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<center><p><font size=-1>Cambridge Underground 1994 pp 35-39</font>

<h1>Austria 1993</h1>

<p>&quot;Oh yes, I'm pretty sure it must have rained,<br>
The day before you came&quot;</center>

<p>It did. Lots. Every day. For four weeks. At the beginning it had seemed
like the glorious excesses of last year - Spencer turned a peculiar shade of
lobster after the first carry, and we were even permitted to put our tents
up in peace. Exhilarated with the joy that is Austria, Adam's tale of a
knife wielding, stone throwing, psychopathically criminal Bulgarian driver
was much appreciated, and we settled into the beer and Hilde's free
schnapps.

<p>Adam's presence forced some enthusiasm into the first arrivals (Clive,
Spencer and Nick) who had been worrying about finding the cave, since Clive
had been there only once the previous year and the other two were novii.
This worry was justified as Nick and Clive continued their run of
directional disability - first Juniper Gulf via Clapham, then the awful
escape from Salzburg, miserably failing to find S'not, and finally the search
for rucksack cave.

<p>Adam had found this while prospecting, abandoning the traditional
technique of throwing a rock down it, preferring to lob his rucksack
instead. Eventually retrieving it, he ran out of ladder, so he marked it
with a cairn, 'for future exploration'. Exploration of the plateau maybe.
The attempt to find it by Clive, Nick and Spencer was put off first by Clive
being desperate to avoid caving and going into the pleasant ice cave,
&quot;Glitterstompf&quot;, instead, and then the rain beginning. A measure
of the optimism of the expo up to that point was shown by Spencer leaving
his cag at base camp, &quot;because it hadn't rained the past few
days&quot;.

<p>Meanwhile AndyW arrived, bringing MikeTS and a van of crap, even bringing
a spare tent for his gear, if you can call it that. His light was so ancient
(when was the last time a stinky made an appearance on expo?) it gave him
the excuse to leave the cave early while Adam and MTS carried on rigging in.
He then lent it to Tess for her tourist trip to Knossos, along with his
&quot;novel&quot; SRT gear, which turned a pleasant trip into a rant. She
left fairly quickly after this.

<p>Team France arrived from Dauphin&eacute;, JulianH, Ali, Petel and Hugh
packed in one car being noisy with their lungs, and much later that day,
Wookey and Tess being noisy with the van's freshly broken exhaust. After a
day to recuperate and drink beer, the first portion were swiftly off to
France, although unfortunately this time it was the cave. They set up the
new improved radios at top camp, and carried on down the cave to run out of
rope at the top of the pitch. After ranting at the rope while escaping, they
found Austria showing it's teeth in the shape of lightning bolts steadily
advancing their way, and decided to make a run for the car, claiming it was
awful when they arrived back.

<p>Adam was not quiet during this time - he had an old question-mark hacking
away at his mind, took MTS to go and look at it, and found 'Final Cut' in
Gob. However this was all a bit active, so a short pause was in order to
carry some more crap up. Clive's tent poles finally arrived, allowing top
camp to be set up with all the piles of flapjack, veggie meals and the one
flavour of Vesta we had this year. The radios were fettled as far as they
went, with the new booster providing more opportunity for us to broadcast
all over Austria except to top camp.

<p>A few souls pushed back the inevitable onset of more caving by taking the
new 200m rope to a big cliff above Toplitzsee where the Austrians said there
was a 200m freehang. This involved a strenuous walk up the side of the
cliff, then a tentative walk down the steep wooded slopes, which would have
been alright has it not been for the immense slipperiness of the surface
(but the leaf mould provided surprisingly good grip in the end) and the
knowledge that there was a drop just past the trees. When they were within a
sensible distance, Wookey was volunteered to tie the rope to a couple of
trees and go down to see if the rope reached. After the usual faff he set
off properly, and after what seemed like hours later he stood on top of his
van half a mile away, which was the signal for 'pitch free!' On average it
took the descenders about a quarter of an hour to get down, mostly filled
with thoughts of rubbing ropes, the knot at the end for Wookey, and Clive's
thoughts on melting STOP's. It was generally agreed that it had now been
Done, and this was a Good Thing, since no-one need try it again. (Apparently
the Austrians did it on 4 50m ropes!)

