Lessons learnt: 1) Bring spare underwear for a multi-day trip. 2) Find time to change underwear on said multi-day trip.
Actions carried forward: Null.
Isaac
Post script James, Charlotte and Jacob found top camp with minimal snow around. Route from carpark onto hill is blocked by large concrete block. Route can be found going round the right hand side but maybe not possible with building work happening. Otherwise route up hill on left of carpark at bottom end takes you up the hill and then a right turn by the big building on the left takes you back to original route. Cairned route up from col to top camp. Broke into storage cave and removed bits and bobs for an hour or so and stored them in stony . Got cooker running and cooked some pasta. Found a mouldy container of tortellini (act with care) . Walked down and placed some reflectors on the walk back. Got to carpark at 18:30 . A very damp day out.
Karin and Hilde came and said hello.
Tarp is partly up at side of hut as there was a caravan parked there yesterday.
Best, Isaac
Sieds calmly checked the online documentation, did the three-fingered salute to reset the firmware on the scanner, and it worked.
With major Faff we set off from top camp towards Fishface to collect rope that had been left there last year. Our bags were very heavy with lots of ropes, hangers and all our caving kit to get to the store of ropes at the bottom of the 4th pitch. James and Jacob found the cave with minimal snow and cleared and flattened it whilst Charlotte kitted up to go in and rig.Jacob hadn't brought a chest harness to expo so some macguyvering of a sling was in order. Rigging went smoothly past the chossy death pitch and tasteful noods until we got to the icy tube pitch. Charlotte rigged the wrong way here as the topo from Jonty had confused hiltis for expansions. Cue an hour of going down the wrong pitch and then back up and fruitful searching for hiltis (unreflectored). Charlotte found the nright bolts and eventually the rest of us got into a group shelter and started singing, hugging, shivering and eating flapjack to stay warm. We even wrote a new verse of Hard Caver.
The plateau is perfect for caving they say
as long as you find them and don't lose your way
we went down to fishface to collect all the rope
but missed half the bolts and we lost all our hope
.....
Eventually we heard rope free and quickly made our way down to the rope store at the bottom. As I passed the deviation at the bottom my light decided it didn't want to work anymore meaning i had to use my spare which fortunatly was around my neck! Large tacklebags were filled up with large quantities of rope which then were prussiced out by this years expos first and keenest cavers. we emerged after much fighting with bags (charlotte really likes having three bags whilst derigging) to a lovely evening with the sun just having set, and enjoyed a relaxing walk back to top with the milky way looking over us. (The walk was much less relaxing for me as the spade handle kept getting caught on things and tried to kill me multiple times).
With an afternoon of festering well on the way after arriving back from our FF rope retrieving trip yesterday, it was decided that I should try my hand at bread making. Holding a degree in International Relations from Aberystwyth University, I was deemed the perfect candidate for checking if the instructions were indeed 'idiot proof'. Holding a Masters degree in International Relations from Aberystwyth University I was of course delighted to find the 'Numpty Dumpty makes a loaf of bread' edition of the instructions.
After initial faff with finding and setting up the equipment an opportunity was identified to time how long it would in fact take for me to wrap my head around the guide, and get a loaf of bread started in the machine. A stopwatch was started and I continued.
Regrettably the faff continued. Notable moments include setting 20ml of water out in the sun to warm enough to activate the yeast, and indeed going down an internet forum rabbit hole to try to decipher how much water to add to about a third of a packet of yeast in the first place. A heated debate also arose from the instructions regarding the stirring implement for the bread mixer. In absence of a wooden or plastic spoon I elected to use the *cleaned* plastic handle of a sharp knife. Before I could enact my plan however I was hurriedly halted by Phil, insisting I used the special tool which apparently exists to stir the bread. This tool takes the form of a plastic knife. A plastic knife is of course not the wooden or plastic spoon noted in the specification for the bread making machine, and despite my pleas that between the two they are so similar that stirring potential would not differ, I eventually yielded, trusting in the experienced guidance that the knife would produce the best results.
