mirror of
https://expo.survex.com/repositories/expoweb/.git/
synced 2024-11-25 16:52:00 +00:00
390 lines
22 KiB
HTML
Executable File
390 lines
22 KiB
HTML
Executable File
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN">
|
|
<html>
|
|
<head>
|
|
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
|
|
<title>1990: Cambridge Underground report</title>
|
|
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../css/main2.css" />
|
|
</head>
|
|
<body>
|
|
<center><font size=-1>CTS 91.1327/a: Cambridge Underground 1991 pp 5-10</font>
|
|
<h2>CUCC Austria 1990 Expedition Report</h2></center>
|
|
|
|
<p align=right>Wookey
|
|
|
|
<p>Now, the complete expo report that follows this article will be at least
|
|
9,000 words long and largely pretty dull as it is written for consumption by
|
|
sensible people who hand out money; your average caver doesn't qualify for
|
|
this description as they tend to be silly people with no money, so this is a
|
|
version aimed at you lot.
|
|
|
|
<p>This year must go down in the annals as the year Hi-Tech came to the Expo.
|
|
With several grand's worth of radios, a survey computer, and a Bosch drill,
|
|
CUCC were well on the way to the 21st century. Good job our carry-in is easy
|
|
enough to accommodate such kit, and a pity that we can't manage the same
|
|
levels of equipment for our transport. Anyway, read on to see how it all
|
|
went.
|
|
|
|
<h3>Arrival in Austria</h3>
|
|
|
|
<p>So, come the 25th June the first wave (Wookey, Del, Tina, Juliette and
|
|
Dave F) set off 3 weeks early to do some mountaineering before the expo and
|
|
to avoid all that last minute organization. A week after that came the
|
|
Landrover and three more bodies (Jeremy, Adam and Paul T). After 2 weeks
|
|
walking we jacked it in and headed for Hilde's familiar campsite, scene of
|
|
many a debauched night over the years. This was a week before the official
|
|
start of the expo but that didn't fool the weather and it tipped it down in a
|
|
huge rainstorm as we travelled, so much so that the Wookmobile ignition
|
|
resigned until an hour's rest and much WD40 got it going again. This was to
|
|
be the first of many breakdowns amongst the even-more-rubbish-than-usual set
|
|
of 'cars' that appeared this year.
|
|
|
|
<p>We arrived to find that Claire and Olly had got there that morning to be
|
|
told by Hilde that we weren't coming for another week! This meant that a week
|
|
before the start there were nine bodies ensconced in Hilde's with our free
|
|
introductory Schnapps, and then another car load of three (Dave H, Julian,
|
|
and Matt) turned up at midnight making 12 in all. (Any apparent arithmetic
|
|
errors in the above are caused by Tina arriving twice!)
|
|
|
|
<p>That night the newly-put-up beer tent blew over, destroying much of its
|
|
frame so we spent the next morning trying to get it fixed, being eventually
|
|
saved by Hilde's husband who brazed it back together.
|
|
|
|
<p>We also installed the Vesta. Now we had a bit of a problem with Vesta.
|
|
They had asked us how much we wanted - we thought of how much we could
|
|
reasonably ask for - ie. about 100 meals, and then doubled it and went for
|
|
200. How many arrived at Cambridge before we left? 720 two-person meals, ie.
|
|
at least 1000 caver-meals, which was enough for everyone to eat Vesta twice a
|
|
day for almost the entire Expo. We managed to get rid of some by swapping it
|
|
with York for batteries and by giving it away to club members but there was
|
|
still an entire trailer-full come Expo time and with only three flavours -
|
|
Chicken Curry, Paella, and Chicken Fried Rice - everyone was looking forward
|
|
to some really exciting food!
|
|
|
|
<p>Despite the presence of 29 question marks on the 1989
|
|
<span lang="de">Kaninchenhöhle</span> survey there was some doubt about
|
|
how much more there was to find and lots of slackers who wanted to go
|
|
prospecting around the plateau anyway. One of the best leads was a big hole 5
|
|
metres up the wall at the end of Yapate Inlet, down the Right Hand Route. The
|
|
deepest question mark was fairly close by, so it was decided to go for these
|
|
first and then go for the stuff down the Left Hand Route where there were
|
|
more leads. (After last year's problems with not having enough rope we had
|
|
fallen upon this plan of only doing one or two things at a time to avoid the
|
|
same problem - some hope!).
