Online edit of logbookentry 2025-07-29c

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@@ -2028,6 +2028,35 @@ We washed the ropes at top cam with the new spiral-brush rope washer and the lar
 <div class="timeug">T/U: 6.0 hours</div>
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+<div class="tripdate" id="2025-07-29c">2025-07-29</div>
+<div class="trippeople"><u>Buck</u>, Alice, Wookey</div>
+<div class="triptitle">Balcony - The Three Balconeers</div>
+We were in the Dolomites, halfway through hiking the Croda da Lago circuit, surrounded by beautiful soaring peaks of bare, pale rock, when Alice turned to me and said 'I wish we hadn't left expo'.  A five hour drive and one sleep on the tatty hut floor later, we were up the hill and packing for a Balcony derig camp with Wookey.
+<p>
+The rain was a little prohibitive, so we didn't set off till 3pm. Underground 3:30, a bit soggy from the entrance series but not too bad. This was my first time in Balcony proper (having only been to the bottom of the entrance series before) and I was especially impressed by all the crystals from Honeycomb to the top of Mongol Rally.
+<p>
+Thanks to plenty of gossiping on the way down, the pitches flew by, and we were at camp about 6:30. Woookey volunteered to begin packing stuff up, so Alice and I made our way to Tartarus to derig. We found a rather large, rather loose piece of wall along the traverse at the beginning, and after a brief debate, made the executive decision that the danger of descending the rope below it outweighed the danger of it damaging the downgoing rope upon its removal, so I gave it a few good kicks and it went tumbling down the pitch with an almighty crash. Luckily, Tartarus follows down the right wall of the shaft, rather than straight down, so the rope was unharmed.
+<p>
+I began descending, but didn't get far before I started noticing a significant amount of drippage. The 2nd (I think?) deviation below the first two rebelays required you to sit in an especially wet part for a moment whilst passing it. A little concerned, especially since I didn't know whether it would get worse lower down or not, I headed back up to talk it through with Alice. After some brief dithering back and forth about it, I decided it would probably be fine and got on with derigging.
+<p>
+The drippy bit was indeed only brief, and luckily my oversuit was fairly new so still had a bit of waterproofing to it (which I was especially thankful for on the way back up). Once at the bottom, I spent a little while poking around and consulting the survey on my phone before finally finding the short and very muddy rope leading down a small pitch shortly after Tartarus. I derigged this, then Tartarus (taking the hangers and leaving the nuts on the through-bolts), before finally reuniting with Alice and heading back camp, picking up some coiled ropes and metalwork partway along.
+<p>
+Wookey had done an excellent job packing up stuff around camp (including fishing all the metalwork and rope out of the splashy bit near camp, which was really rather splashy given the weather outside.
+<p>
+I had curry fruit rice for dinner, and it was one of the most enjoyable meals of my life (although my experience was likely heavily biased by the fact I was deep underground and very tired). Still, I've been thinking about that meal ever since. We then went to bed, and I discovered how difficult I find it to get to sleep without a pillow (I eventually just stole the spare sleeping bag and stuffed it under my head). In hindsight I should've brought more layers, but it really wasn't an unpleasant night at all once I sorted out my pillow situation.
+<p>
+Up at 7am, we had breakfast and packed down camp. I found two marmalade flapjacks (I thought they'd all been eaten by this point of expo! Underground camp is a bit of a time capsule in that way) which I gleefully pocketed for the way out. We packed up cavelink last, so we could let the bounce trip heading down know how many bags they'd be expecting to carry out. It turned out we managed to fit it all into 10 (including two enormous but rather light bags with the sleeping bags and rollmats in). The three of us took two each (Alice and I both had an enormous bag), leaving four (heavier) bags for the bounce trip to take out between the five of them.
+<p>
+Alice headed up Mongol Rally first, with me behind her and Wookey at the rear. I passed Luke on the way up whilst fighting my jammers on the muddy rope. The main highlight of the ascent was some cool spongey-looking mud on the underside of one of the ledges maybe three quarters up! Becka and Ash passed me at the slope down to the traverse at the base of Hangman's pitch, and James W and Ned at the top of Hangman's. By this point my ground had separated out quite a bit, and I was told by the latter two that they'd come across Alice a little while ago looking rather sad, so Ned gave her some gummy worms and they had a 20 minute gossip, by the end of which she'd perked up significantly.
+<p>
+I continued on up, finally reuniting with Alice at the top of Hangman's, with Wookey not far behind. Alice had already shuttled her bags through the crawl, so she kindly took one of mine and we headed through. A brief stop at the drinking spot reunited us with Wookey, who kindly swapped my huge bag for a smaller one of a similar weight (as he'd had one of his bags taken off him by one of the bouncers). We continued to the base of the entrance series, and Alice began heading up. Wookey and I clearly got way too into chatting about Nenthead, as it wasn't until Alice was halfway up the main hang that we noticed she'd pulled the rope on the bottom pitch up on us! After a bit of shouting up to her, a very sad Alice descended back down, with her two bags, threw the rope back down, then returned to ascending. I started heading up as James, Ned, and Luke arrived. I pulled the rope halfway up the first pitch too before noticing, and unhooking it from my bag.
+<p>
+At the base of the main pitch, someone shouted up to me that they'd take one of my bags, and I certainly wasn't complaining, so I clipped it to the traverse and up I shot, revelling in the speed of prussiking when not over-encumbered. The wet, clean rope was such a breath of fresh air in comparison to the horrible, muddy stuff we'd been on all day, and all in all it was a very pleasant ascent, especially when I reached the base of the top pitch to discover that the horrible deviation (that drags you away from the nice ledge you want to stand on and into the massive hole, whilst avoiding a minimal amount of rub) had been blessedly derigged. 
+<p>
+Out the cave by 3:30, Alice and I headed back to Topcamp in full kit to change, pack our bags, and assist with the rest of the Topcamp takedown.
+<div class="timeug">T/U: 24.0 hours</div>
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+ <hr />
 <div class="tripdate" id="2025-07-30a">2025-07-30</div>
 <div class="trippeople"><u>james w</u>, ned</div>
 <div class="triptitle">balkon - balkon boys</div>