get it done, so research was done down at base @@ -2132,77 +1436,765 @@ briskly down the hill for the final time this year, which was good because I really did have quite sore feet by the end of the day after more than 7km of that ridiculous pointy terrain. We even arrived in good time for Tess to rescue us and take us to a fine dinner
- -A canyonning trip was suggested, and as I'd done it a couple of -times before and thus knew where it was, and what to look out for, it -was easy to blag my way on. We had this idea a bit later in the day -than was ideal, because Strubklamm is miles away (most of the way back -to Salzburg), but it also meant that I was able to collect Tess from -the station before buggering off like a very naughty husband. I had -brought my new wetsuit and was eager to find out if it made Strubklamm -into a much less cold-and-miserable experience than previous -attempts. I was also able to borrow a (kayaking) helmet and neoprene -booties from Julia, which, combined with some sandals and spare caving -gloves, was enough kit to canyon (as this one doesn't actually need a -harness if you can manage an 8m jump).
- -We were going to take my van and Charlotte's car but Tess wanted -the Van, and it's a long way to take two cars, so when PhilB appeared -we pounced on him and made him drive all 5 of us there (Charlote in -the boot). This was very kind as it's about 1hr40 mins each way, and -he doesn't even get to do the canyon. Having a driver avoids all the -shuttle-faff too, which is great, especialy as it turned out the -huttle-road was closed for works, so there was quite a long -drive-around which would have made us even later.
- -This was Isaac and Charlotte's 1st ever canyonning trip, and -Marie's 2nd (after the disastrously cold 'Haute Borne' in the -Ardeche), but we were a crack team of potholers with two harnesses -between us so what could possibly go wrong?
- -In fact the descent was very smooth with everyone having fun, at -least to start with. The water was quite a pleasant temperature, -although every inlet was much colder so we got a chilly bit every so -often as they came in. However it is longer than I remember and there -is a _lot_ of swimming, with a long section in the middle starting -with a canyon, and then a couple more long swims. Clearly the local -canyonning school uses it a lot so there were lots of in-situ ropes -for getting to good takeoffs and dealing with any slippery bits, or -just abseiling if you didn't like the bigger jumps. (Marie skipped the -biggest one).
- -Much jumping fun was had, with Charlotte of course taking to the -game with gusto, although neither of us was any good at keeping the -water out of our noses on impact, and I managed to bite my tongue on -one jump, which was dim. Everyone avoided broken ankles or being -impaled on trees, just some coughing and spluttering.
- -I hardly recognised any of the 2nd half as obviously my brain had -shut down with the chilly misery on the previous two attempts after -the 1st long swim. This time it was all rather lovely - it is a _very_ -pretty canyon. Marie found herself a bit short of stoke after the 1st -half, partly due to the baggy 2mm wetsuit and partly not having -evtirely recovered from the great chunder trip. 1.4km of canyonning -(with ~400m of swimming) over 3 hours feels like quite a long -way, and it was a relief to swim round a corner and finally see a -slackline being rigged and a footbridge with a beach which marks the -escape.
- -Phil was even there to rescue us, so that all worked out -nicely. Good trip, and it's a lot nicer with 5 than 10 but still takes -a solid 3 hours. We got back about 7pm.
- ++I am very proud of my loaf, and indeed Marie said that in her opinion it was "the best bread so far"! Jono reports however that Marie told him she hated it... So I guess the question that remains is: +
+How well do you trust the expedition leader?
+The walk started off simply, and we soon found the bolt to mark the divergence from the official paths. The route description got us up to the Bunters Bulge, with the absence of any red markings mentioned. From here, the red markings were still not present, but there is a smattering of cairns to lead the way. A small amount of being lost later, and we were scrambling down to the original entrance, an impressively large entrance. The scramble towards Elephant entrance was helped by some stemples, and we soon found ourselves in the frigid draft, looking at a snow plug. +
+Kitted up with ice axes and crampons, we headed down the snow slope and into the Schneevulkanhalle. Wow, just Wow... The chamber itself would be impressive enough, but the ice formations were incredible. We wandered around and spent some time photographing the place. Some scrambling around, we found various pools of water in the glacier which we decided to not fall into. The far end of the chamber had an impressive false floor, which i walked over to to go underneath it, but was stopped by the ice under my feet sounding quite hollow, so I noped out of there. The next adventure was Harry and I climbing up the snow volcano, with Aila looking on disapprovingly at the Boys being Morons. I stopped half way up, deciding that it was quite steep. Harry, with less of a sense of self preservation, made it to the top, and some more photos were taken. Harry had a fun time coming down, the only time I've heard him admit to being scared. +
+After this, we headed back, creating a GPX track to make it easier for future expoers to find. We were told that sadly, impressive as it was, the formations were a shadow of their former selves. Go sooner rather than later. +
+The entrance series flew by, and I was having a great time reminiscing. Soon we headed up the small pitch into Propane Nightmares, and pressed on through the crawling (I had been promised minimal crawling), down and up some pitches and climbs, until we got to a patch of mud (I had also been promised no mud.) Not long after this, we got to Strained by Gravity. +
+At the bottom of this epic pitch series, I saw Harry and Ailas lights disappear down a passage, so I headed to it, finding a traverse that Aila would not have done without loud complaining, so I turned back. Chi told me that the way on was down below, so I opted to climb down an alternate way. Suddenly, my head was below my feet, and I tumbled 3m down a climb, landing on a bouldery floor. A distinct amount of swearing occurred whilst I tried to figure out what was broken. Chi rounded a corner at speed, highly concerned about my wellbeing. Rescue from here would not be fun. Although I was in a not insignificant amount of pain, nothing seemed to be broken, Chi fed me some sweets, and we pressed on. +
+The traverses were alright for my long legs, but Ailas short legs didn't enjoy them at all. We soon got to Camp, and set up the tent and sleeping bags. It was less than ideal, but we could squeeze in four. Then it was back up the pitch to start down Flowstone Canyon (thrutchy and awkward), Alpine Showers (traversy and awkward) and down some pitches (with awkward pitchheads) to the pushing front. +
+Chi set about bolting a traverse whilst Harry, Aila and I got the surveying kit out, finding a numbered station. The disto was produced, and I started to get ready to shoot the first leg, but noticed that the Disto was in calibration mode. Shit. We tried to get it into the proper mode but nothing we did worked. Double shit. +
+We deliberated on what to do, and finally settled on scooping and then coming back to survey at a later date. Aila was trained in surveying, with Harry showing her how to take notes, and me making up numbers, leading to a very odd cave. Chi dropped a pitch, which I followed him down, but the bottom led to more pitch, so Aila and I decided to head to camp. It was a long slog back to camp, and we arrived at 2330. Some pasta was had, and we turned in. Harry and Chi came back at 0100, and told us they'd dropped some more pitches and killed the lead. Arse. All that for nothing. +
+The next morning, we slowly got ready, dismantling camp. It was going to be a long slog up, and starting on the traverses was a tiring way to start. Strained by Gravity went by vaguely quickly, and soon we stopped to fill up bottles and have noodles. We got up the entrance series relatively quickly and exited finally around 1730 on the 28th. Not the best trip, but no one died. I'm sure there will be other trip reports for this trip. +
+Rosa placed the first bolt for the traverse line - her second ever bolt! - and I rebolted the pitch head (there were two spit there already but I couldn't find any nuts for them anywhere around HC or GC so lovely new fixe expansions it was! I dropped the 20m pitch down into a fair sized ledge with two ways on - I first opted to go the shorter dryer way with the hope it would connect round to the rest of the big aven, using less bolts and rope. One side of this pitchhead is a drilled thread, the other a lovely bolt. This got down to a perfect end of the 25m rope and lead to a 2m climb.This later turned out to be Snagged and Shagged. There wasn't any clear promising leads here so I left Rosa and James to make the rigging topo for me and explore the area while I went on to continue bolting the pot. +
+A perfect height pitchead was placed which felt a very reasonably distance from the ledge. Unfortunately, with the nature of the rock there was immediately some pretty shit rope rope. The next 15 minutes was spent trying to figure out how to ameliorate this. Lots of time was spent trying to create a deviation below and right, but nothing was far enough back to fix the hang without then making me abseil straight into a pool of water. While this faff was going on, a rock ((tatty hut little printer sized) which I previously been solidly heel hooking and holding decided to come loose, missing me but being very exciting when it hit the tacklebag and then hitting the deck. I abandoned hopes over here and decided to swing the other way into the drippy aven and found a nice fault for a ledge for my feet so placed a rebelay and then used that to help me swing across to a nice ledge in a dry area where I bolted a traverse across and then rigged a short pitch down to the streamway below. +
+It should be noted that while I'm doing this Rosa managed to almost climb down snagged and shagged into the bottom of the pot, except she got stuck and from the walls I could see her light and hear her shout for me to come and help her - not something I was in much position to do so James went to her aid. She also didn't sound like she was in any real peril, just mabe unable to get her way back out so I figured I could always head back up with the drill and rope if it were really necessary. +
+We named the pot Tiered Gerkin and the Streamway Bannaboat Streamway at the time, but since then and the time of writing this up we've renamed the pot Saruman. The streamway is unfortunately too short to be worth naming. + +Note for clarity: the streamway was too short because it immediately descended into the two pitches that precede the Eye of Sauron. +
+Turning up at expo on the night of The Dinner, I had expected a few days of festering, fettling, and carrying, but found myself agreeing to a 4 day camp with Nat D after he spotted me inspecting the Balcony map. +
+The next day we faffed and faffed some more, then set off well after noon in Sarah's car. The day was hot. I soaked myself in the waterfall to start the walk,carrying all of my camping and caving kit with trepidation. I loudly announced to the group that heat gives me diarrhoea- already feeling quite unsettled in the tummy. My previous walks in 2022 had left me dreading the length of the plateau walk. Fortunately the dread made the reality feel shorter than remembered. A breeze kept us cool as me Nat Sarah and Zak slowly trundled to top camp, nattering with Nat about all sorts of gossip. +
+We faffed some more at top camp, waiting for Jacob and Lara to join us from garlic camp, and I sat on the gryke hoping to shit as much as possible pre cave. +
+We set off for balcony in the early evening, and struggled under the heavy loads. We split into 2 teams: Nat Lara and I, Zac Jacob and Sarah (SEE ZAC'S REPORT OF HIS TRIP - FEATURING HAND JAMMERS AT HIGH VELOCITY). I said farewell to the light and was VERY happy to find the big balcony pitch rope thinner than 2022's - the Stop cramp only had to be relived every 40 seconds! +
+Then began the wiggling, sliding, slipping, and thrutching, descending and changing, clipping and crawling. +