|
|
|
|
<h3>Caving at last</h3>
|
|
|
|
<p>So after a couple of days of shopping and setting up base and top camps
|
|
(Hilde's and behind the <span lang="de-at">Bräuning Nase</span>
|
|
respectively) we were under way. Jeremy went down a hole that he had first
|
|
bolted the entrance of two years ago, and it eventually went to minus 80
|
|
metres via some very tight pitches ('Fancy a coffee' and 'Get yer kit off').
|
|
Meanwhile the riggers-in started work on the Right Hand Route whilst Wookey
|
|
and Juliette took some climbing gear and headed for Adrian Pitch, which had
|
|
an inviting hole across its head. This was accessible by a dodgy traverse,
|
|
which had been looked at and left ('needs some gear') in '88. This done, the
|
|
Wookey headed off up some crawls and was surprised to find daylight again -
|
|
it popped out and yelled 'Where the fuck am I' which produced an Adam who was
|
|
prospecting in the area. Not bad for the first day - finding a new entrance.
|
|
|
|
<p><img alt="Expo Hazards: 5k gif" width=280 height=325 align=right
|
|
hspace=10 vspace=10 src="nearer.png">
|
|
The next day, back underground, the traverse continued up-dip in what was
|
|
obviously a big rift, eventually reaching a beautiful 50 metre pitch ('French
|
|
Connection II'). At the bottom of this was a passage containing a piece of
|
|
topofil cotton and some boot prints - hmmm, looks like someone has been here
|
|
first. However, we couldn't find any of their bolts so we continued
|
|
exploring. Back on the surface Adam found a corresponding marked entrance
|
|
only 10 metres away from the new 161b, with circumstantial evidence
|
|
suggesting that it was French. This has still to be confirmed.
|
|
|
|
<p>Meanwhile Jeremy and Adam headed for the Yapate climb, armed with
|
|
Geraldine, our lovely new Bosch drill. Unfortunately they didn't get very far
|
|
as the battery went flat after less than a bolt hole (it had been used for a
|
|
spot of re-rigging on the way down). Nevertheless, whilst wandering about in
|
|
frustration they found an impressive pitch series reached by an 'obviously
|
|
blocked' crawl. This was duly named 'Flat Battery'.
|
|
|
|
<p>Next Julian took Dave H to look at his question mark part way down
|
|
Flapjack. Their first attempt had been thwarted by Team Flat Battery who were
|
|
failing to rig the last pitch as their rope was a good 3 metres too short.
|
|
This time it went better, and despite Dave's comment "When I saw Julian's way
|
|
on I thought he was joking", the tiny rift did go, although after getting
|
|
lost on the way out the next visitors took a ball of string!
|
|
|
|
<p>Wookey and Dave were the next to have a go at the Yapate climb, this time
|
|
using conventional climbing gear. The climb itself was only hard, but the mud
|
|
covered traverse at the top was 'absolutely horrific...' [serious bullshit
|
|
edited out here]. Much faffing was caused by the snaplinks on both Dave's
|
|
dangly bag and the tackle sack coming undone and leaving our intrepid cavers
|
|
at the top with no bolting kit or SRT rope. This problemette was dealt with
|
|
by the use of a bit of IRT ('Indestructible Rope Technique') with the
|
|
climbing rope. Fortunately all this effort was rewarded and they found 150
|
|
metres of big phreas, followed by a 23 metre drop and 180 metres of steeply
|
|
descending rift leading to a nasty-looking pitch. Along with the 100 metres
|
|
of 'Vestabule' checked out on the way down, that made us about 400 metres of
|
|
passage up on the day.
