expoweb/years/2024/recovered-entries.html.txt

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<div class="tripdate" id="2024-07-19z">2024-07-19</div>
<div class="trippeople"><u>Wookey</u>, Jono</div>
<div class="triptitle">Balconhoehle - Rigging Mongol Rally</div>

<p>Walked up to top camp in the evening ready for trip down
Balkonhoehle to get Mongol Raly rigged with Jono. I was somewhat
perplexed to find no sign of Jono, and still not as it went dark. He
eventually turned up about 10am the next morning. We had our gear to
  carry over so it wasn't a particularly early start.</p>

<p>I had forgotten a load of the upper passages, but did at least
remember the obscure left turn for Honeycomb/Mongol Rally. Soon enough
we arrived at the end of the rigging part-way down hangmans, complete
with a rigging diag, some rope and a drill. Jono did this one,
complaining at the bottom that the bolts didn't match the diagram,
rigging a 2-bolt rebelay as a rather peculiar deviation. We realised
that we were starting part-way down the rigging diagram, not the top,
so he went back up to put it right whilst I continued to start Mongol
Rally. Dragging the gear through was the usual faff (someone should
just take a spade and make that crawl bigger).</p>

<p>So now it was my turn and I suited up with Anthony's nice new drill
and 125m of rope. The 25m didn't quite reach across the traverse with
a big thread round a boulder, so I put a bolt in the roof to improve
the rigging (another one just over the hole in the floor would make
the traverse line a lot more useful, I later realised). The rock was
impressively cheesy, with about 20mm of goo to remove before getting
to actual rock.</p>

<p>The rigging diagram suggested another bolt near the top so I added
one about 6m down on a nose to the right, only to realise that one had
probably already been done some previous year. I also realised at this
point that the tape on Anthony's drill bit was set rather too short
for reliable bolt-setting so adjusted it to give an extra 10mm of
hole. I then added another bolt on the left, replacing one in the
maximum rub-spot just under a lip (very odd placement). This finally
removed all the rubs on this top slope and actually made the
changeovers nicer, so I think it's an improvement. </p>

<p>Next dilemma was whether to use the bolt on a nose (with hanger
left behind) or the reflectored bolt on the well-used muddy route. The
nose was harder to get to but gave a nicer hang (and was suggested on
the rigging diagram). With a sling to help the changeover it actually
worked quite well, although maybe the obvious route would also work
fine - there is no way of knowing without trying both and I had faffed
enough by now. Continued down for another hour or so rigging
rebelays. The rigging guide is accurate. Hummed and hawed some more at
the odder bits of rigging trying to work out what 'better' might look
like. Left one bit (with a nearly horizontal deviation) some extra
rope to come back to and add a bolt if time allowed but pressed on
until the rope ran out, just on the same ledge that had had a knot
pass in 2022. Looks like that is where 100m gets you to.</p>

<p>We were out of time so called it a day and headed off out, only
realising on the way out that the rope bag we had left contained a
note 'top of mongol rally' in it so we had used the wrong one (misled
by the '25m' rope in the top matching the '25m' rope marked on the
topo for the traverse. Oh well.</p>

<p>Got out around 11:30, having had a very satisfying trip, Jono had
finally got underground and enjoyed himself. It was a chill trip with
almost zero stress, and we'd done enough to make a camping trip
feasible next time.</p>

<div class="timeug">T/U: 10.5 hours</div>
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<div class="tripdate" id="2024-07-25z">2024-07-25</div>
<div class="trippeople"><u>Wookey</u>,Anthony Day, Jacob Chuck</div>
<div class="triptitle">Surface - Fixing Guten Morgen Höhle</div>

<p>My adopt-a-cave for this year was GMH (Guten Morgon Höhle), having
failed to sort it out last time I was here in 2022. And this was the
last day available to get it done, so research was done down at base
to make sure I had the necessary info - email threads, purported
locations, cave descriptions, lobbook entries, GPX tracks, and
Martin's 'mappapp' local copy (ish) of the website. And I went
shopping for stainless screws and HSS bits so we could put in tags,
and had drills, and instruments. We tried hard not to forget anything
important so this would actually work.</p>

<p>The weather was a rare case of a bit overcast, but not actually
raining, which is perfect for this work. It warmed up later in the day
but was relatively gentle on us, which is good because we walked for
bloody miles!</p>

<p>Tromped past Balkony following vague line of cairns, checking the
points on our map. Checkout 2023-ASH-10 and 2023-ASH-11 which defo
look worth investigating. Then got
to <a href="..//1623/2012-OK-01/2012-OK-01.html">2012-OK-01</a> which
is of course one of mine, from the fabled 'Wook and Olaf walk to
Appelhaus' trip of 2012. There were a couple of obvious shafts which
we photoed, but they didn't fit my recollection of OK-01 which was a
smaller shaft under an alcove. Soon we found the right hole just 6m
away, but not obvious due to being 'tucked under' a small cliff.</p>

<p>We put in a new concrete-screw tag for "2012 OK 01", only to find
it already tagged just round the corner as
<a href="..//1623/2017-NR-02/2017-NR-02.html">2017-NR-02</a>. So in fact
it has been explored, tagged, located, photoed and sketch-surveyed for
7 years, so we can kataster this one.</p>