+I had a mixed relationship with my 2 tackle bags, which I named The Toddler (small red) and The Teeneger (Becka's massive bag that matched my oversuit and apparently looked just like me - CAN I ADD A PICTURE HERE?). We had many disagreements in the crawls, and they enjoyed resting upsidedown on every ledge. NAt's 'purple juice' (meths) was resting at the very top of the teenager, and I've no idea what miracle kept it flying out onto Lara below. It defied gravity until it finally slipped out at rest at the very bottom of Mongol Rally. +
+We reached the camp sometime around midnight. I was shattered and provided very little help to Nat's attempt to bolt in 2 hammocks. The wind steamed down the passage and stole any remaining heat. By the time the other 3 turned up I was shivering strongly. +
+Then the first 'accident' was discovered. I had been putting off my urgent need for a poo for all evening. We looked around for the poo drum... kept looking... kept looking. And no one had it. We looked at our supplies. Resealable freezdried meal bags: perfect for shitting in. Porridge sashes: sort of papery. Deciding they made a decent 'glove' for wiping, we emptied all the porridge bags. Only after walking 10m up the passage did I discover the pile of biobags left there! Still the porridge sashes were required. I would not review them highly: more plastic than paper, but desperate times.... +
+I woke in the night even more uncomforatble than before, with a feeling of dread. I visited the 'toilet' and found blood every where. O dear. I hadn't been due my period for 2 weeks but life has its ways of punishing you. Explains how awful I felt the day before, and then. 4am wasn't the time to deal with this fact, so I returned to me sleeping bag, shattered, and restless for everyone to get up. +
+Get up they did, and I brought up my inconvenient fact. I felt mixed feelings to learn that Nat, Sarah and the first aid kit had a handful of tampons between them. I had never used a tampon. I did not think I would learn to use them in a grubby cold cave 100s of meters under ground. It did not go very well. +
+Feeling exhausted, sick, pained and cramping, I dragged myself through the day. I followed Nat and Lara to push an A lead in the north of Southern Pitstop +(SEE ZAC'S REPORT FOR THE OTHER TEAM'S DAY OF PUSHING). My attempt to do my bit was far more of a burden than a help, and I had tampon related disasters through the day, as well as the dreaded period poos, greatly exceeding the quota of 1.5 porridge sashes a day. +
+I did however bolt properly for the first time. I should probably have said no when Nat asked me to bolt a descent but I said alright. I suspended awkwardly over a large drop, struggling to find the arm strength to hold the drill out and install 3 bolts. I'm sure the others were very cold by the time I got to the bottom but it was, at least, a good learning experience. +
+I got changed for a piss by the waterfall - this would come back to haunt me later, then we ascended up the other side. +
+More slipping an thrutching. I was ready to turn around, but held on to the pushing front. We had some noddles and began to survey. +
+Despite sometimes hating caving, I do in fact love surveying. Although I probably failed to give the impression that day, I was very happy to take part in the surveying of 'Tampon turnaround' - aptly named for events there - with the honour of painting the red splodges. We turned an A lead into lots of Bs and Cs, but it kept going. I was very very close to my limit, and kept saying I would head back soon. After point 23 I pushed ahead a little bit, and a little bit more, and found the high passage narrowing to a puddle, and over the puddle to a toddler sized crawl. This final push ripped my PVC oversuit :,( and I was definitely beyond my limit, and decided to head out. +
+A rest at the snake stop, then I plodded back, struggling up the slopes under the weight of the drill. It crossed my mind that I normally find it hard to move with my stop on my D ring. I looked down. My stop was not on my D ring. Ah shit. +
+I trudged back to the snack stop - no sign yet of Lara and Nat, looked through all the bags. No stop. I headed back through the rifts, up the slopes. No stop. I looked again through the drill bag. No stop. +
+Ah well. Strongly suspecting (hoping) what had happened, there was nothing for it but to head to the rope and down prussick. Down prussicking was NOT fun. The rope was thick with mud, and every movement took an age to free my jammers. I had a small private cry halfway, for my period pain, but made it down. There was my stop, thanks be, at the point I had changed earlier. +
+Onwards, up the rope: stand, yank through the chest ascender, sit, repeat, with jammers refusing to grip. By this point Nat and Lara had caught up, so I waited and incredibly kindly they offered to take my bag. +
+I headed on as they derigged. This was my next mistake. 'Don't get lost' Nat said. I got lost. After the white aven there were many ways on. I follwed the muddy footsteps across and up, but grew suspicous. I decided it was safest to turn around. I turned around but did not find myslef back at the white aven. Two more tries and I was at a slope that looked familiar, so I headed up and reached two ways. I followed the muddy footsteps up, but grew suspicous. On your own it is very hard to trust yourself. I turned around, shattered, concerned. And, thank goodness, met Lara and Nat. I took back a tackle bag and we headed up the other junction, which we soon realised was wrong and returned up my way. Trudge, sigh, plod. +
+We reached the camp. The others were there already. Dinner. Jacob kindly said that, if no one else was willing, he would be happy to go out with me a day early. I was so grateful as there was no way I could stay longer. Shivering. Bed. (waking for toilet visits :,( ) +
+Rising at 9:40, the plan was revised: Zac would also leave too, using a microtraction as a jammer (having lost both hand jammer and pantin). Porridge. Noodles. Packing. Washing our gear in the muddy puddle. We headed off. I somehow managed to get lost finding the bottom of mongol rally, but eventually did. I heard zac calling from above, in pain. It took an age to dig out the ibruprofen, and I was shocked how slow I could prussick. It was misreable. Pantin uterly useless. Rope refusing to feed. Stand. Drag thtough chest asecnder. Sit. Ascenders slip. Ascenders grip. Repeat. I haven't prussicked this slowly since my first time. My tackle bag tangled itself in the down rope at a rebelay and I had to down prussick, to some strong words. A shocking anount of time later I reached zac on his ledge and got him the ibruprofen. And he taught me how to properly frog, and drag the rope through with your feet. I'm an idiot for never having learnt to do that before. Mongol Rally was slighlty improved. +
+We headed up, and up, and up, and finally huddled in the bivvy at the top. Hangman's was impressive (and cold). Honeycomb was much longer than I remember. Debating the way, succesfully, I was rather shocked to realise we were at the junction with hilti a plenti. I hadn't thought to imagine reaching the end. +
+Sarah's weather report had predicted a thunder storm that evening. We were fully prepared to huddle at the bottom of the entrance. But, to happy suprise, the drips were slow. I went last (regretting this offer, and desperately uncomfortable). But I had lot of time to sing as Jacob and Zac ascended. The happiest feeling of all, to see the shadow of light from the penultimate pitch, to haul off the final rope, to crawl out into a blue sky. +
+The evening was utterly beautiful. The forecast was wrong. Pink light filled the horizon, silhouetting mountains. The evening air still warm. Why would you go underground from this? To appreciate it more I suppose. +
+I was dizzy trudging back, Jacob kindly, patiently accompanying my stumbling. We reached Stoney Bridge as the light faded and stars brightened. Big Tom and Becka in residence, and Tom a saint making us food. Unbelievably happy to bin the tampon I had been using for far too long (I will never use one again - awful things!) and have some proper toilet paper. +
+We slept out under the shooting stars and milky way. Every time I woke, relieved, to have escaped balcony, and see brightness in the night's dark, under starlight. +
Lucy having already covered much of the trip in I will only fill in the gaps alluded to
++
Sarah, Jacob and I gave the other group a decent head start into Balkon which we soon extended by getting 'navigationally challenged' at the bottom on the entrance series. However, over-coming this we powered on towards the trident and honey-combe. There was a small incident just before the water refilling station where, due to our bags being so overly packed, a gas canister rolled out the top of Sarah's tackle sack. It stopped on it's own before I could grab it but still gave everyone involved a minor heart attack. There was some minor faffigating after the trident but we soon found the top of Honey-combe. From there it was a nylon highway. I struggled a little at the bottom of Honey combe and need Sarah to reel me in. We then extended the rope to make the next descent easier. It was at the bottom of hangmans that the trouble started. I had just done the traverse and was using my hand jammer to ascend to the crawl. I then unclipped it and moved it the next traverse line (as I had my hand jammer on my long cows). I then removed my long cows tail and watched in horror as my nice golden hand jammer plummeted onto the slop and slid down into the giant hole. There were a couple of seconds before I heard a loud 'chink'. Reconvening after the crawl (made fucking difficult by having to haul a giant over stuffed tackle sack) we agreed to keep going and possibly drop the hole tomorrow to look for my jammer. +It was then a short stroll to the top of Mongol Rally, which starts quite nicely but soon becomes several large pitches over a titanic drop. It was at the last rebelay that I had my next incident. When unclipping my foot loop from my snap gate, I had forgotten that I had my pantin on the same snap and so watched, again, in horror as another of my ascenders plummeted into a giant hole. +Absolutely furious at having lost over £100 (new) of kit I stormed into camp with the others to find Nat fettling with the hammocks. +After some noodles and smash, I all but passed out into a fitful nights sleep. +
+Having arrived into camp at 1:30 the night before, needles to say it was a late start the next day, made even later by all the faffing. Me, Jacob and Sarah would push a more vertical lead while Nat, Lucy and Lara would push a more horizontal one. +Kit assembled, the three of us headed out along the piss soaked Southern Pit-stop. Then was some Faffigating and a few wrong turns before we reached our lead. Jacob set the first two bolts leading to the pitch while I then took over and bolted and rigged the Y hang at the top of the pitch. It took ages to find two spots suitable amongst the cheese like rock. But once we had, and Sarah had re-tied my Y hang, I descended to the ledge bellow. Here I swiftly put in another bolt and fixed it with a fig-8 before clearing some space for Sarah to follow. Together we then looked for a suitable place for the next bolt to finish the Y hang and begin drop the next small pitch. The first bolt I tried set was fucked by virtue of the fact that the bolt it's self bent as I was hammering it in (probably because I was hammering at a different angle to the one I drilled). The bottom of this pitch didn't go anywhere save for a narrow horizontal rift. Surveying time. I had to ascend both legs to fulfil my role as dog and mark the first survey station. From there, I slowly re-descended with Jacob in tow operating the SAP. Once at the bottom again, I shimmied into the rift and was near frozen by the dramatic draft. The rift tightened after five meters into a sideways crawl which led into a narrow squeeze. I gardened some rubble out of the way to get this far. Beyond the squeeze was an even narrower (too narrow to pass) hole in the floor. This was the source of the draft. I dropped some rocks down and heard them clatter for ages. I even swear I heard one splosh. Once the survey was complete, we headed back up, Jacob de-rigging. Unfortunately, two of the bolts at the top of the pitch couldn't be loosened, even with a pair of pliers. This meant we lost two hangers. +Surveying done, we headed back to camp where we were the first back. To occupy ourselves, me and Jacob looked for loose rocks we could use to cover the mud slopes around camp. Unfortunately, when the others returned our efforts did not receive the thanks we had anticipated.
