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<center><font size=-1>Cambridge Underground 1996 pp 22-25</font>

<h2>Austria 1995</h2>
<h3>by Steve Bellhouse</h3></center>

<p>"In July," etc, etc.

<p>Yep, we went to Austria again. This is the second Expo report of the
journal. If you've read the first one thoroughly, you're probably getting
bored of the endless tales of rainy day festering by now. Well, sorry but
there's more. But don't give up yet, because Expo 95 was different, for two
reasons.

<p>Firstly there was the trailer. We'll say no more about that now, as
there's a suitably dour description of the misery it caused
<a href="bbr.htm">elsewhere in this esteemed publication.</a> Secondly, we
discovered some cave that would accommodate Yapate and Mississippi side by
side, and still leave space for MarkF and Kate to stroll down the middle
without their lardy buttocks even touching. Its big.

<p>However, before you get to the exciting stuff, you're going to have to
read the usual torrid tales of festering, fuckwittedness and the
occasional bit of TU.

<p>Given my usual technique of ignoring problems until they go away, the
organisation went surprisingly well. My opening gambit at the Sports
Council interview, "We were going to wear suits, but there's been a
bit of an error", will go down in history as something not to do, but
even this failed to cause a major disaster. So I disappeared to the Alps
after the alternative dinner and left Anthony to sort out all the stuff
that was bound to go wrong in the last few days.

<p>It wasn't long later that Anthony and Nick first laid eyes on <i>THE
TRAILER</i>. It probably wasn't dark and stormy, and there probably
wasn't an intangible aura of dread in the air, but there should have been.
However, instead of spraying it with silver bullets and driving stakes
through its rotten axles, they decided to change the indicator bulb and,
satisfied the thing was now legal, they attempted to tow it for a thousand
miles, blissfully unaware of its evil nature. This, however, is (a small
part of) another story. Suffice to say they got there eventually, and Expo
was ready to go.

<p>Once Base Camp had been established, the laborious carries up to Top
Camp began. Paul exhibited the technical expertise one would expect from
a historian by politely inquiring if the yellow charger was to be taken up
to top camp. With great patience, it was pointed out to him that power
sockets on the plateau were far from abundant, and an Expo fuckwit was born.

<p>The day soon arrived when some caving appeared to be inevitable. They
set off to rig France and take a look at some of the many good leads left
in '94. However, they arrived in the area of France entrance to find a
large featureless snowfield, due to unseasonal snowfall in May. Much
digging ensued over the next couple of days, accompanied by even more
muttering and grumbling, but the entrance did not appear.

<p>Animal appeared not long later and was deemed to have the necessary
knowledge of main entrance to rig in and show team youth the way to some
leads. Although the question marks were a bit scrotty, they eventually
led to some worthwhile finds. The "Doubting Thomas" series
descended 100m down tight rifts from Dreaming of Limo chamber. Also found
was the "Oral" series, encompassing, amongst others,
"Throat" and "tonsils" pitches. It remains a mystery
why cavers developed such an obsession with head-and-throat anatomy whilst
spending a month in the field.

<p>Meanwhile some snow had melted and some cunning navigation and frantic
digging had revealed France entrance. The first rigging trip was aborted
as Dave Johnson, a novice from ULCC, got strung up in the entrance. The
second trip was more successful, and cavers swarmed into Algeria to grab
the best leads. A new pitch into Twin Tubs was named
<a href="../../1623/161/sidefr.htm#dazauto">Daz Automatic</a>, and a
hole in the floor in Hob Nob Passage dropped into a promising 3m wide
passage, which unfortunately choked after 100m. This was named
<a href="../../1623/161/offffr.htm#pisspot">'Piss Pot'</a>
as both Kate and Dunks sprinkled their scent around in the passageway.

<p>Then it was time for the dinner, so the plateau was left deserted for
an evening of song and laughter. Prizes for outstanding achievements in
various fields were generously given and graciously received, and Kate
refused point blank to attempt eleven Mohr im Hemds.

