Our final act was to take a look at Ants in Pants schlucht. The snow level looks pretty low, so this might be worth revisiting later on expo.
Headed into Tunnocks to rig the 200m of rope we had carted in earlier. Mark sorted out the rebelay at the bottom of String Theory, making it less of a twat to pass. I made a start on Procrastination. Unfortunately I didn't find the right bolts for the Y-hang, so there is a rub - needs fixing on the next trip. I rigged down using Chris' 2013 thrubolts for the first hang to (hopefully) avoid the worst of the water. Discovered that the traverse and shitty little pitch at the bottom had been derigged, so Mark rigged these using the 200 of 9mm kindly ferried in by Dan and David. Up Bring on the Clowns, then I rigged Number of the Beast with remainder of the 10mm. Out in 3 hrs - a pretty efficient trip.
+Trip to look at Frank's hole eas of itchfork towards 75c, left. Dave to start work while George & me visited other end. (We'd looked at QMs on route, amended maps, posted George into holes that weren't drawn for him to come out 20m back out of another unknown hole). We looked at the boulder choke in a loose passage and spied a slot up. On the way back to Dave I said "How about I give you a leg up?" "Sure", said George. He reported a big chamber up there. I didn'tbelieve him coz there was no echo, but checked it. Yep. Back at Frank's hole, Dave had already knocked a lid over it and couldn't do anything, so took no time to convert to our lead. eorge & I surveyed while he investigated pitch opposite. We borrowed him briefly to rig a traverse in the northern passage. It being latre and with a callout of 8 pm, we had to rush on out and join the queue at the entrance pitch. NB I'd walked up from base camp with George and Rob that morning, so quite a long day. Also recalibrated 8W-poney 3 times underground with no success.
+Same place, same time. Took compass and clino this time and surveyed up south end to a pitch. George went back to chamber and furtled through a passage to a place where he came out of the bottom. Also climbed up the rift through high wet bit. Meanwhile Dave had done his pitch and balcony ledge traverse to big passage. We surveyed into it, plumbed down, then across hole. At this point I got suspicious of how fast George was taking notes/ Turned out he had drawn no diagrams at all. I went to sleep while Gorge got coached by David. Down the end under a low bit, David pushed a rock off a sandy slope. Sounded like the whole world as ending. Even George lost his cool. We cowered against the wall for 20 secs. The reverberating echo on the ceiling made it appear from above. Detackled, Luke and Rob joined us, went and trampled the dead bat in the north end, while George & I bodged a survey drawing in this chamber.
+Got a lift up the hill in the morning and after a bit of faffing headed down 107 with a view to looking at the old route beyond the entrance pitch. Used the backup bolt I'd placed in 2012, and Olly traversed along to get a Y-hang at the end. This got us nicely to the bottom of the old p23, and I noticed that upon the right was the window through from the rampy bit above Ropeless. (We'd been down from there in 2013, but gone right not left, so seen this pitch but not known for sure that this was the original route).
+Olly put in his second Y-hang of the day, then got bored of rigging properly and stuck in a rope protector and headed down. This got us to the bottom of Red [?] - p18 and down the next (~3m) short drop as well. The p18 looks fine in terms of water (our rig is quite a bit across from the wet 1978 hang) but the next little drop was in the water.
+Took off our SRT kit and headed off - there are several passages here, it is more complex than the 1978 survey implies, though that survey is corect in what it does show. Headed down a eastward passage, a mixture of crawling + sideways wriggling. After a bit the floor trench heads right then left - west. Followed this, past a pretty stal. On the way back (surveying) noticed that the other way on was the drafty route. Surveyed back to the bottom of the rope, then left the survey hanging for now and derigged out planning to come in using the Ropeless window tomorrow. Consequently surveyed the top pitch now, but failed to find the old station to tie into.
+Failed to get an early start, and headed into the cave around noon. First finished derigging and sketching from yesterday. Olly rigged into where we were yesterday via the Window in Ropeless, to testerday's 2nd Y-hang. This time with a rebelay not a rope protector. For reasons I now forget, this semi-free hanging rebelay got rigged with a clown for added entertainment.
+Got down into Old Rift via the 1978 route (climb doesn't need a bolt / rope etc.) Started surveying from the big boulder that all the surveys in the area seem to connect to. Then tied into the end of yesterday's tubular survey and then the start of yesterdsay's p18 survey (at the Y-hang bolt) then up to the 2015 station on the Ropeless window. Not sure how that took a whole trip, but it did somehow.
+Decided on a morning of surface work + afternoon of gear fettling ready for an early start tomorrow to avoid being on a wet pitch at thunderstorm time.
+Walked up past 83 to look above Thunder Road. It is quite chossy and bouldery here. Found a few (not drafting) piles of rocks I could climb into, but nothing that went or was worth tgging sadly.
+Headed over to laser05 for Olly to GPS - we suspect the old Austrian version of laser05 in the dataset is closer to reality than Nil's fix. Noticed that 1987-02 has a tag bolt but no tag - will try and fix that later on. Walked back via above 107.direstraits to look for entrances above the avens. Only found one possibility (not far above our tent) - plan to return with rope another day.
+