+It was another late start the following day. Having made the effort of getting down there (and scared to ascend) I wanted to try for another day, but Lara pointed out that I looked fucked, and, to be fair, I was. So I joined Lucy and Jacob on their early ascent. Using a Micro-traction I'd borrowed from Sarah as a hand jammer, we packed what we needed and set off to the wash spot. I led the way but after the first two pitches of Mongol Rally had to stop as my arms were killing me. I removed my Elbow pads as they were limiting my movement and then waited for Lucy to catch up so I could pinch some Painkillers. They worked wonders and it felt like no time at all before we reached the top of Mongol rally. +All our cleaning work was undone by the small crawl to the base of Hangman. I also had a look down the hole that swallowed my hand-jammer only to find that it was far to deep to drop. We then made our way out mostly at my pace. The rigging on Honey combe being a particular bastard for passing up. It also seemed to go on much longer than I remembered. From there it felt like a quick jaunt to the entrance series, the second pitch of which was a right bastard after 50 hours underground. +I was so happy to find that we had made it out in time to catch the sun and spent the night out sleeping on the plateau.
++With not much to do - no desire to explore a drippy lead with a very uncertain forecast and it being too claggy to achieve much prospecting we resolved to landscape garlic when we realised we were potentially going to be short on sleeping sports when the Watershed camp emerged that evening. We managed to level and expand the two person annex, build out the main areas width so there's more space, battle two camp beds, and Dickon leveled a one bed space down in Gollum's Hole where he setup a bed, read some of my book on the Geology of Snowdonia, and did a lot of napping. +
+In the evening, when it finally brightened up a bit, James, Dickon and I summitted the Kleiner Wildkogel. Dickon enjoyed tumbling the big loose rocks down the slope for the hell of it and it gave us a very interesting view of the plateau and an insight into the comples nature of the folding in the rock. We tried to assess new prospecting areas and it looked like along and up from Balkon and don the plateau to the thick Bunde areas would be the most promising. This was with a view to help Dickon with his prospecting the next day. +
+Upon waking, the inevitable morning faff ensued, accompanied by the perpetual roar of the gas stove. Bags packed & plans made, we left camp just before 11:00 on the 30th. +
+We split into 2 teams, with Chris & Jono going to bolt a pitch near camp, and Ellie, Becka & myself heading for Tartarus, where the previous team had stashed the second drill, along with the promise of draughting leads. +
+Making good time through Northern Powerhouse & Medusa's Maze, we arrived at an unnamed 4 way junction, where Becka said "There's some QMBs around here, maybe we should take a look in case we don't fancy the Tartarus leads" +It turned out we were in the wrong place, so after a bit of a mooch about, we continued down the passage, passing through the bottom of a big chamber and down a short handline to a very different passage type, interconnected parallel ramps with a Swiss-Cheesy nature. +This was the location of the leads Becka had mentioned, and she & Ellie soon disappeared up a rift to the North to investigate a QMB. +Whilst stood at this junction, I noticed some definite air movement, which was quickly attributed to an upwards ramp with a distinctive 'frog spawn' texture to the floor. +
+We followed the ramp, reaching a slippery step over an intersecting rift, with a climb down marked as a QMA on the left, and the ramp still continuing in front of us with a QMA marked at the top. +The far side of a second, more precarious step-over brought the exciting sight of untrodden mud, at the foot of a large boulder choke with the draught still beckoning. +
+A careful shimmy to the edge and & bridge across put me in uncharted territory, and after ducking under an arch I was in much bigger passage, 2 huge blocks looming over me blocking the way on, with an enticing black void above. +This presented an obvious barrier to further exploration, but after the echo coming back from a couple of shouts it was immediately clear we needed to investigate further. +
+I wriggled around under the choke for a while, finding a chimney narrow enough to bridge across, which I thrutched my way up, gaining the top of the first large block. +The further into the chamber I got, the bigger it seemed to grow (along with my excitement), whilst Becka & Ellie watched proceedings somewhat apprehensively from the floor below. +
+A second, much safer climb onto another jammed boulder entered the chamber properly, where I began to take in the scale of the place, trying (failing) to light it up, and bouncing echos off the walls. +I returned to the deck completely buzzing, trying to communicate what I'd just seen, and insisting we must return with a drill & rope asap! +
+This meant somewhat reluctantly slogging off to Tartarus, where we decided we'd make the most of the day checking out some leads in Ichthyes. We spent a while trying to work out the way to the pushing front, clambering up and down in the rift, before deciding we were liable to run out of time to do anything useful. We then returned to a QMB we had passed on the way, resulting in a very quick and satisfying loop closure between 2 leads, finding a hole down and the continuation of a draughting rift behind a pillar, before returning to camp. +
+A planned early start the next day was stalled slightly by Jono's alarm failing to go off, but we made up time with some much more direct route finding back to the foot of the boulder choke. +Becka & Ellie started surveying the connection, whilst I climbed back onto the large boulder and set about bolting a route up for them to follow. +I took my time with this, knowing I would be shortly marked on my work by Becka, arriving on the deck at the same time as Ellie came round the corner armed with the nail varnish. +
+We headed into the chamber, celebrating with snacks whilst deciding how to tackle the surveying. We chose convenient stations on top of the Tatty-Hut sized boulders, sending legs as far as the SAP could manage. +A large downwards rift forms the Western continuation of the chamber, but the rock of both walls at the would-be pitch head is fairly crap, so this will require some thought. +
+Back at the entry point, heading East across more boulders revealed more promising leads; a "black hole" downwards spotted by Becka whilst surveying, and a mouth-like opening with a strong draught in the Northern corner which captured my attention as soon as I found it. +Grabbing the drill & our last scraps of rope, I rigged and descended the awkward pitch head, sliding between the waterworn 'teeth' into the (horizontal!) passage below, naming this the Dental Floss pitch. +
+There were 2 ways on from here; the continuation of the main passage straight on , and a small hole choked with mud to the right, which I promptly dug out to reveal a short drop to a second pitch, and some audible water dripping somewhere ahead. +
+Heading along the main passage, we reached a junction with a pillar; left leading down a steep slope covered with a thick layer of virgin mud, & right upslope leading to another junction with a switchback connecting to the small hole with dripping water described earlier. Here there were some interesting mud formations which we duly protected with the scrap of conservation tape we had remaining, before turning left up a short scramble to another right hand bend. +
+Upon turning this corner, we were immediately hit with the strongest draught I have felt in any cave, setting the tone for the next few steps across a pristine white traverse, the passage rapidly enlarging as we went... +
+This spat us out on a ledge overlooking a hole which left me totally lost for words; a pitch plunging away below, and an aven towering above. +Much whooping and revelling in the echos followed, before taking some photos and surveying as far as we could reach (very little!). +
+Underequipped and running out of time, we returned downslope, following the ramp back past the junction we'd entered from, for some very slippery surveying on the thick mud. +Reaching the bottom, I spotted what looked like freshly gardened rocks, and Becka then noticed the climb up on the right, which was the QMA we'd left immediately before entering the boulder choke that morning! This resulted in a very satisfying loop closure to finish the day, at which point I deployed the tactical miniature cave whisky, which I'd been saving in my oversuit for exactly such a moment. +
+Returning to camp in good spirits, we passed the evening with many noodles and the remainder of the hot chocolate, setting an alarm for 6:30 for the trip out. +In the morning, Becka & Jono raced ahead, whilst Chris, Ellie & I plodded up, arriving at the surface around 17:00, just in time to get stuck in a thunder storm at top camp. +
+Having vowed I was done with deep caving for this expo after the prussik up, it took all of 12 hours for the rose tinted glasses to go on, and back at base camp planning began for a return to the newly discovered shaft... +
+I am a very sad man with too much time on his hands... +
+James and I surveyed what we thought was the final pitch while Aidan added a deviation. I complained greatly while surveying much to Aidan's entertainment who had bolted it. Once in the stream way bolting kit was packed up as we prepared for an easy surveying waltz down a stream way. +
+Aidan found another pitch where I asked if I could bolt. Of I went expecting a short pitch nice and easy. I got to a re-belay and started yelling it keeps going as there was another hole below me little did we know how big it actually was. I got to the ledge and started to prepare to abseil into a rift bolted the pitch head and then went why am I doing this walked over to the edge of the ledge to set up a much nicer hang, very scary. + +I shouted at James and Aidan that its huge and keeps going and we don't have enough rope. Neither quite realised how big. I kept asking if Aidan wanted a look and he seemed uninterested until I pestered him enough where he promptly looked over the edge where he told us that we didn't realise how cool our find was as we had found a 80m hypo-genic tube. Our 30m rope got barely a 1/3 of the way down. +
+I was sent out of the cave to tell people of our find and collect food, water bolts, batteries and rope. With eguipment acquired I ran back to homecoming to see the others exiting. Bags were packed flapjack was eaten, cooling down was required and once everything was ready to go I had to try and get a call out. After much hair pulling and phoning round I got a call-out so we were good to go. James had decided he wanted to go back to base which was probably a sensible decision so me and Aidan pushed on. +