<p>The same day, Gob was bottomed by Adam, Nick and MTS. They found
footprints on the floor - it joined Dehydration. On leaving they then had
the usual tally of light failures, Nick ripping the lid off his Oldham/FX5
in the slot of Final Cut and MTS's just generally dying. Adam had been let
out first and the other two followed slowly out due to being over caved and
under lit. Nick's opinion of his trip was to be found in his illegible
drunken ranting a few days later - &quot;Once upon a time there was a caver.
He was fucking hard. Nobody liked him&quot;, and &quot;Caving is shit
especially with hard bastard adam  He is so hard I want him&quot;

<p>Team rant (Ali, JulianH and Pete) were busy playing down France and
throwing rocks at each other. They liked the rebelay at the top of Algeria -
6 inches into a huge rock ceiling - but didn't like the huge rock Ali
dislodged from Orient Express and sent rumbling towards the others. This was
to cause problems later while derigging as it landed on the rope, was too
big to move by hand, and so 50m of rope had to be fed underneath it, making
the whole pitch take 1&frac12; hours to derig.

<p>The first trip to The bitter end (Far Too Far) was made by Lummat (who
dropped and broke the new, small, light drill battery), JulianT (who wants
to rename Boulder Alley, Shit Alley and hates endlessly sucking on fudge) and
Wookey (who has this strange desire to rig mental tyrolean traverses across
Hyper Gamma Spaces). They spent most of their time rigging to get there, and
Wookey went down the virgin black crusted mud of Anglia while Lummat started
rigging a small pitch. They emerged at dawn, having been underground 16
hours.

<p>Everybody was frightened, knackered or at least wet by now, so it was
decided to have Ali's birthday party as an excuse to have nice food rather
than bean slop. He and MTS had shown their skills earlier by sharking some
German girls (&quot;she was at least fourteen, honest&quot;) and when trying
to find their rooms at half past midnight were intercepted by their teachers
who were awake and sitting in ambush. Some swiftly cobbled together excuses
about the toilets were mumbled before they scarpered. Since then a party of
Czechs had shown up, in much improved tents since the previous year. They
had a collection of even younger girls, which was just the ticket for our
two intrepid Cassanova's. Ali had to be dragged away to be fed his birthday
cake and be thrown in the river, and rounded his evening demonstrating his
newly found prowess at firebreathing (taught by Adam).

<p>Meanwhile, Nick was secretly sitting in a corner of the Potato Hut
writing his <a href="log.htm#drunkrant">drunken ramblings</a>...

<p>Then came the New Question of the expo, caused by France being loose and
Far Too Far being so : &quot;Wookey, can I have a question mark near the
top, please?&quot;. Proponents of this school of caving were primarily
Anthony, Hugh and DaveG, the others just going along for the ride. Lummat
and DaveG went down past Arrow Chamber, and Anthony, Hugh and JulianS
surveyed at the bottom of the second pitch. The latter trip went ok, but
after Lummat and DaveG's discovery of the "Chunder pitch" series their trip
started going wrong. Dave has started to feel ill at the top of S'not, and by
the time he was prussiking up the entrance pitch he lost all strength.
Hanging aroung on the last rebelay for over an hour, vomiting for around
twenty minutes, he got dragged out by Lummat eventually. Then there was the
small matter of it being foggy, dark, and neither of them knowing the path
back very well.