On to the results though, the bit you are all interested in. After dutifully waiting the three and a half hours, the bread was extracted. Slicing it up, samples were distributed. I'll leave it to the quotes to put together the picture of how it went.
Trying the bread first, Phil came out with "It's not mixed very well, there are dense lumps of salt in it". Under usual circumstances this would not be too bad, however the quote was accompanied with a deliberate journey to the door of the tatty hut and beyond. The bread's final resting place we can only guess at, but it is alluded to being the bush outside.
Upon Mr. Waite trying the bread second he ended up lying on the floor, claiming the bread was "so dense I had to lie down". When I made a move to pretend to kick James on the way past he responded "please don't make it come up, I don't want to taste it twice!" It was at this point when Jacob chimed in with the tactful comment "I couldn't even finish mine", adding "I feel nauseous" for good measure.
I do not know how it says more about (my bread, the others or Charlotte) but her comment was "I thought it was actually quite nice". So there you go, idiosyncratic taste buds or an unwavering commitment to politeness? I'll let you decide.
In the end I took this episode as an omen, deciding to call off my trip up the plateau
early tomorrow morning. I was on the edge and this certainly seemed like the universe
sending me a message. There is a silver lining though, and that is that I'll certainly
never be asked to make bread again. Another afternoon drinking beer for me!
Yours to the final Sump,
Isaac.
We were tasked by Antony to rig the entrance series of Balkonhöhle so that he could go and rig Mongol Rally (presumably a more interesting rig).
Obedient as we are, we agreed to the task and decided to make it a rigging learning expereince as well.
As we were the first people going to Balkonhöhle we had to add refelctors to the path, which we found by using the GPX track from essentials.
At the entrance of the cave, I rigged the handline onto the balcony. We then got changed and prepared to go underground. As it was supposed to be learning experience, Sieds and Marie had priority on the rigging, supervised by Lara and me.
As Sieds was geared up first, I took him to rig the first pitch. Midaway down the entrance series, Marie took over. She got to rig the large drippy pitch, which I was a bit jealous of.
Around this time, Lara was getting a bit worried because of the storm that was forecast and the perceived increase in drip. For the sake of expediency, I rigged the last bit. At the bottom, we decided that it would be irresponsible to keep going and rig the traverse we were meant to.
So we slowly made our way out of the cave, which wasn't very far, since we rigged a total a of 139m of rope.
The walk accross the plateau back to top camp was uneventful, except for the storm that was rapidly approaching. Luckily we made it back to camp 5 minutes before it started pouring.
It turns out that Garlic Camp is a really good idea. 1h58 from the car park, under 20 minutes from Homecoming, so I'll be spending more time there.
In order to make that happen, Jono organised our small group to set up Garlic Camp. Before that could happen, some gear needed carrying to Balkonhöhle, which Becka tried to organise. Seeing that I was sceptical of the plan, she tried to appeal to my male ego by saying that she tought I the next big thing on expo. Marie was a bit easier to convince.
At top camp, I edited the water collection system, hoping to make a system that is more robust and easier to replicate next year.
Once Becka, Jono and Marie were back, we slowly made our way towards Homecoming via Fishface. At Homeconing we bumped into Charlotte, Lara, Wookey and James, who were just starting with the rigging of the Homecoming entrance series.
From there, the walk to Garlic Camp was rather short, Jono claiming it was only 12 minutes, excluding the breaks taken.
At Carlic Camp, we set up a water collection system, solar panels, and a tarp to protect the sleeping area. Further, we did some terraforming to make the space more livable.
At around 17, Marie and Becka decided to make their way back to Top Camp. Shortly afterwars, Jono and me left for the car park. On the way to Homecoming, we caught up with Marie and Becka. Sadly, we had to say our goodbyes for the second time after we reached Homecoming.
Image of the path to the car park from Homecoming
Image of the path to top camp from Homecoming
The walk from Homecoming to the col was actually surprisingly pleasant and easier than the one from top camp. It could definitely become a trade route in the future.