<p>We were all terribly surprised when the radios failed to work.
However, our disappointment was reduced as the Base Camp aerial did at
least provide amusement as people hung various items of (other people's)
clothing from it's higher reaches, and Julian sawed up a scaffolding pole
to create a serviceable drill battery. Armed with this, Julian and I
took the two Daves off to France to hopefully get to the bottom of
<a href="../../1623/161/france.htm#sultans">Sultans of Swing</a>, having
got off halfway down the pitch last year and found fat wads of cave. Julian
was fully kitted up and ready to duck out of the sweltering sunshine and into
the cool entrance, when he realised the drill-bit was sitting back at Base
Camp. So of he went back down, to return the next day, whilst Dave squared
went to push some crappy lead and I went 'prospecting'.

<p>Around this time we were joined by Bal&aacute;zs Izapy, a Hungarian who
had played a big part in organising our post-expo jaunt to Eastern Europe.
At first we thought he looked a bit clean for a proper caver, but then we
noticed his 1 litre tin mug dangling from his rucksack, and surmised
that he was in fact the genuine article. After one trip down France, he
conceded that the shafts were impressive, but generally concluded that our
cave was cold, wet, miserable and completely devoid of pretties. He spent
the rest of the time prospecting with Kate, who was the only person he
could communicate with. This communication problem made it difficult for
us to explain to him that his favourite spot on the plateau, where he
would sit and write his memoirs, was in fact the toilet. All in all, I
think we came off best from our little exchange trip.

<p>Sultans was finally bottomed at 320m, and the new battery proved to be
remarkably effective, capable of drilling twenty-odd holes from one
charge, and only being very heavy rather than utterly ridiculously heavy
like some of the previous attempts.

<p>Back at base camp, we cooked chicken on the fire, drank G&ouml;sser
and festered lots. It was getting to the stage of Expo when everyone was
knackered and lethargy ruled. A combination of the dodgy connector on the
CCMC stove and Julian's usual over-exuberant pumping nearly burnt the
beer tent down, which provided an exciting moment as the rhino ran around
base camp with the stove, a five foot tower of flame bursting up from it.
Subsequent efforts to fix the stove resulted in Paul spreading a tin of
Hammerite over the grass, leaving a nice blue patch for years to come. 
His subsequent efforts to clean up with bog roll met with limited success,
turning his hands blue and achieving little else. We laughed at him a bit
and drank some more beer.

<p>Wookey and Andy Atkinson arrived for the latter part of the expedition,
and soon afterwards went on the trip to end all trips. All lethargy about
repeated KH trips was soon to disappear after the finds of the last week
of the expedition. Going down France, they first checked out
<a href="../../1623/161/fbland.htm#forbidden">"The
Forbidden Land"</a>, a truly appalling bit of cave at the end of
Mississippi. This was the southern most part of Kaninchenh&ouml;hle and
therefore worth a look. A tiny, muddy, wet thrutch came out at the bottom
of an utterly desperate boulder-choke. Traversing this carefully, they
found themselves in a huge rift running in the NNE/SSW direction. One
wall was collapsed and the floor was strewn with huge boulders. At this
point they heard a horrible rumbling noise from the hole they had just
crawled through, and hurried back. Fortunately only a couple of rocks had
fallen and they weren't trapped, but all present declared this the scaredest
they had ever been and vowed never to return.

<p>However, the stuff they had found had been huge, and was also in the
direction of Stellerweg. They decided there must be another way in, and
went looking...

<p>... and they soon found a trivial traverse over an undescended pitch,
which led to a <a href="../../1623/161/frtotp.htm">nasty squeeze</a>.
Pushing the 3m passage they found in both directions, Wookey found a 5m
draughty choke climb which led into a totally huge space now named
"Staud'nwirt Palace" after our base camp Gasthof. From this led a windy, 10m
wide passage containing bat droppings. Another entrance nearby perhaps?
Following the breeze led to an even wider passage, "Triassic Park". Around
20m wide in places, this was all becoming a bit too much, so they surveyed
out and returned gloating to Top Camp, making the less experienced members
feel a little stupid that all this cave had been found down a lead that
should really have been explored the year before but which hadn't even been
included on the survey.

<p>The next trip another 350m were surveyed and the passage was still left
going strong. The survey data put us close to the side of the hill. If a new
entrance could be found, we could effectively leave our SRT gear at home for
the next expedition! Faced with this exciting prospect, a team went into
France to try to find 161d from the inside. They went downwind, following the
bat droppings, and went through a couple of ridiculous squeezes with gale
force winds blowing through them (one named "Battle of the Bulge"). They
found a skull, and some moths, and moments later they found daylight.
<a href="../../1623/161/sftotp.htm#id161d">161d</a> was promptly named
Scarface due to a recent rockfall from the cliff above.