<p>At top camp, JulianS called base camp to tell them a call out had been
missed - the radios were used at last. Lots of running around was done,
people who had been drunkenly laughing ten minutes previously suddenly
claiming they were sober, Ali dragged himself away from the Czech girls and
a CB was jury rigged into Wadder's van. An hour after the call, they were
storming up the toll road, Wadder's rambling drunkenly over the radio to
whoever would listen. With typical caver timing he stood on the jury wire
and blew the fuse just as top camp sent one final message with 3 zoom
batteries held together since the main battery was dead : &quot;All Clear at
top camp&quot;. Fortunately, base camp received it, and relayed it to the
car just in time for Wookey to catch up the rest who were already hurrying
to top camp.

<p>The next day, those unfortunate to be at top camp were treated to rain,
sleet, mist, drizzle, hail and an over inch of snow. All the cars were hiding
at base camp, the radios were dead, so they were happy, until Lummat and
MikeTS went to carry on where Lummat left off before, and they were all able
to leave in time to miss the real weather.

<p>Even CUCC get bored of sitting in the rain. Wookey and Adam were first to
break, going up to see all the snow on the plateau, and then down to survey
and derig Gob. On the same day Lummat, Nick and DaveG got to survey "Chunder
Pitch" series, a cloudy clino having cleared up while prospecting, and
JulianS,  Anthony and Hugh played pushing again. Top camp was still too
awful, so they left fairly quickly, Anthony minus his socks so his boots wore
about fifteen little holes in his toes. This combined with his flooded tent
made him even more dour than usual.

<p>France then went deep, changing from big pitches and chambers to a typical
Yorkshire streamway, with cascades, pools etc. and an awful sump at the
bottom. Having got suitably wet, team rant felt too keen and zoomed back to
survey and derig up to Algeria, which is when they found the stuck rope. To
continue the proud expo tradition of broken feet, Pete blistered his
prussiking and swore a lot.

<p>Because of the amount of caving required to get to the far end, people
began prospecting around that area of mountain. This yielded nothing except a
few small shafts, one of which JulianT got stuck in until he was given a
bolting hammer to make it bigger. So it was time for another long trip. Going
into the cave was uneventful - the silly rigging was marvelled at, and Wookey
and MTS were left to set up camp while Lummat and Clive continued Lummat's
previous rigging. This led nowhere except a pile of mud, so they were sent
off to survey Anglia (because it's flat and horrible) while the others played
rigging. Some later they all decided to leave, which was again uneventful
until Knossos where the queues began. Clive was last, prussiked slowly and
took a wrong turn at the top of Boulder Alley. By the time he had climbed
down from his mistake he was knackered, saw what looked like obvious bolts
and he was lost. Eight hours of shivering later, trying not to fall asleep,
he decided to look at the bolts, which turned out to be carbide marks, and he
was in fact just at the top of Boulder Alley. Having confirmed this by
walking down to the Knossos rope, he set off again and found Poxy pitch, and
was happy. He was even happier when he met the rescue team (JulianH, Ali and
JulianS), who gave out food and light when his finally broke.

<p>Having made their exit, met by &quot;Tea or Coffee?&quot; and other such
comforts, the weather broke and it was a collection of miserable wet
bedraggled cavers who wound their way to base camp.

<p>It was so awful everyone hung around in base camp shouting at each other
about the lack of bolts, slings, sunshine, nice food etc. Then in a break
from tradition, team rant split up, Petel being sent to the far end with
Wookey and MTS, and JulianH and Ali taking Anthony (mended at last), JulianT
(too many bloody Julians...) and Spencer (caving! only 3&frac12; weeks into
expo) into France to explore Algeria some more. They found &quot;Twin
Tubs&quot;, and sent Spencer down a hole. Upon emerging from this he was
heard grunting and cursing like a very rude monkey, the tackle sack having
draped itself in a particularly painful way round his bollocks. Ali and
Anthony hid behind a boulder &quot;cringing with each wail of pain&quot;
while the hardier Julians carried on surveying.

<p>The first CUCC camp for many a year began that day, the far end trip
being the fools. A measure of the success of the camp is that the Vesta
meals were a high point. They intended to sleep in cheap hammocks obtained
from the Army and Navy stores bolted to the wall. What they actually spent
their time doing was hanging on trying not to fall out all night and
consequently got no sleep. Conversely, Wookey, who had approached the whole
thing in his usual slack manner, borrowing a thermarest on expo and sleeping
on a ledge, had a wonderful night. The campsite itself was reasonable, at
Beehive where there is water and not too much wind.

