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<font size=-1>BCRA Caves &amp; Caving 75, Spring 1997, pp 19-23 [ISSN 0142-1832]</font>

<center><h1>CUCC IN AUSTRIA, 1996</h1>
<h3>by Anthony Day</h3>

<h2>Introduction</h2></center>

<p>July 1996 saw the twentieth Cambridge University Caving Club expedition to
the Austrian Totes Gebirge. Since 1988 these expeditions have concentrated on
the increasingly complicated Kaninchenh&ouml;hle system, whose length stood
at 14.3km at the start of the expedition. The latter half of the 1995
expedition had seen many important breakthroughs. There was the surprise
discovery of major horizontal development ("Triassic Park") with over fifty
leads and a new, lower entrance, found from the inside. The other important
leads were at the southern end of the cave where all south going passages
appeared to be stopped by a fault, which was irritating since the 970m deep
Stellerwegh&ouml;hle system was thought to be less than 1km away to the
south. This southern boundary had been passed in 1995 via a dire boulder
choke ("Stairway to Hell") to find large passage beyond ("Forbidden Land")
but the dangerous nature of the choke meant that all concerned were
determined never to go there again. Finding a bypass for the choke was a
priority for the 1996 expedition.

<p>With these exciting prospects, enthusiasm was running higher than for
several years and forty people made their way to Austria at one time or
another making 1996 the largest ever CUCC expedition. When the first arrivals
presented themselves at the Gasthof Staud'nwirt near Bad Aussee on 28th June,
their first objective was to find a good route to the new 161d entrance
("Scarface") which had the advantage of offering easy access to most of the
leads but the disadvantage of being situated in the middle of a cliff. This
was surprisingly easily achieved, and with the aid of a couple of handlines,
an acceptable route was soon established and the caving got under way.

<center><h2>Knossos Connection and Bugger</h2></center>

At its northern end, Triassic Park divides into two main branches at
"Trifurcation". One of these branches was explored as far as a 10m climb up -
"Bugger" - in 1995, which required gear. This was one of the most promising
leads in the cave, and it was successfully scaled at the second attempt. Our
hopes of finding miles of train tunnel passageway were dashed however as the
passage quickly becomes quite small. There is an 80m pitch however, which was
duly descended and named "Henri's Cat". It was found to lead to further
pitches of 36m and 60m before ending in a pile of rocks. The bottom of this
series is very close to the bottom of the Flat Battery series, found in 1990.

<p>The other main branch ended in a short pitch - "Minoan Surprise" - which
was found to be very close to Knossos, the largest chamber in
Kaninchenh&ouml;hle. This connection was eventually confirmed, and would
potentially provide a much easier route to the many leads in the northern
extremities of the cave which have not been visited since 1993. However,
with all the easy leads in Triassic Park, the connection was not used in
this way in 1996.

<center><h2>Puerile Humour Series</h2></center>

The start of this series was found on the first day of caving by a party
who had failed to scale Bugger. They went to look at a horizontal lead to
the east of Triassic Park near Ring Piece Junction, and found and surveyed
around 300m of cave with a few moderate leads. A later party went in with
instructions to complete the survey ("It'll only need a couple of legs") and
walked into 2km of horizontal cave.

<p>The Puerile Humour series appears to be a complex network of smaller
phreatics (typically 3m round) which fed the main trunk route of Triassic
Park. The main route divides into two, 500m from Triassic Park. The western
branch - "Where The Wind Blows" - ends in a draughting choke after 170m.
Significantly, this end of the passage is only about 100m east and 40m north
of what was previously the north eastern extremity of the cave. There are not
many high quality leads in Where The Wind Blows but all those that there are
will be worth thorough investigation in 1997 since this would potentially
provide an even easier route to the northern end of the cave than the new
route into Knossos.

<p>The eastern branch quickly became very complicated. A chamber with five
ways out, given the inspired title of "Five Ways Chamber" is the key. The
northern route leads to "Bounce Rift", a 6m deep rift running perpendicular
to the main passage, whilst east from Five Ways leads to "Completely Loopy",
a rabbit warren of interconnecting passages. There are significant draughts
in many places around here. On one day, a party went to explore beyond Bounce
Rift whilst a second party went to explore and survey in Completely Loopy.
The first party found a 3m round draughting phreatic which frustratingly
ended at a strongly draughting choke after 80m. This was thought to be
promising enough to warrant a quick dig, and after 45 minutes of toil they
emerged onto the hillside. 161e became the "Yorkshire Pudding" entrance since
the author of this piece didn't fit through until some more rocks had been
removed. Ten minutes later, the second party emerged from the second new
entrance of the day (161f) 100m around the hill, having followed a similarly
strong draught from Completely Loopy. 161e and 161f are about 25m higher than
161d and 500m to the north. Neither will be particularly useful for access to
anywhere other than leads in their immediate vicinity as they suffer from the
same surface accessibility problems as 161d.