<p>The only drawback was that the route back to Top Camp can only be
described as bloody tedious, involving vertical bunde-bashing and scary
climbing which, whilst okay during the day, would be desperate in the dark
after a long trip. Possibilities of a new Top Camp have been mentioned, but
it appears this would cause problems with the Austrian authorities. However,
with some hard work to beat a trail, it is likely that we could get
reasonable access to Scarface one way or another. To give some idea of
the scale of the finds, in the last 9 days of the expedition we found
and surveyed 1500m of cave, and there are 72 new question on the 1996 list.
[<i>The northern end of Triassic Park ends at a junction -
<a href="../../1623/161/triasp.htm#trifurc">'Trifurcation'</a>
- from which one branch leads to a 10m climb in need of a bolt ('Bugger')
at the top of which a similar sized continuation can be seen. Another
branch - 'Minoan Surprise' - is sitting on top of Knossos. Flippant Editorial
Remarks Inc. regard neglecting to mention this as something of an
oversight on the part of the author. Ed.</i>]

<p>Just as everyone got keen again, it was time to derig and leave.
Anthony and I were surprisingly efficient, using our pulleys to haul gear
out of France. Main entrance was also derigged with a minimum of fuss.
Striking Top Camp proved a bit more bothersome, as I managed to convince 
myself that a large pile of shit up there could be brought down in three
carries, and so told folk they didn't need to go back up the hill. Once
our legs had seized up, Andy returned and told us that I had been
completely and utterly wrong, so Anthony and I ran back up the hill in
the dark.

<p>Then Expo was over. Anthony, Kate, Dunks, Wook, Tess and Andy all
headed off to Hungary and some stunningly pretty caves, but that's another
story. All that remained of Expo was the writing of reports and the
drawing of surveys. Oh yes, and a hat full of meaningless statistics
derived from 21 tallies (including the tally tally):

<p>Total TU: 721hrs
<br>Average Trip: 8.3hrs
<br>Highest TU: Nick with 96.5 hrs

<p>Beer Tally: 681 beers in total, won by Duncan with 106 beers
<br>Limo Tally: 369 limos in total, won by Anthony with 58 limos

<p>There were 77 official smelly farts, although I suspect many were not
recorded.
<br>Paul was the Quote King and Animal was the Father of Farts.

<p>And, since I don't like to waste a perfectly good tally, I'm forced to
tell you that there were 0.286 baseball caps per piss-on-the-butty-box. 

<p>The Culprits:

<p>Anthony 'Dour' Day,
<br>Nick 'Bullfrog' Procter,
<br>Duncan 'Drunk'un' Collis,
<br>Mike 'The Animal' Richardson,
<br>Julian 'Rhino' Haines,
<br>Paul 'Sparky' Bilton,
<br>Penny 'Jet Set' Reeves,
<br>Dave 'Scout' Collins,
<br>Dave 'T'other Dave' Johnson ,
<br>James 'Cancer' Eckersley,
<br>Kate 'Oral' Janossy,
<br>Hugh 'Twitmobile' Adams,
<br>'Ard Andy Atkinson,
<br>Bal&aacute;zs 'Big Mug' Izapy,
<br>Wookey,
<br>Wadders,
<br><i>THE TRAILER</i>,
<br>and me.

<p><a href="../../1623/161/l/bcunt.htm"><img alt="Photo - 8k jpeg, link
to 59k jpeg" width=124 height=184 align=middle hspace=10
src="../../1623/161/t/bcunt.jpg"></a>

<a href="../../1623/161/l/shwall.htm"><img alt="Photo - 7k jpeg,
link to 79k jpeg" width=178 height=123 align=middle hspace=10
src="../../1623/161/t/shwall.jpg"></a><br>

<table border=0 width=342>
<tr><td width=139><i>Dave Scout in the Brownie's Cunt - the squeeze at the
Zombie Slime end of the connection to Fudge Brownie and the rest of France,
and the route via which Staudenwirt Palace, Triassic Park etc. were found.
Kaninchenh&ouml;hle 1995.</i> [Photo: Andy Atkinson]</td><td
width=10></td><td width=193><i>Steve Bellhouse in "Shortage of Walls",
Kaninchenh&ouml;hle 1995.</i> [Photo: Andy Atkinson]</td></tr></table>

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