<p>Their caving was hampered by losing the Hilti driver on the way in, and
the expected hand driver which was supposed to be at the end having
mysteriously disappeared. This meant they spent their time surveying,
rigging pitches awfully off naturals and going up scrotty holes. Eventually
this got boring, the mud got everywhere and they weren't going to be able to
get any more sleep so they left, carrying too many tacklesacks. And yes, it
was raining again as they emerged.

<p>Then up rolled a big van, with the other DaveG (you thought the Julians
were confusing) who was a teacher at JulianH and Hugh's school. Instead of
teaching them boring things like German, which would have been useful on
expo, he took them caving. His redeeming features were fluent German, so all
the confusing liaising bits could happen, and some tins of meat. His
contribution to extending Austrian caves was limited to looking at the top
of KH and deciding to go home again.

<p>Seb, who is fat, turned up late too. He brought some sun for Clive's
birthday party, so was forgiven. Team rant and Hugh took him caving down
(surprise surprise) France, where despite all their efforts, question marks
persisted. Then some water came down. It had been dry for almost 36 hours,
so it had obviously been saving it up - 2&frac12; inches in 15 minutes at
base camp, flooding it, and Algeria suddenly got wet and windy so they all
left.

<p>Then all that had to be done was derigging. Had everybody spent all their
time caving this would have been an even longer and more arduous task than
it was, but fortunately they didn't. JulianT brought an estate car full of
festering gear with him. The hang gliding was awful all holiday - on his
last flight he got hassled by a helicopter with a dead cow swinging by its
neck below - but he and Wookey got to go diving. Robert The Wonder Caver had
taken up cave diving, so he was able to provide free air and take Julian
round all the things in Grundlesee put there by a mad local who went there
too often.

<p>Bicycles put in another appearance, Wadders going for the downhill
record, Clive beating his previous best, and mountain biking on road bikes
providing diversions. Nobody went up the toll road - it would have been too
awful! That left the beer festival, which was quite jolly as the Austrian
cavers gave us a bottle of schnapps, Robert the policeman carefully ignoring
Clive's protests of &quot;No, I'm driving&quot;.

<p>So, as is traditional in these things, all came to an end. The caves were
derigged, Wookey and MTS being superheroes and carrying out six tacklesacks
betwen them in one trip, then going down the next day for more. Only a
couple of people were left up the mountain, Anthony with a hole in his knee
and Spencer carrying a stupid amount of gear, then we got to pack it all
away. The last day was sunny, and being really dim, we left the campsite
strewn with bits to pack in the morning. We thought it wouldn't rain,
because it hadn't all day. What happened? Nothing. &quot;Hooray&quot; we
went as we went home, all terribly sorry the expo was over and wishing it
would go on for ever. Or not.

<p>The END

<p>Cast:<ul>
<li>Adam &quot;Moose&quot; Cooper
<li>Ali &quot;Child molestor&quot; Morris
<li>Andy &quot;Half a caravan owner&quot; Waddington
<li>Anthony &quot;Dour Yorkshireman&quot; Day
<li>Clive George
<li>Dave Galvin
<li>Dave Gordon
<li>Hugh &quot;Ninja Caver&quot;
<li>Julian &quot;Rant&quot; Haines
<li>Julian Shilton
<li>Julian &quot;Womanizer&quot; Todd
<li>Lummat &quot;The Gumby&quot;
<li>Mike &quot;The Sapling&quot; Pigram
<li>Nick &quot;Alcoholic&quot; Proctor
<li>Pete &quot;Doris&quot; Lord
<li>Seb Holland
<li>Spencer &quot;Curry Monster&quot; Davey
<li>Tess &quot;Token Woman&quot; Jones
<li>Wookey
</ul>
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