This article first appeared in Descent(40) for Jan/Feb 1979, pp10-11 and is reproduced in the password protected part of the website with the permission of the author and Wild Places Publishing.

Eislufthole still going for CUCC at 1148 ft

By Nick Thorne

After last year's quietly successful Cambridge UCC expedition (see Descent 38), enthusiasm to return to the karst regions of Western Austria soared. The main incentive was to carry on prospecting on the almost virgin lapiaz of the plateau above Altaussee, and to continue pushing our unfinished find of last year, 106 - Eislufthöhle (good name, eh?).

By way of introduction, Altaussee is a small village about 50 miles east of Salzburg, and it was there that we set up our camp. The Loser Plateau where we carried out most of our work is then reached by a steep (in more ways than one) toll road, follwed by an hour's brisk walk from the top. Furtunately for us, one of the few local cavers, Karl Gaisberger, who seems to be able to arrange anything, managed to secure free passes for us on the toll road. Cheers Karl; how about a sedan chair for the walk at the top next year ?

So in July and August of this year, we were back on the Loser with a fairly hefty team. Expedition members divided logically into three groups: Team Eislufthöhle: Andy Waddington, Simon Farrow, Nick Thorne, Doug Florence and Julian Griffiths - the crack ropes team, ready for anything. Team Ladders: John Bowers, Ben van Millingen, Mike Shearme and Nicola Davies - all spending their first year in Austria. Team Geriatric: Rod and Jont Leach, Vic Brown, Dave Fox, plus "hangers on". These acted as the emergency reserve powerhouse, to be called into service should things get out of hand for the rest of us. (Something like Aladdin's lamp I suppose, but this lot looked more like a clapped out carbide).

And so to caving. Team Ladders didn't take long to find a promising, draughting entrance. All well and good so far, but the entrance initially was only big enough for a midget and it was only after a couple of days of boulder hauling that they got underground. The cave, 107, they called Gemsehöhle. Since I didn't get a trip down it, and know Berger all about it, I won't go into too much detail.

Apparently they descended a series of pitches in a large rift, down to about 560ft, when the tackle started to run out, with the cave continuing. They chose to get out of this dilemma by rubbing the magic carbide lamp. Wham! Team Geriatric hauled their weary bodies out of their canoes (canoes?) and went down Gemsehöhle with a brand new reel of Marlow. Once underground, the Geriatrics were immediately transformed into an efficient well-oiled machine. Within a couple of trips, Gemsehöhle had been pushed to a choke at minus 918ft.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, what of Team Eislufthöhle ? Mixed fortunes really. A slow rig in down to last year's terminus (ie. the Tap Room - see survey) was due to greater amounts of snow and ice than last year. ("Are you sure this is the right cave?") At one point a huge ice boulder was suspended at a pitch take-off, and it refused to give way to a well-directed wellie. Farrow and Florence then carted a great crowbar into the cave to shift the thing, only to find that the boulder had fallen down in the meantime. Ah, well !

Once we had rigged down to The Tap Room, but before pushing far into new ground, we had an interesting policy change - to overnight trips. The lapiaz in which the cave entrance is sited is impossible to negotiate in darkness, and therefore trips during the daytime are limited to a maximum of eight hours underground. Longer trips could be attained by going underground in the late afternoon, spending a minimum time underground of about ten hours, and then emerging into the morning light.

Good idea, we thought, and indeed the first of these trips did add 394ft to the depth of Eislufthöhle, including the magnificent 197ft abseil into The Hall of the Greene King. Subsequent overnight trips pushed on down some more pitches, and a very muddy 'Fiesta Run' to give a total depth of 1,148ft, the cave still continuing. This bottom part of the cave is a very tall vadose stream canyon. The passage is very tight at stream level and traversing was necessary.

It was whilst driving back from the last of these overnight trips, at about 7 o'clock in the morning, when we had a slight mishap. The driver of the car carrying three of Team Eislufthöhle back down the toll road, fell asleep at the wheel. With that Great Karst Area in the Sky Looming ever nearer, the car missed a telegraph pole and a tree by inches, went through a fence cum crash barrier, and gracefully launched itself over the void.

Well, it could have been a drop of a couple of hundred feet had it happened further up the road, but as it was, any spectators stupid enough to be awake at that ungodly hour would have seen a fine piece of 'S' registered, British engineering fall, roll, and tumble down a near vertical 30ft bank, to land wheels down in the river at the bottom. (all film rights reserved.)

The driver had a broken sternum, cuts to face and hands, and concussion. The front seat passenger had a bad gash in the head, and was suspected of having a lightly fractured neck, and as the passenger in the back (I'm almost ashamed to say it!) I escaped uninjured. The car was a write-off. Both injured parties are now out of hospital, and well on the way to recovery. (Rats, I wanted his watch!)

One consequence of the crash was to leave Team Eislufthöhle a little short of manpower. Efforts were shifted from surveying and photographing to derigging. As the expedition neared its close, we even started fondling insurance policies as we contemplated having to abandon some tackle down the cave. With most of the cave still to derig, things looked bleak. Then we remembered the magic carbide lamp . . . Wham! In came Team Geriatric, fresh from Gemsehöhle, and in one magnificent combined effort, we cleared the cave with one day to spare.

On the return journey we were waved through Belgian customs by the cleaning lady, and just reached an English telly five minutes before Sid's Pippikin film started.

In conclusion then, the expedition was a great success, even if the exploration of Eislufthöhle was halted a little early. As for Eislufthöhle itself, it is now one of Austria's most significant caves. From our end point this year, we could lob stones down a considerable distance below, with the stream canyon continuing. No sump appears imminent as there is no fresh mud on the walls. (The mud of the Fiesta Run is probably associated with a shaft overhead, and is quite old stuff.)

To get 1300ft out of the place should be a mere formality, and after that, there's still 1640ft of depth potential left. Now we must try and muster a really crack team for next year. And crack team it must be, as Eislufthöhle is no longer the easy series of shafts it was, but a long and serious undertaking.

References: Cambridge Underground 1977, 1978 and 1979 [to be published] containing surveys of all underground discoveries made by CUCC inrecent years, plus surface survey giving accurate entrance locations and altitudes. [This is a slight exagerration, WebEd.]