I failed: the GPS position (fairly close to the Stoger Weg) is (2024) in completely impenetrable pine scrub. So either ArGE are incredibly hard, or the path has healed up since 2000, or they have recorded the wrong GPS position. I suspect that it is really the same as 114 and that they have the wrong GPS.
It was horrid: lower altitude and lots of curious cows meant lots of flies, cow flies, horse flies, humid scratchy larchen. Nasty. So I went on to the next target which was to check out some entrances lacking photos on the near part of the plateau.
I can say categorically that a GPS position is not sufficient to disambiguate entrances when there are 5 pits all within a few meters. One would need good photos and very clear descriptions. This is the case for 1623-81, 81b and 1623-82b. 1623-82 82 and 85 was easily identified because the paint and tag were in place. Ditto 148, but I failed with 289 too.
OK so lots of frustratingly similar photographs were take (with GPS coordinates in the EXIF data at least). My phone battery died with all the GPS work, and even with a spare battery pack it died again. So I took decided to get my exercise by walking up to top camp, having a coffee (nobody there). I left at about 14:00 and walked back.
The Berg Restaurant was not serving food, but beer was extremely welcome. As was the Austrian trio of double-base, accordion and base guitar which was serenading the just-off-work seilbahn station workers, who were tucking into roast pig, sauerkraut and potatoes. Very, very Austrian.
Got a lift back down the toll road to Alt Aussee with a multigenerational German family in a very small car: the granddaughter had to sit across Granny and my laps. This was a bit uncomfortable for all concerned s she was about 18.
Walked back to Bad Aussee. Had coffee having missed last bus.
Walked back to Gasthof. At which point I discovered Jono had driven down and if I had just stayed drinking beer I would have got a lift. Ho Hum.
These ropes had been left in a diabolical, abhorrent and disgusting state. They were left vaguely piled around the passage with knots still tied and with tangled ends and random extra knots, twists and fucked bits. Lara spat on the knots to try and untie one of them. We spent an hour untangling, untying, unfucking and coiling ropes. The clean ones were left daisychained whilst the fucked ones were coiled. The longest 4 fucked ropes were dragged out without tackle sacks! grrrrrrrrrrrrr
new verse of hard caver
the rope in homecoming was left in a tip
i think it caused charlotte to finally flip.
we hauled out the rope and were missing a bag
charlotte was the bull and this was the red rag!
Soon enough we were at the head of Honeycomb. Ruaridh and Marie immediately settled into their bothy and I was left to start rigging. Two minutes later, at 13.22 I heard the taps turn on. "It's a flood pulse, Ruaridh". This meant there'd be no point trying to get out in the next few hours. I headed down, past the 2nd Y-hang to the first single bolt Hilti spit rebelay. Such things are usually hidden by a nice, big hanger. Seen naked, it's smashed-in, cratered surround looked disconcertingly bad. And the air rushing from the roaring waterfall immediately below had me shivering. I turned tail and prussiked back up to add a thermal in the toasty bothy bag and collected the drill. This was Anthony's brand new drill, and a thing of beauty. Hammer and drill tethers with delightful, dinky screwgates plus baby snaplinks to clip them up. Drill bits carefully taped up to the right length. A blowing tube and even a spare spanner in case you were numpty enough to drop your first. The drill itself was nestled in foam padding then a dry bag that had, get this, no holes. It felt mean to him to be christening it.
Having added a bolt to the first single bolt rebelay it seemed sensible to add another to the next single bolt rebelay then I headed on down. Marie followed me with the Hangman's rope bag but said that Ruaridh was sick with stomach pains and was staying at the top. She had been keen to rig but the next pitch and hand-line turned out to be still in situ. Instead, she put in a new through bolt for a traverse line to the initial short pitch leading to Hangman's.