<p>To the north of 161e is "Iceland" which is similarly draughty and
contains a number of ice formations, the first that have been found in
Kaninchenh&ouml;hle, and most welcome in a cave which generally lacks
aesthetic beauty. There are around 40 unexplored leads in the Puerile Humour
series and Iceland, many of which are very promising.

<center><h2>Interview Blues Series</h2></center>

There is a fourth, smaller way on from Trifurcation which leads to the
Interview Blues Series, so called because one of the initial explorers had to
return to England after just one trip to attend a job interview. A 25m
entrance pitch quickly leads to two more shorter pitches, all dropping down
the same rift. With the cynicism born of several years of pushing similar
leads only to find that ultimately the rift becomes too small, nobody really
expected it to go very far. However, by the time we left Austria it had
descended 250m from Triassic Park via ten pitches and is the third deepest
point in the cave.

<p>At the foot of the fourth pitch is a choice of routes: Continuing down the
impressive 55m fifth pitch, "Application for Life", or heading south down a
rift passage which opens out onto a large pitch with an aven above. Whilst
bolting this pitch, a caver was spotted at the top of the aven, and it turns
out that this was the foot of an undescended pitch in Minoan Surprise.
Traversing round the pitch leads to a second connected pitch, "Spatial
Awareness" which was descended. This pitch lands in the same chamber as
another pitch from Minoan Surprise which had been descended earlier in the
expedition, the lovingly named "Bottomless Pit of Eternal Chaos" (79m).

<p>Whilst the pitches are mostly spacious and dry, the same cannot be said of
the sections of horizontal cave which connect them, which are mostly about
50cm wide and covered in mud, which makes a trip to the bottom of Interview
Blues a strenuous affair. However, the caving improves towards the bottom of
the main route, and the splendid 40m tenth pitch lands in a sizeable chamber
with half a dozen possible leads. Although many of these were quite wet and
miserable on the one occasion this area was visited (during a period of
unsettled weather), there is the prospect of adding more depth to Interview
Blues, and this exciting prospect means that this area is likely to be
revisited in 1997.

<center><h2>Forbidden Land</h2></center>

Whilst all this cave was being found in the vicinity of Triassic Park,
various attempts were made to find an alternative route into the Forbidden
Land by systematically pushing every south going lead in the area. Thus a
steep climb in the corner of Staud'nwirt Palace was pushed further than it
otherwise would have before becoming blocked, some people pushed a promising
lead in Zombie Slime, backing off at a too tight pitch, only to find their
rope hanging out of the roof back in Zombie Slime, and various other unlikely
crawls were pushed, all becoming choked or too tight. Eventually there was
only one lead left in this area, and that was Stairway to Hell, so all the
people who had vowed never to go there again prepared for another trip, this
time taking some survey gear.

<p>In 1995 the passage beyond the choke had been described as having one
solid wall and one shattered wall, but this turned out to be a big pile of
boulders in the middle of a huge hading rift chamber, 90m by 30m, named "Hall
of the Mounting Choss". A phreatic tube - "Pump House" - heads south from
here, which is of similar dimensions and orientation to the phreatics found
in France in 1994 but considerably higher up, and is thus thought to have
been offset by our hypothetical fault. The large passage bears southwest into
"Elin Algor", ending in a large undescended pitch with aven above, and
"Tirolia Werke", a westerly trending passage containing a number of phreatic
ramps. (Incidentally, the grand names of these passages result from a total
lack of inspiration on the part of the surveyors: Elin Algor is the name of
the fridge in our base camp hut, and Tirolia Werke is the name of the oven.)

<p>The usefulness of having a computer and a copy of Survex present in
Austria was once again demonstrated, as when the survey for this part of the
cave was included, it was found to be very close to a known CUCC cave,
Steinschlagschacht, explored in 1983 and 84. Although the details are
sketchy, it seems that this cave is essentially a 250m deep pitch series in
which the existence of a number of phreatic ramps has been recorded, similar
to those found in Tirolia Werke. It also appears to be very loose in places
and contains an active streamway, so although plans were made to descend
Steinschlagschacht in the final week of the expedition, it didn't take very
much rain for those plans to be abandoned. Making the connection will be a
priority at the beginning of the 1997 expedition.