|
|
|
|
<h3>Cars and computers</h3>
|
|
|
|
<p>At this point the rest of the Expo turned up, Mark D winning the worst car
|
|
award by using 9 litres of oil on the drive out (the car later died
|
|
completely near <span lang="de-at">Salzburg,</span> refusing even to be towed
|
|
back to camp (we bent Tony's car trying), so Mark got the AA to pay for a
|
|
brand new hire car to fill with caving gear and yob home in). He did succeed
|
|
in getting the hang-glider out so that put paid to any more caving by Julian
|
|
or Mark S who kept lemminging off the 10 metre ramp bolted to the side of the
|
|
mountain to land on the Village Green some 900 metres below. Mark managed a
|
|
descent time of 4 minutes on one rather choppy flight i.e. nearly 4 metres
|
|
per second vertically, never mind his horizontal speed!
|
|
|
|
<p>Other people avoided caving by going windsurfing, sunbathing by the lake,
|
|
walking, climbing and touristing (oh yeah, and drinking bier of course) - any
|
|
excuse really.
|
|
|
|
<p>Along with another 13 people came the rest of the gear: a computer for
|
|
doing the surveying on (bit of an improvement on the programmable calculators
|
|
of the last few years); and the Philips radios, which proved to be
|
|
absolutely ace gear. We didn't even need to cart the second base station up
|
|
the hill as the mobiles reached down to base camp anyway. It was eventually
|
|
shifted up and installed at the cave entrance giving excellent all-round
|
|
communications. Now we didn't have to walk back down the mountain to go
|
|
shopping when we ran out of Vesta and bog roll, we just phoned up base camp
|
|
and told them to bring some up.
|
|
|
|
<p>The only problem was irate Austrians trying to use the same frequency
|
|
(they weren't supposed to be there either!), and trying to communicate with
|
|
the total pissheads down at base camp. For example, Adam and Jeremy stupidly
|
|
dashed all the way up and down the <span lang="de">Dachstein</span> in a day
|
|
(20 miles and 8000 feet of ascent), and then got lost on the way down in the
|
|
dark. Fortunately they had a Talkie Walkie with them so they phoned up for
|
|
some transport, but all they got was an unbelievably pissed Julian (as the
|
|
weather had been too bad for flying) who claimed that it would be 'completely
|
|
impossible to walk the 50m to the beer tent to get someone else to talk to
|
|
them as he would fall over'.
|
|
|
|
<p>The computer caused a bit of a problem as well (don't they always?) as
|
|
Wookey had brought the data and software on 5 inch discs but the Archimedes
|
|
only had 3 inch ones. Wadders, unable to contact Wookey as he had buggered
|
|
off early to Austria just to make things difficult, had intelligently brought
|
|
an extra 5 inch drive with him, but it wouldn't read the discs. The combined
|
|
efforts of about eight supposedly intelligent people, several of whom had
|
|
newly-acquired degrees in Computer Science, got us nowhere. Eventually Wookey
|
|
was forced to drive 40 miles to something approximating a town, and wander
|
|
around looking for a Dixons, or anybody else that might have a computer, and
|
|
attempt to explain to them that we were English cavers and could we just
|
|
borrow their PC for a mo? Surprisingly, this eventually proved successful and
|
|
provided Olly with another excuse not to go caving at all (the first excuse
|
|
had been Claire but she had gone home after 2 weeks). He proved much more
|
|
useful above ground than below by inputting all the data and writing an
|
|
impressive 3D cave rotation/examination program as well.
|
|
|
|
<h3>Caving again</h3>
|
|
|
|
<p>On the next trip underground, comprising some ouigees touristing around
|
|
the entrance series, Mark S was somewhat surprised when one of our new Hilti
|
|
bolts fell out, depositing him on his arse on the ledge he'd just tried to
|
|
abseil from. This made people somewhat suspicious of our new drill and bolt
|
|
combination, so it didn't get used for some time until Dave F and Wookey
|
|
fished it out from the depths of the cave to do some surface testing. This
|
|
involved bolting up a few boulders so that we could tie them to the mountain
|
|
and chuck 'em off. Some Fall Factor 2s with a 40 kilogram boulder failed to
|
|
break anything and a Fall Factor 1 with a 150 kilogram boulder (the biggest
|
|
we could slide off the edge!) broke the tape and partially melted the rope
|
|
but didn't do the bolt any harm. The ring hanger survived in very good nick
|
|
as well - looks like good gear.