Having rigged down to the start of Hangman's we ferried our bags down then, unexpectedly, Ruaridh arrived. Despite a hacking cough and some strange smells he had managed to bring down one of the Mongol Rally bags which was impressive. I was, though, a bit less impressed that neither he or Marie had brought down any food, water, the stove, bothy or first aid kit so it seemed sensible to call the trip and head on out.
Ruaridh was suffering on the exit but we plodded out a reasonable pace, Marie and I had noodles at the base of the entrance to give the water more time to recede then I offered to head up first, being the only one who'd brought a kagoule.
The bottom third of the long drop (2nd one up) was the wettest where spray filled the shaft but it wasn't too bad so I whistled for the others then rigged the single bolt rebelay above the long drop Y-hang to remove the rub. We were all out by 10 so T/U 11 hours. Beautiful, moonlit and clear walk back to an empty Top Camp.
As we walked along, Jono and I chatted back and forth confirming the radios worked on the plateau and had the range to be useful. Finally, I arrived at Garlic Cave and dropped a fixed node above the cave and descended to look over the solar system. Meanwhile Jono setup a surface node at Stone Bridge. From inside each location, we were able to chat back and forth. No more need to leave the comfort of a sleeping bag to plan the day!
The Garlic solar system seems OK, pressing the green button enable the voltmeter and it showed about 14.5 volts.The USB A chargers are odd, the 1A ones seem to charge my phone, the 2.5A ones didn't. My cigarette adapter USB A charger worked OK, but it felt a bit fiddly in the socket. At this point I headed for the Col, hoping to find the radio we thought James lost, since we saw it reporting a position on the Col-Garlic path. After a while James emerged from Homecoming and started chatting. We learned the radio was at homecoming and was reporting its location wrong. A mystery for another day. I was at the Car park by around 2130 and Jono and Isaac mode it back a little while later.
Having allocated half an hour at top camp we naturally faffed for an hour and a half before beginning the hopefully-not-too-painful walk to homecoming, bags heavily laden with rope, metalwork and caving gear galore.
We arrived at the cave a little past one, Wassil went to gather more equipment from Garlic while we began packing rope at the entrance. We continued to faff till our hearts were content and weren't underground till gone three. The whole cave was rigged to the bottom of Gromit so, besides some futile arguing with our heavy tackle sacks on the traverses(oh and passing Charlotte, James and Lara on their way out), the descent went fairly quickly.
Stopping for a quick snack break at the end of the Gromit traverse, it became clear that Marie was quite worn out from all the awkward SRT and so it was decided that we should turn around after ten more minutes.
We stopped a short ways into "second coming"(just before the first traveres) and while I got the stove out to cook some noodles, Marie got a lesson in bolting. As the drill whirred away in the background I eagerly unpacked the cooking equipment: pan, lid, noodles, stove top and lighters what else would I need ... hmm ... the gas must just be hiding somewhere in this tackle bag ... hmmm ... must be a very small cylinder. Well, it turns out that EXPO hadn't invested in microscopic gas cans but rather I couldn't see it because it was still sitting comfortably somewhere at top camp, forgotten. This news hit Marie particularly badly who immediately began feeling nauseous and requested we leave the cave sooner rather than later.
The plan put into action was that Marie and I would begin prusiking out while Wassil finished bolting the traverse Marie that had started. I packed up to leave of course taking just the essentials: first aid kit, snacks, water and the spare drill batteries ... oops. By the time Wassil caught up to inform us that we had run of with his much needed spare batteries, Marie had taken a turn for the worse.
She had stopped at the top of Wallace to begin emptying the contents of her stomach onto the traverse below(luckily not directly onto Wassil's head) and was feeling very apprehensive about some of the pitches to come. We waited until she was finished retching to offer water and discuss plans, but with options limited the only thing left to do was to start the long arduous journey back to the surface.
Several more chunder stops were required on the way out, during which I also began to take a turn for the worse, but we eventually made it to the surface around 11pm. Outside a thick mist had enveloped the plateau casting doubt onto our ability to find our way across it. We got changed as fast as we could and at midnight made the admittedly dubious decision to set off for stoney bridge instead of the currently-max-capacity-but-much-(much!)-closer garlic cave.
