On this date, with the exchange of geartape Julia "the bloke" Bradshaw and Dour "the beardy one" Day were in the sanctity of the tattiehut joined in Holy Bondage until the day that one or the other fall apart.
Registrar: Martin Green
Witnessed: Jessica Stirrups
Emma Wilson
Rope for rigging down to pushing in 204 A => 48 (up), 30, +70 (up) [Last item annnoted 'wrong' in pencil] King Carbide => 50/60 Brians phat shaft => 82+30 Painted Lady => ~30m Puss in bolts + on the prowl traverse => 30+27, rope protector, deviation Fat Cat => 80, (or 25,45,12) may need more for swing off -> log book states "QMA would require swing & prob more rigging to assist swing" Actual ropes => A: 41m, 11mm, chop from 92m King Carbide: chop from 92m 10mm Brians : 92 + 38 11mm Painted Lady => 140m 10mm Puss in bolts => 34 9mm On the prowl => 29 9mm Fat Cat => 140 10mm
Wook & Serena filled the van with lots of food & gear & set off for expo. Remarkably traffic-free trip in the UK & across europe. Relised at dover that we'd failed to bring a map of europe in physical or digital form, so did a quick download + make plan on cheap UK data. Worked very well offline so failed to get lost at all. Had 4hrs kip en-route.
Very hot all the way here until thunderstorms from Reid in Imkreis onwards. _Very_ wet. Got to Bad Aussee having heard that there was a big concert on but traffic had cleared. Main Rd to Grundlesee was closed & we were sent the back way, only to find it was totally packed with drenched pedestrians & vehicles coming the other way. Eventually got to the main rd to find totally stationary traffic. Went nowhere for about half an hour before finally inching down to camp site which was utterly heaving.
Left 5:30pm, arrived 9:30pm.
Martin rigged Fat Cat and explored the wrong way to solution pocket 8m long & 10m high
Dour sat at the top for 3hrs and got quite cold.
Rigged the entrance pitch to 204. Found that the snow was quite low. My spanner made a descent of the 2nd pitch, at which point I went out
Popped down the hole to top of Fat Cat. Jess pointed me towards Emmas alternative hole, using backup of Fat Cat started on a quick pootle downhill. Realised quite quckly I'd been sandbagged into a hard bolting nightmare. No slings so cut end off rope to make one and head down in tight rift.
Ended in rift that opened, placed bolt and headed down. Some minor rubs that probably didn't damage the rope... Found a nice loking natural and destroyed it one hit. Didn't make the mistake a second time and cut end off rope to make a sling, arrived at sharp eyehole looking for deviation - Jess called down from Emmas 'actual' hole 'which was nice'. Lost confidence in rock after dinner-plate fell off. taking note of natural above. made 'Y' hang but [unreadable] with hand bolts. Wish I had not lost drill bit at bivvy.
PS pitch heads back under and appears to connect to Fat Cat pitch.
Decided to have a quick look in 101 to see what it did. Much as described in 1977, pitches all free climbable. Just after 101 and 101a join there is a tight pitch lead to the right into a canyon - we didn't descend. Followed to near the end in 1977 - gets quite small, but continues. Another small tube leads off to right - Olly went for a short way down this and it continues.
Got out survey kit, discovered the disto battery was flat. Didn't survey... passage is roughly SSW and descending slightly. Walked back via looking for 99-OB-01 which we found. Easy to locate if you assume Schoenberg bearing is for 2 peaks further east, and Zinken is a different peak.
Lesson learnt - check disto batteries.
I was still feeling full of cold so we went to have a poke at the dig at the end of 82's top level. Olly successfully dug and got more passage, but sadly it didn't go very far - I suspect it is too near the surface. While I sat on the surface and coughed, Olly had a look at 85, and concluded that there is still a lead.
Went back into 82 and surveyed the new bit.
Olly rigged and bolted down 157. We went down the parallel rift and concluded the bolts of unknown origin spotted in 1987 are not in 107. Cave doesn't continue. We surveyed out, via a brief warm up on the surface. On redescending Olly realised his rack was still underground. Opps! Fortunately I could rescue it for him! We didn't descend the main shaft as it was quite full of snow. There is also another parallel rift we didn't visit.
Lesson learnt: don't prussic out leaving your rack behind.
This cave is right by the path to 204 ~ opposite 157. one day this cave would have had a long section of big passage heading for 107, but is today missing much of it's roof. Off this main 'passage' are several short sections of cave heading off. Sadly they all either get too small, end, or are choked with rocks. Surveyed most of it - will go back and finish off later.
(The cave name is because we saw a pair of gemse twice on the way).
Went into 83, put some new bolts in, but rigged as a pushing rig, assuming we'd only spend a day here. Got into the big rift but needed more rope than expected due to re-belays and an almost non-existent snow pile.