+Aidan added an extra bolt to the top of the eye of Sauron where he handed me all the heavy bolting kit in case he needed to prussik out. Our 40m rope which was now down the pitch was still very short so a 30m rope was taken down by Aidan. Much bullying was required to get Aidan to go down the pitch as he was being a wus his words not mine he thanked me alter so its all good. Once the rope was free it was my turn where I was equally terrified but couldn't back down after bullying Aidan down. Descending was relatively straightforward until the knot pass. Doing a knot pass 40m below a pitch head and 20m above the floor makes a simple manoeuvrer terrifying. At the bottom of the pitch Aidan asked me to swing over a boulder where I was like, what do you mean, as I'm hanging in free space. I descended onto solid floor which was a relief where we clambered onto the boulder to make another pitch down into another big chamber with a false floor. +
+The new pitch head was bolted with a combination of me and Aidan resulting in lightning bolting. This is where we decided to call the series Welsh Engineering due to all the people bar James, sorry James, were from a Welsh university. At the next pitch another deep hole opens out into nothing where we has high hopes of going deeper than the rest of the cave which was not to be. midway down the next pitch as I was looking for a re-belay. I spied a bolt in front of my face to much confusion and annoyance. I quickly realised I had been here before as I was at the bolt traverse I had pushed with Dickon 2 days before. I proceeded to have a 5 minute tantrum that our lead did a big loop collected myself and dropped to the bottom of the pitch to say I was at the bottom. +
+This bottom bit was bolted badly due to my frustration although it is still safe. We promptly called it a day and ran out of the cave trying to conserve energy. Exiting at 11:30. The eye of Sauron is pleasantly easy on the way out even with the knot pass. Resulting in an exit in less than 45 minutes. Once at garlic we clattered around trying to get to bed as quickly as possible waking Adam and disturbing Fiona sorry guys. +
+At the bottom of the streamway and along about 10m we found a small sledge with a 10m pitch down to another ledge and a seemingly bottomless space below. Colin bolted the way down while James and I surveyed. We joined Colin on a ledge with a prow of rock sticking out into a seemingly bottomless hole. My torch's light on boost mode couldn't make out the bottom! I was incredibly psyched about this find - we were in a massive vertical hypogenic phreatic tube!! This could surely only mean there was a massive lead waiting for us down at the bottom! +
+Unfortunately, when we lowered the rest of our 40m rope down from the pitchead we could see the end dangling in space, looking not even halfway down! It was very very scary looking down such a void from such a small prow of rock! +
+We decided that we certainly needed more drill battery, bolts, and rope to push this and that would require us leaving the cave. That and James wanted a lift down the hill that evening, which we'd already arranged. Colin set off first on the way out, with the goal of heading straight to GC to get the needed resources while James and I followed him out. We left all the bolts, rope and kit at the bottomless hole so speed our ascent out, but not before James and I tried to survey it - but we were thwarted by endless 'Laser Reading Failed' error messages when we fired down the hole. +
+James and I made our way out and within a few minutes of James surfacing, Colin had arrived with more kit and some more food!! I started packing the rope bags and bolts while James dekitted and Colin rekitted up. We check James knew what he was doing before we parted ways and he started to walk across the plateau and Colin and I descended back down. When we got back to what we would later name The Eye of Sauron, we re rigged the traverse into the pitchhead using the 11m rope, I placed a second bolt for the pitchhead (being quite nervous of the drop by me all the while) we rigged it and again hand over hand lowered the rope down to see how far it got. 38m of hanging rope and still no end in sight. I rechecked the rigging, armed with a 30m rope in a tacklebag, and after a lot of whimpering/complaining and some bullying from Colin I descended down. It should be noted I had no bolting kit on me because I knew for a certainty I couldn't reach a wall tom place a rebelay and I didn't want the extra weight on me if for whatever reason I had to changeover and head back up. +
+When I got close to the knots in the end, with a locked off simple and not much joy in what I was doing (only fear and trepidation) did I join the ropes together to form a knot pass and hand-over-hand lower the end of the 30m rope down to the bottom. It was hard to figure out if the rope touched the bottom. Committed to the pitch I abbed down to the bottom and called rope free. To my dismay I had landed on a rocky floor with only a tiny C-lead style rift ahead. Nevertheless I let Colin head down because if I had to reascend this, he had too! +
+As I was waiting I realised the big boulder I had spotted on the way down was only a few metres above me and I thought I had seen a big space beyond, so with some spotting from Colin as I made some moves up the snappy rock to the boulder and was relieved to see that there was large passage that continued on. We bolted as a team here - me with the hammer and bolts, Colin with the drill and tube and we got 3 bolts in 5 minutes ready for the short descent onto the boulder-y false floor below us. In the same style we placed a bolted for a descending traverse line to a pitchhead at a narrow rift with a clear load of space below. Since I had the honours of descending the big pitch we agreed Colin would do the next pitch. +
+To both our dismay, when Colin was roughly 20m down he shouted he could see bolts! and then had a small tantrum when he realised this was the bolt traverse he had belayed Dickon across the other day!! +
+A little disheartened we decided to keep dropping the canyon, using the bolts from the traverse to make a very wide rebelay, and to see where we ended up. This ended on a big old rock wedged in the canyon, forming a nice ledge. With it being late and our bags now significantly lighter with many less bolts and metres of rope, we made our way out. Colin being a trooper took out most of the bolting kit. I believe, being pretty lightweight, it took me only about half an hour from here to get to the surface. +
+Before I had left I'd told Colin I'd wait 45 mins for him at the surface before I got concerned. Well Cutting-it-close Colin lived up to the name and with 7 minutes to spare! We both dekitted and in silent, tired awe at what we had found that day walked up to GC where we stargazed and enjoyed some mobile data before disturbing Fiona and Adam in bed around midnight in the camp - we were too tired to manage being remotely quiet so we just tried to be loud for as little time as possible. +
+What. A. Day. +
+In packing my stuff, I discovered the dark chocolate caving snack in the barrels and by god after a taste I knew it would be one of my go-to snacks this expo, on the side of gorp. +
+We walked down to Homecoming, Fiona and I this time not taking our walking poles with us, and started our descent. The coolness of the cave, even at the entrance, was a great change from the stifling heat of the surface, especially in all of our caving gear. +
+I went through the cave system following the others, so did not take as much notice of the names of the pitches as I should have done, which would have made future descriptions of the cave far easier when trying to figure out routes. I believe the route we took in was called the Welsh Engineering Route. In any case, after the first few entrance pitches, we deviated from the main route by taking the a white rope instead of a green rope (upon checking the description now, a few days later, this pitch appears to be Radagast). Instead of going straight down, we followed a rebelay into a traverse into a small phreatic chamber, where we waited for the rest of our group. Here, I put my buff fully on, covering my head as well as my neck, anticipating the further cold. From here, we found a junction where we went right. We came across another downhill junction where we took the left. At the end of this I believe there was a very downhill pitch head with a short traverse section and a deviation rigged off a natural very early on. We popped down and immediately went down a small dusty crawl, taking the next left. A traverse bolt on the left of the wall and a Y-hang on the right, we came into the pitch head for Saruman (with all the pitch head names aside from Eye of Sauron, I'm just taking from the description now). A few more pitches followed this one, which I can't recall too clearly, but at some point there was an upstream pool where Aidan advised us to dip our descenders into to cool them down. We all did so. +
+After a traverse to another pitch, we came to the Eye of Sauron. In hindsight, it feels a lot like Mount Doom. There is a traverse and then a rope leading straight from one side of the wall to the pitch Y-hang. This rope hangs over a small walkway, the cave itself almost leading you to the great drop below. I should have brought my One Ring prop so I could re-enact one of the many endings of Return of the King! Alas, I didn't. So we went down, having little trouble with the knot pass most of the way down the rope. Descending to the very bottom of the Eye of Sauron isn't the way to go, as there's a big climb following. The goal would be to descend to the top of the climb and use the rope to pull yourself over, as the rope is bolted there too. +
+This is where we started our surveying. Luckily, there was a nice platform where I could sit and put my bag as I put my coat and balaclava on, as well as have some of that amazing dark chocolate. Definitely buying some for myself! I acted as the instrument for the surveying, with Fiona acting as book, Aidan as dog. Colin forged on ahead for some bolting work, to meet us at the bottom. +
+The surveying was cold work, but all straightforward. Sometimes the vertical readings didn't function at all, the SAP refusing to work. So we just put them as question marks. In addition, the SAP had a scrolling option that worked by tilting. You could tilt either way, but it would only scroll one way. A bit annoying, Every now and then I found myself in settings, at which point I just had to turn the thing off and on again. We got to a false floor, so on surveying we always were clipped in to a traverse line. At the end of this section, I tried getting a vertical distance down the pitch but the SAP wouldn't have it! So we called it there and just went straight down. +
+The wall was a bit muddy and had a few rebelays. In addition, there was a rope protector attached as otherwise the rope would be sliced on a particularly sharp section of rock. We got down to a large rock where Colin was waiting. It was a large chamber with a few leads and a nice streamway ahead. We named the rock Urinal Rock. Not the nicest name, but nature called. +