After around ten minutes of walking it became glaringly obvious we were not going to make it back to top camp. Marie was still throwing up and her balance had gotten worse with her state. Since Wassil was still feeling ok we decided on the very unappealing option that he would walk back to top camp, alone, and return with our sleeping gear so that we could wait out the night on the plateau.
Marie and I sat uncomfortably inside the bothy we had with us for around 2 hours, Marie regularly purging her stomach contents into a nearby grike, after which I grew worried that Wassil had not yet returned. Stumbling round the location of our camping spot(which I lovingly name "patient's retreat") I finally found a spot where my phone had signal. Chatting with Jono, We learned that Wassil had made it to top camp but was too worn out from the day to return to us so instead Wookey was on his way with food and bags.
around three in the morning we were greeted by the very welcome sight of a surprisingly cheery(considering the circumstances) Wookey strolling down the plateau towards us. He dropped off what we needed for the night, made sure we were ok and then headed back up to top camp. We each found relatively less spiky bits of rock to lie down on and tried to get some rest.
In the morning, the warmth of the sun forced us out of from the dozy comfort of our sleeping bags and back into the reality of getting off this horrible lump of angry rocks. I dumped my sleeping bag in my bivvy outside homecoming and we began to make our way back to the Col at quarter to ten in the morning.
The Usually 1 hour Homecoming to Col walk was inflated to over 2 by the requirement for regular breaks, general sluggishness expected from two considerably unwell people and difficult nav on the currently un-reflectored route.
We eventually made it back to the Col and then dragged ourselves down to the carpark arriving promtly at half one to be met by a relieved looking Jono and Phil B, who supplied us with energy tablets and chocolate.
Moral of the story - EXPO should invest in microscopic gas cylinder technology, there's some smart people here I'm sure they could figure something out. I'm going to bed now, good night. Jacob
A bit of a disturbance last night as Marie was a bit ill after coming out of a cave and could not make the walk back to camp and had to bivvy on the plateau with Jacob. Wookey took her a sleeping bag.
In the evening Phil B and Jono went up to play with radios and to find Isaac (who apparently had been taking more than 5 hours to get to Garlic with Sieds), Anthony & Ruairidh went up to stay at top camp. All in PB's car.
While we were faffing at the entrance we ran into Wassil. The plan had been to use some of the rope we'd taken out of the cave from last year's leads and Wassil and co. had washed and brought back out the hill. Wassil told Charlotte they needed all the rope for second coming which put a bit of a dampener on the trip as we were pretty sure we didn't have enough to reach the watershed pushing front. Ah well, might as well get as far as we could.
Nothing very eventful happened in the entrance series; I shat myself mildly less on the traverse at the bottom of Grommit that the two previous times (progress!) and rewarded myself with a piss in the streamway. It was to be the first of many.
We sadly continued on past the nice pile of rope and up the dodgy muddy rope that led to watershed. The best event in this section was that James refound my breaking-crab which I was extremely happy -and vaguely sentimental- about. James rebolted a scary corner traverse which made it 10% less scary. It went sandy crawl, sandy crawl, muddy crawl, muddy puddles interspersed with a few pitches till the top of Strained by Gravity.
Here Isaac, Charlotte and I waited for James to rig what we haden't got to two days before. James made some strange grunts and groans which we elected to ignore. In the meantime Charlotte read another chapter of our bedtime story (Into Thin Air) and Isaac told us about the trials and tribulations of his job. We eventually got the all clear and descended to find James annoyed as the pitch lengths and rope lengths aligned unsatisfactorily and he'd had to turn back for several missed deviations. His mood was not improved by having missed a chapter of story-time.