|
|
|
|
<p>A couple of Swedes passed through, on their way to another Expo, dropping
|
|
off Hugh, the newest member of the CUCC Scandinavian Department. One of them
|
|
got the highest Time Underground per Day ratio of anybody. Dangerously keen
|
|
some of these foreigners.
|
|
|
|
<p>By now the Vesta mutiny was developing - led by Paul Smith and the
|
|
Veggies. Ironic, really, as they didn't have to eat the bloody stuff anyway.
|
|
Unfortunately, Paul was far too good a cook and everyone was eating veggie in
|
|
preference to more Vesta, especially at base camp where shopping for nice
|
|
food had become rife - what do think this is - a holiday? You lot can't
|
|
afford to eat nice food, now shut up and eat some more Shit Curry.
|
|
|
|
<p>We now had three deep routes, as the first three things we had looked at
|
|
were all going strong, and indeed this started to cause a fairly serious rope
|
|
problem as our entire 1.4 kilometres was used up. Fortunately, just as things
|
|
were about to start getting nasty as people argued for their favourite route,
|
|
the Flapjack II series ended at an inaccessible rift with water at the bottom
|
|
- apparently at exactly the same height as last year's sump, which was only
|
|
about 30 metres away. This made it pretty certain that that was the water
|
|
table here and we weren't going to get any deeper without going sideways a
|
|
fair way. This series contained an absolutely stunning 100 metre pitch
|
|
'Splatdown' - due to the mega rock that had been bunged down it and had sunk
|
|
in the gloop at the bottom. This had been rigged on our new 9 millimetre rope
|
|
- Ernie the Earthworm - and there had been much gibbering and whimpering all
|
|
round!
|
|
|
|
<p>Meanwhile 300 metres of coax cable was laid from the entrance so we could
|
|
play with our radios underground as well, and people kept finding bits of
|
|
cave more or less wherever they looked. The Adrian's 'French Connection II'
|
|
pitch had a couple of others below it, culminating in a nasty, grey, dead-end
|
|
bit, appropriately named 'Belgium'. More cave was found about 40 metres from
|
|
the entrance and in several side passages, climbs and holes down the Right
|
|
Hand Route.
|
|
|
|
<p>The next development was that after much fruitless searching last year, we
|
|
finally found a bypass to the Squeeze which had claimed two victims (a femur
|
|
and a pelvis) in '89. The Bypass was called 'Dreamtime' and was one of the
|
|
strongest leads left last year, coming out about halfway along the Right Hand
|
|
Route. This allowed our rather large geologist to finally get into the cave
|
|
proper, (he hadn't fitted through the squeeze)and tell us what all this
|
|
bloody space was doing here anyway. The squeeze failed to claim any more
|
|
victims as we had installed a 'dickhead catcher' - a sort of donkey's dick
|
|
for cavers - which would catch anyone who attempted to repeat the previous
|
|
disasters.
|
|
|
|
<p><center><img
|
|
alt="Sheep, drugs and rock'n'roll - only substitutes for caving (6k gif)"
|
|
width=425 height=256 hspace=10 vspace=10 src="sheep.png"></center>
|
|
|
|
<p>There was, of course an Expo dinner with much debauchery all round - well
|
|
not that much debauchery this year, but Jeremy did challenge the Club that he
|
|
could eat ten of Hilde's incredible 'Death-by-Chocolates'. He did manage
|
|
seven before throwing up, but missed Mark's tent. This was a great pity as he
|
|
had successfully thrown up in Mark D's tent in '88, Mark F's tent in '89, and
|
|
had tempted fate by sharing his abode with Mark S in '90.
|
|
|
|
<p>More fun and beer were had when the club was invited to appear in the
|
|
village carnival by the local cavers who had an amazing artificial mountain,
|
|
complete with abseil, cave, bar and accordionist on their float. We only had
|
|
our trusty Rover, on its sixth (and probably final) expo, and with lots of
|
|
free beer around, everyone got extremely drunk - well, what else is there to
|
|
do?.