+I liked the look of the rift going off to the left, hoping to visit it again. +
+We headed back up, eventually getting to a rebelay named Rivendell. This had a green rope traversing to the left that lead to the main route. This had many awkward, horizontal passages. I remember shuffling on my butt to the left for a good while, trying to keep my position good whilst also not getting my bag stuck. At one point, we had to go down again to go up again! I should really know the names of the pitches here. Eventually we came back up Radagast and, being very tired, I was very happy to hear that we could see the other rope for the Welsh Engineering Route. We came out and saw off Colin and Aidan, who were heading down the hill. We updated our callout with basecamp and set off, getting to Garlic camp safe and sound, but still tired from the cave and the plateau walk. Curries never taste better than after a caving trip. +
+On going down the Eye of Sauron, I told Fiona to wait and shine her headtorch down the great pitch after a minute of descent, at which point I leaned over the hole, attached to the traverse line of course, and took a picture with my own light off. All the while very worried I'd drop my phone. Fortunately this did not happen and we got a really good picture out of it, though I'm disappointed at the actual camera quality, but what can you do? +
+We arrived at Urinal Rock at around 1:30pm and we looked into the rift that we had seen the day before. I remembered on the journey down that the rebelay onto the rock had some coiled up rope at the end and so instead of starting our rigging at the rock, we simply extended the pitch down to the rift. We used the hammer on various sections of rock on our way down, but neither of us liked the sound of them. Eventually, I got to a small platform in the rift. I walked to the edge of the platform and tried the hammer on two opposing rock walls. Success! The rock sounded good! I got to work drilling the bolts and setting up a Y-hang. I made some small mistakes during this, such as not flattening the rock properly for the anchor and bolting at a slight angle. Simple and really annoying stuff. It ate much of our time as I used the sharper end of the hammer to correct my mistakes. After I rigged these, I descended from them to a further platform down below, wanting to be the very first to know if my Y-hang was insufficient. Fiona then followed me down and took the bolting gear to set up the traverse along the rift. At the first traverse bolt, the rope had ran out and we set to work using the short rope we'd brought down with us. As Fiona bolted, I ascended to Urinal Rock to grab some more gear. As I did so, I noticed a glaring problem: the rope rubbed. The thought of someone being on this rope I'd rigged and it snapping would haunt my dreams, so I knew a deviation was needed. We didn't have the gear for a deviation at this time, but I still tried to find a suitable natural. There was a sizeable flake that I liked the look of, but I wasn't sure. I tried climbing up to it to get a closer look and pulled on it. +
+The damned thing came off in my hands. About twice the size of my head, heavy and sharp. I sat back in the rift for a few seconds just in disbelief and then told Fiona to stand well back and that I was going to drop the flake. After she stood well out of harms way, I dropped it down the rift and it smashed into pieces into the streamway. We'd have to find something else for the deviation. +
+Fiona then continued bolting, eventually bolting three sections of the traverse. She used her jammer to look round a bend, finding a big chamber! I can't recall how large it was, but it certainly a surprise to me. My past experience with bolting traverses in expo has led to... well more rift. The fact that this one actually led somewhere was exciting. Unfortunately, the rope we had was not enough to set up another section of traverse and then descend into said chamber. The last bolt was already pushing our time and I did not want to be out after call out, so we resolved to come back and properly survey our findings at a later date. The day prior, however, I'd promised the SAP to Todd, so it would have to wait at least a few days. +
+For the name of the section, we came upon Brandywine Overpass. +
+As we prepared for our journey out of the cave, I noticed that I had left my pantin in my bag at the top. I was annoyed, but only a little. I'd survived the last expo without a pantin at all, it'd be fine. +
+The out journey without a pantin was no problem, but I did make some dumb mistakes, largely involving not looking where I was going. Twice I hit my shoulders on sharp rocks whilst prussiking and not looking, one time I prussiked up and hit my head very hard onto a flat ceiling. Annoyed at myself, I stopped to make sure I hadn't bitten my own tongue or cheeks in the process. +
+My ascent of Eye of Sauron before Fiona had given me a bit of headway, so I took a small break at the top of one of the later pitches to sing some Cavetown. None of his songs involve actual caves as far as I'm aware. After a few of these, Fiona caught up with me and we exited the cave at 6:45pm, 2 hours after we'd started to leave. +
+A good trip, we'd made progress though not nearly as much as I wanted to make, my main goals for the next trip were to survey it and to rig a deviation. Due to me giving the SAP away for the next day, the former would prove difficult. +
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++The day started slightly sadly after a night at Garlic: Harry had consumed ice cream illadvisably (and maybe was ill on top of that). So his stomach and his fever meant it was decided it was unwise for him to join us. Colin was stolen from Todd and Aila to become an extra mule for the many many metres of rope we expected to carry out. The plan was simple: Watershed ended in a sketchy duck and the lack of enthusiasm for pushing it meant we should really remove all the rope up to Strained by Gravity. It was going to be around 300 to 400m and probably some strenuous prusiking. Chi and Harry had also realised the disto was in calibration mode on their last pushing trip so our extra task was surveying the lead they had slightly killed. +
+We went in down Aidan's new Welsh Engineering route, guided by Colin. Though it was very pretty (cool 60 meter freehanging pitch down a tube) it was deemed probably not safe for a main route. The main pitch was in a noticeably drippy and it was a bit snaggy. This was a bit of a shame because as much as Wallace and Grommit have grown on me against my will Welsh Engineering was definitely more efficient. Let it also be noted that the water was very low at this point and the streamway peaceful and quiet below Grommit. +
+I took over the tour guiding at this point and showed Colin down Watershed, Chi and Liam nattering about something technical at the back. At the bottom of Strained by Gravity I instructed him to walk quickly through the section Chi calls 'The Gauntlet'. Colin looked at me like I was being silly: 'Its not even that drippy'. +
+After a fair bit of Caving we reached Chi's new traverses at around 3:30 and were pretty chuffed at our expediency. Chi and Liam arrived soon behind us in time for me to begin apologising as doing book was so slow. This theme continued but it was fun to see the new passage and seeing the duck at the end was a nice reward for finally getting down all the data. It was more promising than expected; a nice draft coming out of it and quite a few B leads which had potential for bypasses. +
+Our turnaround time of 7 had crept up on us so we had to leave the very bottom of watershed and contemplate the long derig out. This is where things stopped going to plan. +
+Chi began on the bits he and Harry had bolted, while I zoomed to the bottom of My Favourite things to wait for the bags to be passed out. Colin took a full bag and went on ahead. During this time feeling slightly guilty I decided I would offer to do the next section, up to the top of Alpine Showers. A slightly daunting task as I hadn't done any derigging on bolts and was pretty green at derigging in general. Ah well, I'd give it a go. +
+Eventually Chi and Liam turned up, went up the pitch and I began. The first pitch was fine, but the second bolt at the top started spinning as I undid the bolt. I abandoned the hanger and continued along the traverse, aware I was being pretty slow. Somewhere along the traverse, undoing a maillon I noticed the roaring of the waterfall - I always get paranoid at water noise. Better just check though: 'Chi! Is that getting louder'. He surprised me with a matter of fact: 'Yes, it is'. Oh fuck. +
+Having read Becca's trip report I checked my watch: 8:20. Apparently, as I learned later, 40 mil of rain started pouring on the surface at 7. At this point I should have abandoned the derigging and got the hell out of dodge but my decision making wasn't working perfectly. I sped up, shoving maillons and knots into the bag and not being as careful with points of attachments as I should have been. Chi shouts round the corner something about the waterfall getting bigger. He was going to get up it and out of there. I kept derigging, pretty frantically, one more bolt started spinning on the traverse and another at the top of the tiny pitch after the bottom of Alpine Showers, this time almost as I'd taken the hanger off. I cursed as I fumbled and dropped the nut on the next bolt. The noise of the water was deafening. Chi was shouting something at me down the pitch, so was Liam but I couldn't hear a thing. The waterfall down the bottom pitch was a torrent and at this point I was pretty goddamn scared. At least I had my layers in the bag with me, I could get through this. +
+At some point before expo I had a vague memory that Kai had made me promise not to ascend a pitch in a flood pulse. I knew what the middle pitch was like, pretty splashy at the best of times, it needed a deviation we'd never put in and I'm bad at avoiding water. Maybe I shouldn't so something stupid here. I finally gave up on the derigging, Chi was shouting at me something. Maybe: come up? I shouted 'IT'S TOO WET' a lot of times and heard clearly 'I KNOW!!'. Great. +
+At this point I'd resigned myself to at least a few hours alone at the bottom waiting out a flood pulse, no group shelter but I had warm clothes and I wasn't wet yet. The bottom of the rope I'd just derigged landed on a nice dry ledge: that's where I wanted to be. As I reached to put the maillon back in and rig it again I realised I couldn't use a spinning bolt with the nut almost off it. I was just contemplating the rope rub by rigging of the previous bolt and quietly singing My Favourite Things to myself when I saw Chi's light at the top of the pitch. He really wanted me to come up. Okay, plan change. +