<p>Next we passed 2012-OK-02 which still needs descending so far as we
can tell. Easy job. We put our cave-blinkers back on in an attempt to
actually get the job we intended to do done. Wook had carefully put
the alleged GPS of GMH on his phone (neither it nor shagged-spit was
in the 2024 entrances list). The back-up plan was that Anthony had
been there before a mere decade ago so could hopefully re-find
them. Fortunately the GPS was spot-on for the GMH entrance, which had
a nice tag saying <a href="..//1623/2015-DL-02/2015-DL-02.html">"2015
DL 02"</a> so one wonders quite how "Chossy Death Slope Höhle" got
renamed and no-record of this correspondence made it into a logbook. A
short wander up-cliff found the
also-tagged <a href="..//1623/2015-DL-01/2015-DL-01.html">2015 DL
01</a> (Shagged Spit Höhle). We GPSed (GPS on the eponymous shagged
spit for about 40 mins) and photoed that location whilst also doing a
  'from-the-surface' SAP6 survey.</p>

<p>So now both 2015-DL-01 and 2015-DL-02 are explored, located,
photoed, tagged and surveyed sufficiently to get
katastered. Result. Job done.</p>

<p>Time was moving on and we had a dinner to get back to this evg so
we headed back, looking
for <a href="..//1623/2012-dd-04/2012-dd-04.html">2012-dd-04</a> on the
way back. Despite our best efforts we stumbled onto an entrance too
fine to ignore and so spent 40 mins GPSing, tagging and surveying
(from the surface) 2024-JC-01. (See how the wiley old lags carefully
made this one Jacob&apos;s responsibility :-) It&apos;s quite a big
hading shaft entrance about 12m x 2m with a 4m cliff behind and at
least 17m deep. There was a nice boulder for a survey station but it
looked a bit dodgy and shove sent it crashing down the hole so we were
wise not to use that one. Tag is to LH end of the hole. GPS point and
intermediate point are red nail-varnish marked.</p>

<p>dd-04 was a tiny bit elusive, although Anthony&apos;s GPS took him
nearly straight there whilst Wookey&apos;s took him 20m away jus tthe
wrong side of a ridge and then he was marooned by bunde for a while,
but eventually re-found the others. jacob had shoved himself into the
hole but it was about 1.5 cavers long and thus not big enough to be
katasterable. We tagged it anyway.</p>

<p>Now it really was time to hot-foot it home so we headed back,
passing the (tagged) caves 277, 272 and 2012-FT-02. There really are
quite a lot of holes round here.</p>

<p>Anthony and I collected the rest of our shit and we all headed
briskly down the hill for the final time this year, which was good
because I really did have quite sore feet by the end of the day after
more than 7km of that ridiculous pointy terrain. We even arrived in
good time for Tess to rescue us and take us to a fine dinner</p>

<div class="timeug">T/U: Jacob: 2mins</div>
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<div class="tripdate" id="2024-07-17z">2024-07-17</div>
<div class="trippeople"><u>Wookey</u>, Jono, Marie, Isaac, Charlotte, Phil Balister</div>
<div class="triptitle">Canyonning - Strubklamm</div>

<p>A canyonning trip was suggested, and as I'd done it a couple of
times before and thus knew where it was, and what to look out for, it
was easy to blag my way on. We had this idea a bit later in the day
than was ideal, because Strubklamm is miles away (most of the way back
to Salzburg), but it also meant that I was able to collect Tess from
the station before buggering off like a very naughty husband. I had
brought my new wetsuit and was eager to find out if it made Strubklamm
into a much less cold-and-miserable experience than previous
attempts. I was also able to borrow a (kayaking) helmet and neoprene
booties from Julia, which, combined with some sandals and spare caving
gloves, was enough kit to canyon (as this one doesn't actually need a
harness if you can manage an 8m jump).</p>

<p>We were going to take my van and Charlotte's car but Tess wanted
the Van, and it's a long way to take two cars, so when PhilB appeared
we pounced on him and made him drive all 5 of us there (Charlote in
the boot). This was very kind as it's about 1hr40 mins each way, and
he doesn't even get to do the canyon. Having a driver avoids all the
shuttle-faff too, which is great, especialy as it turned out the
huttle-road was closed for works, so there was quite a long
drive-around which would have made us even later.</p>

<p>This was Isaac and Charlotte's 1st ever canyonning trip, and
Marie's 2nd (after the disastrously cold 'Haute Borne' in the
Ardeche), but we were a crack team of potholers with two harnesses
between us so what could possibly go wrong?</p>

<p>In fact the descent was very smooth with everyone having fun, at
least to start with. The water was quite a pleasant temperature,
although every inlet was much colder so we got a chilly bit every so
often as they came in. However it is longer than I remember and there
is a _lot_ of swimming, with a long section in the middle starting
with a canyon, and then a couple more long swims. Clearly the local
canyonning school uses it a lot so there were lots of in-situ ropes
for getting to good takeoffs and dealing with any slippery bits, or
just abseiling if you didn't like the bigger jumps. (Marie skipped the
biggest one).</p>

<p>Much jumping fun was had, with Charlotte of course taking to the
game with gusto, although neither of us was any good at keeping the
water out of our noses on impact, and I managed to bite my tongue on
one jump, which was dim. Everyone avoided broken ankles or being
impaled on trees, just some coughing and spluttering.</p>

<p>I hardly recognised any of the 2nd half as obviously my brain had
shut down with the chilly misery on the previous two attempts after
the 1st long swim. This time it was all rather lovely - it is a _very_
pretty canyon. Marie found herself a bit short of stoke after the 1st
half, partly due to the baggy 2mm wetsuit and partly not having
evtirely recovered from the great chunder trip. 1.4km of canyonning
(with ~400m of swimming) over 3 hours feels like quite a long
way, and it was a relief to swim round a corner and finally see a
slackline being rigged and a footbridge with a beach which marks the
escape.</p>

<p>Phil was even there to rescue us, so that all worked out
nicely. Good trip, and it's a lot nicer with 5 than 10 but still takes
a solid 3 hours. We got back about 7pm.</p>

<div class="timeug">T/U: 0.0 hours</div>
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