Walked down the big rift until we got near the bottom, took the phreatic passage on the left like in 1977. Pitch was lovely 32m of freehang to a big chamber, as expected the route didn't continue, but we could survey out to connect any new stuff too. Sadly the survey pencil was rubbish, and the 2 spares I was carefully carrying were broken. Olly managed to take notes up the pitch and I derigged it. We then headed home, planning to return with a pencil the next day.
Lesson learnt: don't carry broken pencils.
Decided to see if we could drop back into the trunk passage seen in 1987-02 and the top level of 82 somewhere in between, taking the obvious approach of walking between them. This doesn't work well as the terrain is very broken, but we found what is likely to be the skylight entrance to 1987-02, a postcard on balloons from Italy, and a few scrotty tubes to crawl into.
Went back to 83 planning to look at the bolt traverse over the 32m pitch, as this was likely to be a short trip and the last in 83, we didn't re-rig the entrance pitch and we set an 8pm call out.
Olly did a great job bolting over the pitch and on. I took a few photos and eventually followed along. The bolt traverse was great fun. At the end was an ~8m pitch with a slope/climb up the back wall which sadly didn't go. At the top of this short pitch, Olly spotted an alcove on the left, so bolted into that, and climbed up into the roof tube. We realised there was nowhere near enough time to explore, survey and derig by 8pm. So we surveyed out as far as the main chamber and made our 8pm callout by ~15 minutes. Left the cave rigged for 1 final trip.
Went back to 83 for our final trip to look at the roof tube beyond the bolt traverse and survey the entrance bit. I got part way along and realised I had left the grease syringes on the surface, Olly wasn't yet on the bolt traverse so kindly popped out to get them.
Got into the roof tube, which is called Thunder Road due to the thunder we heard there on the 10th. I took off my SRT kit and wiggled along the passage which rapidly became more rift like. Olly wasn't keen to follow, so sat with the notebook while I shouted back numbers. The passage went for ~30m trending uphill. Near the end was a short section of walking passage followed by a low crawl. Then a drippy aven on the R and a pitch on the left. I surveyed back from here. I suspect it is near the surface.
Derigged back to entrance chamber and began to survey out. Checked the bottom of the rift and it is, as you would expect chossy and connects with the p32. Then, about 1 survey leg up from the p32 passage Olly potted a low passage going off under a rock, names Under a Rock, passage gets to a pitch, which we could carefully traversed round. Next was a short section of lovely big phreas, heading up to a choke. There were a few bits of leaves and pine cones - presumably near another entrance. Right from the pitch went less far. Combined tactics got me up a short climb which led up to a choke, again with leaves. I thought i could smell outside.
Surveyed back to entrance chamber, and left the cave.
Went back into Under a Rock and dropped the pitch. The bottom was a tall rift, up didn't go far, the way the water flows rapidly got too narrow. We followed the 3rd way on, up a short climb and down the other side (via a bolt). We scrambled further down and down some more to find ourselves back at the bottom of the p32. Olly was amused at where we were, I was annoyed. But at least our loop closure was good!
Went back to entrance chamber to survey out. Olly spotted a hole thru' some rocks. It drafted so we pulled some rocks out. We couldn't easily make the gap big enough, so tried a meter or so higher up. I managed to get through, and amazingly got under and through a window into another passage underneath Down Under, removed more rocks so Olly could follow me through. Followed the passage past a squeeze and a climb down. Found ourselves above a reasonable sized passage ~5m above. Didn't look climbable down, but I could traverse over. Did this to another 6m drop into the same passage, but excitingly could see a snow plug. We wondered if this was 107. Surveyed out and up to the tag bolt.
Scrambled in 107 on the way back and saw a similar looking snow plug. Down the hill the survey data confirms we connected! Not as impressive as The Connection, but we have made 107 ~9m deeper (by the CUCC way) and ~500m longer.
Went back to 83 for the actual final trip. I retrieved the rigging gear while Olly sketched the entrance chamber. I derigged and swung across to look at side tubes. One near the top generated another ~15m of passage.
Finished de-rigging. [rigging diagram in original]
Went to 148 and rigged in the first 4 pitches (i.e. to just before deep space). I'd forgotten how cold and drafty 148 is.
Went to 148 with 100+m of rope, hangers and a drill. Tweaked the rigging on the way in to add a bolt on pitch 2 -> clowns are a poor hanger choice for free hanging rebelays! Also changed natural backups and things. Olly rigged down deep space (and hated using a stop more than hating using a rack) After much swinging about with too much gear he gave up looking for the deviation and came back up. I had a go and managed to find it eventually - a sling on a nose of rick behind you. Must be more than 5 years since I last rigged but I mostly remembered what to do. Except I was slow and failed to find the next few bolts. Safely got to the asteroid belt and found more bolts. Olly came down too and we rigged on to the pushing front. Olly found the missing bolts on the way out.
The pitch heads are nasty and tight, but things look better deeper down. Got out surprisingly fast (1hr 40) despite bimbling.