+I ditched all the rope onto the ledge, knots with maillons and hangers in the pile with everything else. After a glance to check my layers were there I got going. Chi shouted something about not swinging into the water: okey dokey. I half prussiked half clung to the wall, relieved this pitch wasn't as wet as it looked. The waterfall was roaring right next to me but I was fine. I reached Chi, very very relieved to no longer be alone. +
+Chi leaned in to be heard, he was wet from the waist down but impressively calm. Right, we were going to get through this. I de-weighted the traverse so he could rerig is looser so it didn't pull you taught into the waterfall. He told me to watch what he did. In essence: climb up the right ledge as far as possible swing round the waterfall, now gushing like a split pipe out the right hand wall around three metres up the pitch. After that, prussik like hell. The ideal was to only get soaked legs. Chi swung but ended up in the waterfall, he was soaked but got to the top of the pitch. 'Not like that', okay I shouted, 'I'll do it my way'. My way wasn't better. +
+Steps one and two went well but my pantin and footloop popped off just under the waterfall, exactly as they had the last time I'd got dripped on on this pitch. This time it was a lot more than the splashback spray. Chi was shouting GO GO GO, and I wasn't moving up the rope. At this point I decided there was nothing for it and reached down to put back on my footloop. The waterfall was pounding on my helmet - I had to get out. I frogged like hell fresher-style and got up the pitch, completely soaked but not drowned. +
+Chi and I came to the same conclusion, abandon the derig, cave fast and get the hell out. Liam had also got soaked below the waist and this was dangerous. I met Colin along the rift and he greeted me with a cheery 'I'm completely dry!’*. Despite the look I gave him he and Liam were brilliant: cajoling me up pitches where my SRT was shaky with adrenaline. There was a lot of checking up on each other. +
+Up flowstone canyon I was a lot calmer but worried. I was properly exerted but only lukewarm and I knew Chi got hypothermia at the drop of a hat. At the junction I raided my layer bag to the dregs: Chi got my pufferjackets, I got spare thermals and a waterproof and in surprisingly high spirits we kept going. +
+The way out was shivery but cheerful. Moral was pretty high and we even stopped for noodles. Poor Liam and Colin were roasting at the pace we needed so there was a lot of sitting very close at pitchheads and transferring warmth. Still we laughed at the clusterfuck that had happened and kept caving out making not terrible time. +
+Chi's D and B was brilliant as always up Wallace and Grommit and for once I was looking forward to long pitches where: rather than the normal experience of sweating in no layers, this time I got back to a nice temperature. The final push and walk back to Garlic was very welcome. The first thing we did when there was reassure Harry we hadn't died. He knew that we’d headed into active streamway and watched the weather forecast change. +
+It sounds crazy but it was a brilliant trip, fun in adversity becomes more fun and we all got out safe. For one thing, Chi looked very funny in a green and purple jacket all the way round his head. Still, I'm definitely avoiding waterfalls for a little bit. +
+
+* addendum: Colin (fairly) pointed out that he was responding to me asking if he was okay and all irony was unintentional. +
+It was midday by the time faff and the walk to Homecoming passed, and we were off down the entrance series. It was a bit of time before we got to the corner traverse that we were going to drop down from. I scrambled down the rift to see if it could be climbed, but it ended at a 10m drop. We decided the best point was from the traverse, so Isaac set about bolting whilst Aila and I started to survey. +
+It didn’t take long to drop, and soon we were treated to the sound of Isaac whooping and saying “Hello my sweet prince!” Reunited with his descender, we set about looking at what was ahead, which was a few spacious chambers (including Cupids Cavern, which has lots of heart shaped formations), and a few rifts here and there. Around one corner was a phreatic tube, which we set about traversing into. Ahead it kept going at roof level, so we went a little way along, before deciding that the survey would have to take precedence. +
+Unfortunately and fortunately the SAP battery died, and we realised that we were at our turnaround time. So we headed out having surveyed ~100m of passage. +
+We headed to Homecoming, with Fiona and I walking ahead, veering off to the right, following the cairns and, at times, the spray paint. This was a mistake. We soon realised that we were not at all on the right track and that we were instead following the hunter's path. We saw Chi shouting to us from the actual Homecoming spot and for a bit we tried Bunda Bashing our way to them, but it was apparent that we should just walk back to where we were on track and carry on from there. Indeed, that's what we did. When we arrived at Homecoming my main goal was to figure out logistics, which involved setting up callout and getting the times sorted. I called basecamp and managed to secure an 11pm callout, having a similar time for getting to the Loser Alm for a pick up by Sarah. Isaac was apparently fine with this as well, which he confirmed when he arrived. If he was earlier than us, he'd try to get a ride with Jono. Else, he'd be with us. +
+I grabbed the relevant gear for the trip, cutting a good length of cord and getting a drill bit from Harry, who felt ill and was staying on the surface. Colin said he was doing a bounce trip and had gone in before anyone else. I took pictures of a Welsh Engineering description from Lara's phone to get a better idea of where to find the rope. After this, Lara and her group went in after Colin. We soon followed, wrapping our drill in my jacket as we didn't have a foam covering. The delay between Lara's group and Fiona and I was too, great, however. They would be going fast so they wouldn't be able to show us the way to the junction. +
+After Radagast, getting to the phreatic tube, I opened the description on my phone and began to read. I quickly realised it was useless to us for what we wanted. We want a way to get off the Welsh Underground route, whereas this was just a description of that route, plain and simple. Useful for that, but nowt else. I could therefore not tell where the junction would be. It was out of scope. +
+Fiona and I eventually descended onto a platform with two pitches. Facing the wall, the one on the left led to Welsh Engineering. Right? We went down to see what we'd fine. There was a climb followed by a very narrow squeeze which we quickly realised wasn't the way. As a result, we headed back. It became apparent to me that for our time constraint, we couldn't use the rope. +
+When we got to Urinal Rock, we started unpacking the bolting gear. It was at this point I realised another mistake: I'd left the drill bit at the top! We'd not be able to bolt a new deviation, though it did mean it was good we bailed on the rope. As such, I found a new natural to rig a deviation on. This time, it was a bridge of rock where I could pass a cord through. I stood at the bottom of the pitch with Fiona adjusting the knot to make the deviation more pronounced. When we were satisfied with how much it pulled the rope we tested it. First with my weight and me ascending, then with both of our weight. It held true! I was very pleased with this, but seeing as we needed to come back for a proper survey anyway, I was also keen to properly bolt it. +
+Fiona then drew a grade 1 survey of the Brandywine, including where we'd put the bolts. Worry not, this will be properly surveyed! After this, Fiona started to prussik out of the cave and I stayed behind to adjust the bolts of my Y-Hang. After I was satisfied, I followed. +
+The most frustrating part of the ascent was bashing my shoulder on the exact same spot on the exact same rock as the day before! That, I think, drove my frustration even more than the actual pain did. +
+But in any case, I got out in 2 hours at 5:30pm, popping out of the cave entrance a bit after Fiona did. We noticed the rainclouds appearing and quickly began packing out things away. As we did, I noticed a small hole in the bottom of my dry bag, not doubt a result of the metal ring breaking off my tackle sack. I made a mental note to contact Petzl about that. I put the drill into the dry bag alongside my caving clothes and put it in a further plastic bag under another waterproof cover, just to be safe. I took the battery back with me and found the drill bit on the ground where I had left it! +
+10 minutes after leaving, rain started to pour down. Even further into our hike, we saw flashes of light and the distant rumble of thunder, some of it being worryingly close. We knew, however, that it was faster to just walk back to the carpark from where we now were on the plateau. As the rain continued and we got more and more soaked, our spirits got more and more dour. We got a tad lost a few times, but these were trivial compared to our prior mistakes and we got off the plateau in only a few hours. After an hour of stoic walking against the wind and rain, we arrived at the Loser Alm at about the same time as Sarah, being very glad of the sight. The walks across the plateau had pained my knee greatly, the downhill track to the Loser Alm being agony. I was glad to be going down to Basecamp for a couple days rest. Hopefully the next journeys on the plateau would be less agonising and we'd be able to push our lead further! Next time, the callout would be 8am. +
+Armed with a crowbar and a lump hammer our plan was to investigate a promising dig that Nat and Sarah had found in the previous days. +
+The last 100m of navigation proved quite painful as thick swathes of bunde seemed keen to stop us reaching our destination but the devilish trees eventually yeilded and we found the hole as described under a large pine. +
+We got to work trying to remove the boulders but the rock wrestling was rather sheepish on account of the seemingly quite large drop directly underneath us. +
+Around this time Zac informed us that the distant thunderstorm in the datchstein direction was looking a lot less distant at that current moment and we decided it best to leave the large metal tools at the cave and return to Top Camp before it was upon us. +
+Cue a rather exciting plateau walk with sound of thunder encouraging quite a brisk pace all the way back to Stone(y) Bridge. +
+The day started slightly sadly after a night at Garlic: Harry had consumed ice cream illadvisably (and maybe was ill on top of that). So his stomach and his fever meant it was decided it was unwise for him to join us. Colin was stolen from Todd and Aila to become an extra mule for the many many metres of rope we expected to carry out. The plan was simple: Watershed ended in a sketchy duck and the lack of enthusiasm for pushing it meant we should really remove all the rope up to Strained by Gravity. It was going to be around 300 to 400m and probably some strenuous prusiking. Chi and Harry had also realised the disto was in calibration mode on their last pushing trip so our extra task was surveying the lead they had slightly killed. +