After another piss for bravery we continued to the many many metres of traverses. I was pleasantly surprised by how not scary it was, the mud was slippy but they weren't very exposed and sliding over on my knees eventually became fun. Many slidy sandy bits through flow-stone canyon led to the top of The Sound of Water which Isaac offered to re-bolt and rig. James and I took a group piss then cuddled to keep warm and made up verses to Hard Caver:
We rigged in Homecoming for many a day
pirates stole our rope and for that they will pay
we slid down traverses, got covered in sand
then ran out of rope so the pushing got canned
At this point we decided to turn around. Isaac produced the first iconic quote of the day, not three metres into prussicing: 'I want to kill myself'. I took another piss (at this point questioning how much water i must have drunk) and we let him get a head start out the traverses. We spent a faffy time surverying a side lead (a traverse leading off flowstone canyon). James got sketched out after 4 or so points and we headed off.
I realised i still had my jacket and hat on half way up Strained by Gravity and nearly expired of heat. At the top we met up with Isaac, collected the brew kit and headed on to the top of Sump Bypass where we ate some moderately sandy noodles with a spanner. I took a piss to celebrate. Isaac really seemed like he needed them and produced iconic quote no. 2: 'I feel like fried chicken before it's fried; covered in mud then breaded in sand'.
Isaac and Charlotte headed out whilst James and I took a detour to survey Heifer. We had to drain a bit of a static sump and tried not to contemplate falling in. the actual aven through the wet bit was extremely cool and James excitedly took disto points while I stood on a rock and tried to keep up on book. It seemed like it went up 40 metres! We christened it Cow-Lick (as it was drippy) and as a few hours had now past we headed out. I had one final piss, by this point even James was concerned. the entrance series dragged on a bit, especially as James had to isolate a shagged section on Grommit and the Wallace rope was still 2013 (agh). By Radagast I was dreaming of Gosser, Chips and my book so the final pitch to the surface was very welcome.
Outside Homecoming we met Charlotte and Issac who made one final iconic quote: 'being out of the cave feels better than loosing my virginity'. We headed back very tiredly to the sweet damp embrace of Garlic Camp. Great trip.
The cycle path along the south side of the lake is now stopped after half way, and bicycles have to trog up the hill and go along the track, which is
Anyway I parked the bike at the "No Cycling" notice at the bottom of the track up (where going left would go to Stummern Alm) and walked up 3km (+400m) to Oberwasseralm.
It is mostrously dramatic: not only are you right underneath the Trisselwand but the Loser massif (Vor.SMK) Weisse Wand is huge and very steep.
I did spot, I think, the steep grassy field with an entrance at the top end which Chas and Planc found in 1983 and which I revisited in 2017.
GPS track is uploaded using expo.survex.com/gpxupload/.
James was shown how to scan survey notes, put them in a plastic wallet, and create the corresponding online wallet.
Lara was shown how to type up a logbook entry online, but she (sensibly) bailed on typing up the survey data when faced with the full complexity of the survex system in troggle..
Future work: Rename channels so we can pass telemetry over an expo specific channel, test bridging the plateau to the potato hut via mqtt. Setup Anthony's cellular wifi at top camp to help support bridging. Figure out why the GPS is a pain on some units. And figure out why Meshtastic won't run on wookey's phone. The tofu curries were consumed when a prospecting trip returned. I was sad.
Created new folder as expofiles/datalogger/ where I have put the data, exported data (xls, txt) a .db3 file which was lurking and the 88MB Windows control software. There is also Apple s/w.
You can extract the PDF file without software by just plugging the device into a USB port, where it appears as a disc drive containing just the pdf.
The gloomy weather, still pools of greenish water and dark rock which enclosed us created an eerie atmosphere. The water temperature was quite pleasant but at times could be much more frigid depending on the pool. There were plenty of opportunities for jumping which Charlotte, Jono, Wookey and Isaac bravely dared while I mostly avoided them (my outdoor enthusiasm was still not at 100%). At times the canyon threatened to keep us within its clutches the rocks were so slippery. Isaac remarked that he felt like he was experiencing an accelerated version of evolution as he slithered out of the water. A few long stretches of canal at the end led Wookey to comment that it was mostly a glorified nature swim, but one that was at least enjoyed by (pretty much) all until the very end.