<center><h2>Other Finds in Kaninchenh&ouml;hle</h2></center>

Many other leads in Triassic Park were pushed to a conclusion, and a brief
description of these follows. "Alternative Universe" leads from an undercut
in the western wall of Triassic Park beyond Shortage of Walls and proceeds
north as a 7m round passage paralleling Triassic Park for 280m, before ending
at a short pitch with a tiny rift exiting. This rift is tantalisingly close
to a larger rift near Ring Piece Junction which was descended in 1996 via two
pitches - "Tapeworm" (27m) and "Hammeroids" (45m) - before ending in a small
choked rift.  "Dr Snuggles" heads west towards Alternative Universe, past an
enormous aven before ending at a 6m climb up with black space visible beyond.
Having failed in an attempt to climb this, one pair ignored all the train
tunnel leads elsewhere in Triassic Park in favour of hammering out a 10cm
round hole in the wall until it was passable. Initially it appeared that
their efforts had been worthwhile as a 100m long body sized crawl emerged
into huge cave, until they realised they were back at the start of
Alternative Universe.

<p>Going the other way from Shortage of Walls, leads to the large "Teapot"
chamber, visible from Salt Lake City. Two pitches in the far corner of this
chamber landed in "Rich Tea", a 1994 find in France, thus providing another
connection from Triassic Park to the older parts of the cave.

<center><h2>Other Work</h2></center>

In recent years, much time and effort has been put into collating all the
available information about CUCC finds in Austria over the last twenty years.
This work, performed principally by Andy Waddington, revealed many gaps in
our knowledge. During the 1996 expedition a concerted effort was made to put
this right, and much time was spent relocating earlier finds and making
surface surveys to their entrances. To aid this work, for the first time we
had the use of a GPS which provided reasonably accurate locational
information for cave entrances that are a long way from a surface survey.

<p>The steady improvement in the standard of CUCC's underground surveying was
maintained this year. Even the novices produced high quality work with the
result that the full survey was completed several months earlier than usual.
Julian Haines continuing battle to build a reliable radio system for
communication between our two campsites was more successful than previous
attempts. We obtained two weeks of reliable communication, and they served an
important purpose in reassuring base camp that the Stairway to Hell team had
emerged safely. The photo trip was less successful with five cavers spending
a very cold five hours standing around while flashguns failed to work. Our
photographic record of the 1996 finds is thus somewhat sparse, and this will
need to be rectified in 1997.

<p>There is still a large backlog of entrance finding and surface surveying
work to be done, but there is a new spirit of trying to take a more
systematic approach to prospecting and surveying, which has been achieved
without compromising the relaxed atmosphere of the expedition. This new found
efficiency was not much in evidence however when the aforementioned GPS was
left on top of the mountain at the end of the expedition. Disaster was
averted when one of our members returned from Slovenia via Austria two weeks
later and retrieved it.

<center><h2>Summary</h2></center>

In terms of the amount of new passage found, 1996 was CUCC's most successful
Austrian expedition with another 5.5km of passage surveyed taking the total
length of Kaninchenh&ouml;hle to 19.7km. These finds include around 80 new
leads meaning that once again there are more leads at the end of the
expedition than there were at the start. Although the depth of the system has
remained stuck at 498m for a number of years, there is the very real
possibility that next year the system will get deeper, either by pushing some
of the leads at the bottom of Interview Blues, or by connecting to
Steinschlagschacht (which seems extremely likely) whose entrance is a
princely 11m higher than the highest known entrance to Kaninchenh&ouml;hle.
Enthusiasm is still running high, and the 1997 expedition has much to look
forward to.

<p>Most exciting of all however are the possibilities at the southern end of
Forbidden Land. The northern end of the Schwarzmooskogel Eish&ouml;hle is
believed to be between 200 and 500m away from the new southern extremity of
Kaninchenh&ouml;hle. The Eish&ouml;hle is already connected to the Stellerweg
system, and the major horizontal development in all the systems in the area
are known to be at similar altitudes, so a connection looks more likely than
ever. The combined length of the systems would be over 40km, the majority of
which has been found by CUCC, and the overall depth would exceed 1000m.
However, such a connection may take a number of years to find given the
dangerous nature of access to the Forbidden Land, which means it is not the
sort of the place to send lots of people, especially not people new to
expedition caving. With over 100 leads remaining in the nicer parts of
Kaninchenh&ouml;hle, this doesn't seem likely to be a problem.

<hr />
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<ul id="links">
<li>1996 Expedition info:
<ul>
<li><a href="index.htm">Index</a> (more detail than in this list)</li>
<li>This <a href="bcra-d.htm">report translated into German</a> (as published in VfHO report)</li>
<li><a href="log.htm">Logbook</a></li>
<li><a href="excsrp.htm">Preliminary report</a> (exCS newsletter)</li>
<li><a href="report.htm">Cambridge Underground report</a></li>
<li>Wookey's Compass Points <a href="gps.htm">article on GPS usage</a></li>
<li>This year's <a href="sponsr.htm">Sponsors</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="../../pubs.htm#pubs1996">Published accounts</a></li>
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