+We went in down Aidan's new Welsh Engineering route, guided by Colin. Though it was very pretty (cool 60 meter freehanging pitch down a tube) it was deemed probably not safe for a main route. The main pitch was in a noticeably drippy and it was a bit snaggy. This was a bit of a shame because as much as Wallace and Grommit have grown on me against my will Welsh Engineering was definitely more efficient. Let it also be noted that the water was very low at this point and the streamway peaceful and quiet below Grommit. +
+I took over the tour guiding at this point and showed Colin down Watershed, Chi and Liam nattering about something technical at the back. At the bottom of Strained by Gravity I instructed him to walk quickly through the section Chi calls 'The Gauntlet'. Colin looked at me like I was being silly: 'Its not even that drippy'. +
+After a fair bit of Caving we reached Chi's new traverses at around 3:30 and were pretty chuffed at our expediency. Chi and Colin arrived soon behind us in time for me to begin apologising as doing book was so slow. This theme continued but it was fun to see the new passage and seeing the duck at the end was a nice reward for finally getting down all the data. It was more promising than expected; a nice draft coming out of it and quite a few B leads which looked promising for bypasses. +
+Our turnaround time of 7 had crept up on us so we had to leave the very bottom of watershed and contemplate the long derig out. This is where things stopped going to plan. +
+Chi began on the bits he and Harry had bolted, while I zoomed to the bottom of My Favourite things to wait for the bags to be passed out. Colin took a full bag and went on ahead. During this time feeling slightly guilty I decided I would offer to do the next section, up to the top of Alpine Showers. A slightly daunting task as I hadn't done any derigging on bolts and was pretty green at derigging in general. Ah well, I'd give it a go. +
+Eventually Chi and Liam turned up, went up the pitch and I began. The first pitch was fine, but the second bolt at the top started spinning as I undid the bolt. I abandoned the hanger and continued along the traverse, aware I was being pretty slow. Somewhere along the traverse, undoing a Maillon I noticed the roaring of the waterfall - I always get paranoid at water noise. Better just check though: 'Chi! Is that getting louder'. He surprised me with a matter of fact: 'Yes, it is'. Oh fuck. +
+Having read Becca's trip report I checked my watch: 8:20. Apparently 40 mil of rain started on the surface at 7. At this point I should have abandoned the derigging and got the hell out of dodge but my decision making wasn't working perfectly. I sped up, shoving maillons and knots into the bag and not being as careful with points of attachments as I should have been. Chi shouts round the corner something about the waterfall getting bigger. He was going to get up it and out of there. I kept derigging, pretty frantically, one more bolt started spinning on the traverse and another at the top of the tiny pitch after the bottom of Alpine Showers, this time almost as I'd taken the hanger off. I cursed as I fumbled and dropped the nut on the next bolt. Chi was shouting something at me down the pitch, so was Liam but I couldn't hear a thing. The waterfall at the bottom pitch was an absolute torrent and at this point I was pretty goddamn scared. At least I had my layers in the bag with me, I could get through this. +
+At some point before expo I had a vague memory that Kai had made me promise not to ascend a pitch in a flood pulse. I knew what the middle pitch was like, pretty splashy at the best of times, it needed a deviation we'd never put in and I'm bad at avoiding water. Maybe I shouldn't so something stupid here. I finally gave up on the derigging, Chi was shouting at me something. Maybe: come up? I shouted 'IT'S TOO WET' a lot of times and heard clearly 'I KNOW!!'. Great. +
+At this point I'd resigned myself to at least a few hours alone at the bottom waiting out a flood pulse, no group shelter but I had warm clothes and I wasn't wet yet. The bottom of the rope I'd just derigged landed on a nice dry ledge: that's where I wanted to be. As I reached to put the maillon back in and rig it again I realised I couldn't use a spinning bolt with the nut almost off it. I was just contemplating the rope rub by rigging of the previous bolt and quietly singing My Favourite Things top myself when I saw Chi's light at the top of the pitch. He really wanted me to come up. Okay, plan change. +
+I ditched all the rope onto the ledge, knots with maillons and hangers in the pile with everything else. After a glance to check my layers were there I got going. Chi shouted something about not swinging into the water: okey dokey. I half prussiked half clung to the wall, relieved this pitch wasn't as wet as it looked. The waterfall was roaring right next to me but I was fine. I reached Chi, very very relieved to no longer be alone. +
+Chi leaned in to be heard, he was wet from the waist down but impressively calm. Right, we were going to get through this. I de-weighted the traverse so he could rerig is looser so it didn't pull you taught into the waterfall. He told me to watch what he did. In essence: climb up the right ledge as far as possible swing round the waterfall, now gushing like a split pipe out the right hand wall around three metres up the pitch. After that, prussik like hell. The ideal was to only get soaked legs. Chi swung but ended up in the waterfall, he was soaked but got to the top of the pitch. 'Not like that', okay I shouted, 'I'll do it my way'. My way wasn't better. +
+Steps one and two went well but my pantin and footloop popped off just under the waterfall, exactly as they had the last time I'd got dripped on on this pitch. This time it was a lot more than the splashback spray. Chi was shouting GO GO GO, and I wasn't moving up the rope. At this point I decided there was nothing for it and reached down to put back on my footloop. The waterfall was pounding on my helmet - I had to get out. I frogged like hell fresher-style and got up the pitch, completely soaked but not drowned. +
+Chi and I came to the same conclusion, abandon the derig, cave fast and get the hell out. Liam had also got soaked below the waist and this was dangerous. I met Colin along the rift and he greeted me with a cheery 'I'm completely dry!'. Despite the look I gave him he and Liam were brilliant: cajoling me up pitches where my SRT was shaky with adrenaline. There was a lot of checking everyone else was okay. +
+Up flowstone canyon I was a lot calmer but worried. I was properly exerted but only lukewarm and I knew Chi got hypothermia at the drop of a hat. At the junction I raided my layer bag to the dregs: Chi got my pufferjackets, I got spare thermals and a waterproof and in surprisingly high spirits we kept going. +
+The way out was shivery but cheerful. Moral was pretty high and we even stopped for noodles. Poor Liam and Colin were roasting at the pace we needed so there was a lot of sitting very close at pitchheads and transferring warmth. Still we laughed at the clusterfuck that had happened and kept caving out making not terrible time. +
+Chi's D and B was brilliant as always up Wallace and Grommit and for once I was looking forward to long pitches where: rather than the normal experience of sweating in no layers, this time I got back to a nice temperature. The final push and walk back to Garlic was very welcome, where we reassured Harry we hadn't died. +
+It sounds crazy but it was a brilliant trip, fun in adversity becomes more fun and we all got out safe. Still, I'm avoiding waterfalls for a little bit. +
+The walk to the ice cave is one of the more frustrating plateau walks and at points not entirely clear but we had luckily aquired Todd's GPS track to follow and after an hour and a bit we arrived. +
+We kitted up for the cave, I in Wookey's crampons and Liam in Harry's, and we trudged down the snow slope to the cave below. Liam's first response to the small icy mole-hills near the entrance were "fuck we've missed them, they've melted...", however turning the corner we were happy to find that was not the case. +
+Towering sentinels gathered in council rose up from the icy floor towards an impossibly high roof as the two of us wandered between their ranks. Liam started arranging lights around them and I got a bit distracted taking photgraphs instead of enjoying the sights but I eventually put my camera and phone away. +
+After a bit more wandering and contemplating how long I'd last in any of the icy-cold pools dotted around the chamber we decided we should probably head out if we wanted to back at basecamp at a reasonable hour. The walk back would've been uneventful were it not for the second thunderstorm of the day catching us halfway. Now truly sodden we made it back to the car park where we had a short but lovely conversation with the Loser sheep herder before a jolly Christopher, blasting his pirate music arrived to drive us down the hill. +
+Enthusiasm was surprisingly high at the entrance but had mostly been extinguished once the actual derigging commenced. Harry did a heroic job derigging the shockingly dangerous traverses beyond Swiss Cheese and we each headed out with a sizeable bag (Colin took two because he's young and 'ard). +
+The positive outcome of the trip was the realisation that the traverses may well have been unnecessary in the first place as the rift that passes through Swiss Cheese drops a short distance to a pleasant descending canyon which will probably connect to the base of Salamander Queen. +
+After a heroic day huddling from the rain, we set out to finally prospect, trudging up to tunnocks col, down, and back up again. James W, Zac, and Risa arrived first and successfully bullied the massive boulder out of the entrance to Nat and Sarah's promising shaft. +
+Rosa bolted and headed down first. Meanwhile I explored James W's nearby (10m awaY) discovery. I wriggled over a boulder that he had kicked into the entrance, gardened rocks down the slope, and found a very pleasent chamber - completly chocked out - that I decided would makje an excellent camp for anyone my sized. It even has a nice ledge in the entrance for storing gear. I did a sketch survey and named it Mercurial Mine in honour of the glistening water on the walls. +
+Back to the initial hole, rosa had arrived back at the surface without too much promise and a bit cold, so I went in. A dodgy single bolt descent took me into a lovly. very wide shaft (very slowly on the thick rope) and down onto the ice plug. Had ome fun slipping around and swinging across the roiom on the ice. I put a deviation directly on a spike of ice, and tried desending down a hole at the edge of the ice. After two meteres or so I decided it was a bit too dodgy. I shouted down and the echo was very unpromising. I could see 4 or 5 meteres further down, ending in boulders on a floor. I could imagine it is possible a crawl could lead on horizontally a meter above the floor, but there was no wasy of testing this without descending below some dodgy ice. Did a sketch. headed back out. shooted the disto down to the ice and measured an avarega of 21m vitrical hight. +
