On the drive back, Nadia claimed we "undersold" everything between the pitches, and described Mahlstrom as a "Yorkshire blackbook" cave
Nowt, apparently. Again. On a Sunday, again.
After a leisurely (not quite for Ruairidh, carrying far too much) walk up to topcamp with Frank and Nadia following a leisurely morning start from me, Ruairidh and I decided that we could attempt to find an easier, quicker entrance to Maelstrom by following the rift from the surface whilst the other two and Sam were actually in the cave derigging. First we found a large basin, containing what appeared to be a large cave entrance, but upon further inspection, choked out towards the back of the cave. Ruairidh did find a nice complete Gaemse skull though, which he seemed quite happy about. Another potential entrance found further along the rift with a steady flow of water disappearing into the ground which could explain some of the bigger drippy pitches after the lovely squeeze. The rift splits into two further on, with some promising, but inaccessible, looking gorges on the right fork as you follow it. The left seemed less promising from memory but this area is definitely worth another look with bolting kit to make sure. Realising we'd actually got quite close to the col, we decided to simply hike towards the slabs and rejoin the carpark-topcamp path and head back. + +
Woke up to see a sub-optimal forecast. Somehow I was convinced that hiking to Garlic Cave Camp was of course the best course of action to take, so we set off. It was actually dry for the first third or so to fishface gear dump to collect our caving gear, but this did not last. The path is a little treacherous in the wet, so it was a little slow going and slightly miserable and wet but we made it. Adam started shovelling snow, Nathan joined in, then I did. I believe Adam had some grand design in mind but I think we ruined it. We then decided to rig a third tarp up to stop the horrible drip right next to the kitchen, but we rigged a drippy tarp and so the situation wasn't drastically improved. We all went to sleep pretty early without anything else to do. + +
After our lovely sleep, we woke up to dry weather, and set off to the top of the ridge above Garlic. Carrying the thick, wet 90m up the mountain was not conducive to good balance so I did fall over in the bunde and struggle to get back up. We reached Buzzard, Adam rigged it, first to the bunde, then hand bolting whilst we waited patiently. The improvement in weather did give a lovely backdrop of the Braeuningzinken for photos. Nathan went down next, followed by Manfred whilst I stayed outside enjoying the view. Upon Adam's return, I swiftly fell asleep, and awoke to find Nathan and Manfred had finished their survey and were finalising some sketches. Adam spotted some interesting holes beneath us on the plateau, so wet set off to prospect (see next entry). + +
After dropping Buzzard, the fours of us decided to drop down the north face of the ridge, heading east at first, then split to form two prospecting groups, Adam and I heading further east to wrap around to the south face of the ridge, and Nathan and Manfred following the north face westwards to prospect the large, unknown valley beneath us. + +
We spotted an interesting looking hut halfway up the side of the next peak eastwards (called Feuchter Kogel) which we went to look at first. It seems to be some kind of hunters hut; it looks quite new and very well set up, with solar panels, a level, felt platform and even an outhouse. Borrowing the hut to sleep in could be really useful for prospecting in the area but it looks so nice I'm not sure we should really be staying there. There are plenty of promising leads we were unable to drop in this area north of the line between Raucher and Feuchter so this really could be very useful. + +
We headed back towards Garlic, having a look at some of the holes we spotted from the ridgetop and some others, finding some promising looking leads that seem to follow a rift along the base of the Raucher, then back to Garlic camp so as to not miss our callout. + +