+rosa and james went off to survey pelvis pot. its a large open hole with a climb down on the north and south sides, there is a continuation on the east side which continues down a climb past a pelvis (gemze?) to a chossy end with a small tube on the left which also chokes out. +james taught rosa some surveying which ended in tears! +
+
+
+We headed off towards the Promised Land. Very excited about the area that had apparently 'made backa smile'. All in all it was a bit hopless. Lots of masive long, deep rifts - around 7-12m deep, 2-6 m across - that would all appeared to chock out at the bottom. No evidence of anything horizontal. The most promising spot was a nice arch at the bottom of a wide rift that Rosa and I scrambled down to, but this did not go more than a few meters deep. I walked above all the major rifts and scrambled down into a few, witrhout promise. +My opinion is that the beds in the promiosed land are all poor in caves. And if there were any minor caves they would pop out very quickly. Searching on the northern side of the ridge may be more promising where the beds can be intercepted. +
+Some of the group explored Stoney Arch up there, then we headed back. Me James and Rose decided to return in a straight line by taking a bearing to Stoney Bridge. The platau monster did not approve of this decision and punished us with forests of bunder to swim thorugh. +
+We did however discover a very promising cave entrance. Turns out it was found by becka in 2004, and surveyed in 2013 by Alex Crow et al, but there is some ambiguity about whethjer it was killed off, and may be worth returning.The whole area around there appeared highly promising for cave entrances - though seems to be well prospected in the past. +
+Arrived at stoney as the first rain drops fell, througoulyu punished for our hubris for attempting a 'short cut'. + +
+I have uploaded a gpx file of my approximate path this day, made 3 daya later, called 'Prospect_day_3.8.24.gpx' +
+With some down time at base camp before the big de-rig we were looking for a non-strenuous activity to engage in. Inspired by Jono and the Balister's visit to Halstadt, we thought we'd visit the Altaussee equivalent. +However, several people wanted to come who had other priorities (Dickon and Harry), namely, retrieving kit. This meant we had to wait for them to finish, which was estimated to be around mid-afternoon. +
++The kit collecting team were done by early-afternoon so Tom, Rosa, James, and I rushed up to meet them at the mine. However, after Dickon rather bluntly asked "Do you speak English?" to the receptionist she explained that the next tour was for children and we'd have to come back at 4. +So we bummed off down to Altaussee for some Ice cream before heading back up. +
++Having forked out 22 euros for ticket, we were all marched through a turnstile and handed a overall jacket and trousers each. While putting these on, Dickon joked about how it felt like we were being sentenced to hard labour. Once changed, we were expected to wait in a small theatre room until everyone was ready, at which point a film about the mine explaining it's history and contemporary use was played, at the end of which the screen rolled up and the curtains behind brushed aside to reveal the entrance to the mine. +Our tour guide then stepped out and, in a pattern that would be repeated for the rest of the tour, explained first in German, then in English, about the mine and what we would be doing next. +
++In single file we marched into the mine where the air became colder and colder. After 350 meters, we were through the limestone layer and had made it to the salt. Magnificent multicolour layers of rock spiralled and swirled around each other while small formations bristled from between the seams. After a further 350 meters we reached another theatre room where we watched a video about the two salt extraction methods. The first and oldest, involves simply mining the salt and grinding it down. In the second method, bore holes are dug hundreds of meters into the salt and then water pumped in. The water dissolves the salt becoming brine which is then pumped out to a processing facility where it is dried back into pure salt. After the video, someone in the crowd asked how much salt was left and how much longer they could mine it for, to which the guide explained that they had dug bore holes over a thousand meters down and still not found the bottom of the deposit meaning they could continue to harvest for 2000 to 3000 years. +
++From the theatre room, we were marched onwards to a large chapel built from salt blocks in, what felt at the time, like a large chamber. Religious murals and decantry were strewn everywhere in classic catholic fashion. The guide explained that it was the miners chapel to saint Barbara, the patron saint of miners, and that he himself had been married there 24 years ago. He also explained that we should have been smelling a wonderful aroma of pine needles and salt but instead we had the even more wonderful aroma of cured pork as they were drying meats in a neighbouring room. +After the chapel, we moved to another room which housed an underground cabin that would put deep sleep to shame. Here there was an exhibit on the Nazi use of the mine as an art store and how it was all nearly destroyed but for the courage of the miners removing eight bombs just before the end of the war. +We then went down our first slid. Dickon, Tom and I were grouped together in a threesome and achieved some considerable speed. At the bottom of the slide, we marched through a tunnel of projected art works to the top of the next slide which dropped us into a truly vast chamber. This chamber housed a lake with an island in the middle adorned with musical paraphernalia. We were then all asked to be seated for a show during which the cavern was illuminated in a spectacular display of lights and sound. +It was at this point the tour was concluded and we were all marched back out of the mine. Many comments were made about how much warmer we got as we approached the entrance. Back in the mine buildings we changed out of our overalls and were handed a complimentary thimble of salt. +
++I had a brief conversation with Tom after which we both concurred that it was a worthwhile experience for the amount we had paid. There was also much conversation within the group about the possibility of a cavers tour and seeing even more of the mine. +Overall a good afternoon out. +
++ At around 4 pm we reached the eye of Sauron and came across the same issue Colin, Aden and I had earlier which was the survey device wouldn't reach the bottom. Regardless we continued down and ignored this slight issue. +This pitch was my first knot pass and i managed to get myself into a bit of a tangle. Using multiple mystery knots and a foot loop which included my cows tail to get below it . +
+By the time I got to the bottom it was around 5 pm I was quite damp and not happy. When the others got down the surveying continued and after a short pitch i began a decent on a longer pitch. +
+About 5 m down Lucy shouted 'don't risk getting wet'. +I was confused the pitch was pretty dry and looking down at the bottom there wasn't a stream way. +I then heard Lucy shout 'the waters coming! +CLIMB!!' +
+I had previously been listening to a relatively quiet cave, but i began to hear the sound of rushing water. It took a second or two from standard cave noise before this sound reached its maximum volume (which was very loud). +
+Some of the fastest SRT i have ever done got me to the top of the pitch where we then got into the group shelter. +
+Apparently Lucy's had initially thought the SRT i was doing was just really loud before realised it was water. +
+The first shelter set up was on a slope where we were all sat ontop of each other; there were a few bags beneath us for insulation. We had 2 shelters the second shelter was used to block the gap in the down hill slope. Other than the shelters i had no other warm gear , I was already wearing all my layers(as well as my under suit I had a skin on). I was also very happy i had been greedy that morning since i had 8 chocolate bars and a bag of sweets on me. +
+One of the big worries we had was that we didn't know if we were in the way of the flood. But we didn't really discuss this or other water related stories instead our time was taken up by talking about extractor fans. +
+At 7 pm the water had not died down but Lucy wanted to take a look around: So, she headed down the pitch i had hastily climbed up earlier. She returned 30 minuets later having deriged the pitches, but she was soaked. Supposedly she was regretful that she didn't manage to survey the pitches. +
+We then move the shelter to flatter ground, Lucy announced we couldn't miss our call-out so we should all climb up the eye of Sauron and out. The plan consisted of Lucy first, me second, Zac de-rigging at the back, don't stop or you will freeze. Lucy would also be taking the smaller shelter. +
+At 8 pm Lucy left, the shelter immediately got colder. About 10 m up the pitch she shouted at us 'dont follow me, i will change your call out to 8 am, you may have to wait many hours'. +
+At about 10 pm Zac announced we should do some engineering so we made a flat platform and got back in the shelter. Initially we were at opposite ends of the shelter. But we did end up spooning :). I was big spoon :( . +
+At 11 pm the sound of water got quieter on the pitch bellow but above us it was still as loud, we decided to wait longer. +I'm not sure if i was hearing cave trolls or something but i kept hearing occasional clicking. It also felt like mysterious water tubes were opening above us as the sound of gurgling water changed. +
+At 1 am I began shivering. Zac had already been shivering for some time and he decided to put another layer on. This was good for him but the communal warmth of the shelter did get lowered. Around this time we decided we would leave at 5 am. +
+Between 1-3 am we both also managed to get some sleep which surprised me since i thought i was awake the whole time. +
+At 3 am we decided it was too cold so we headed out. The amount of water coming down the eye of Sauron had not decreased since 11 pm. +
+The pitch took me about and hour. My hands were numb on the lower section where the rope swap was. My light also went into battery saving mode, and I had forgot to charge my emergency light. A quick battery swap solved this at the top of the pitch. +
+Near the top of Radaghast i remembered how we had not linked our survey up. +
+At 5 am i got to the surface just in time for lighting up, followed shortly by Zac. +
+We had managed to de-rig 4 pitches, had created an unlinked survey and spent 10 hours in a emergency shelter. +