|
|
|
|
<p>Photos were taken of the mega 'Splatdown' pitch, and of Yapate and the
|
|
massive Knossus chamber. Unfortunately photos were not taken of 'Flat
|
|
Battery' as Mark D the photographer had had far too much beer at the
|
|
above-mentioned carnival (to prove how 'ard he was). Much to our surprise he
|
|
made it up to the cave the next morning, looking like death and having the
|
|
shakes so bad that he made a big hole in his hand whilst trying to break up
|
|
our cheapo Polish carbide into bits small enough to go in a generator. He
|
|
even made it underground, but resigned after about an hour as it was just too
|
|
awful, and headed out. He did discover a third entrance on the way out by
|
|
forcing a bedding plane connecting the 161b entrance to the nearby French
|
|
entrance. "It was so tight I had to dig myself out at one point" said Mark
|
|
'God-I'm-so-hard' D. Later Paul-the-large-geologist got through so someone is
|
|
bullshitting somewhere!
|
|
|
|
<p>Meanwhile the rest of Team Photo had a lovely trip to the bottom of Flat
|
|
Battery (minus 400 metres) and checked out the remaining leads. The pitch
|
|
series had finished at 100 metres or so of largely sand-filled phreas with
|
|
lots of tiny tubes going off. None of these went anywhere although
|
|
Wookey-the-stupid pushed one for about 150 metres of thrutching and even did
|
|
a classic Mendip duck (at 1°C)and after giving up at a dodgy climb froze
|
|
his balls off for the rest of the 16 hour trip. There's technically still a
|
|
question mark there, but anyone who wants it is welcome to it, OK? After
|
|
deciding that this had finished too we de-rigged it, so that was that.
|
|
|
|
<p>Meanwhile lots of people had been wandering about on the surface looking
|
|
for holes as it was sunny up there (the weather was being consistently
|
|
brilliant) and 15 new holes were found and marked, at least one of which is
|
|
still going after 200 metres or so. Even Wookey and Dave F took a couple of
|
|
days off to survey two caves left over from '88 (162 and 163), before
|
|
everyone forgot where they were, as has happened to so many other over the
|
|
years - ahem.
|
|
|
|
<h3>Ending it all</h3>
|
|
|
|
<p>Finally, as everything started bottoming out, people remembered the
|
|
original plan and got round to looking at some stuff down the Left Hand
|
|
Route. The first hole they tried went straight into more big pitches (bloody
|
|
cave's full of holes!), called 'Powerstation', comprising 'Dungeoness',
|
|
'Sizewell B', 'Dinorwig', and 'Foulness Ledge'. Two more trips pushed this
|
|
down for 120 metres until it stopped at a couple of tiny rifts. Why do they
|
|
all do that? - I mean where does all the water go?
|
|
|
|
<p>This year's collection of cars was even more motley than usual; at one
|
|
stage, five of the six remaining vehicles were knackered. Wadders' pistons
|
|
had popped out of one of his rear brake cylinders whilst hacking down the
|
|
toll road, causing the occupant's lives to flash before their eyes, but
|
|
fortunately he had a spare circuit so they survived. His clutch lever had
|
|
also snapped whilst driving to the cave so he had neatly turned round and
|
|
driven all the way back to the campsite in second, ignoring all the junctions
|
|
as he couldn't afford to stop. This was left for us to fix as Wadders dashed
|
|
back to the UK to do a week's work in the middle of the Expo, taking Jeremy's
|
|
car (the nice one) with him. The Wookmobile's brakes slowly decayed until at
|
|
least four pumps were required to get any slowing down done. After taking 3
|
|
days to buy a new cylinder, and knackering it on insertion as it had the
|
|
wrong threads, National Breakdown took the car away to fix it. This meant
|
|
that those unfortunates who were supposed to drive it back got a lift in Mark
|
|
D's nice new hire car. The Landrover's dynamo died so we had to keep charging
|
|
up car batteries for it, and only using it in the daytime. Fortunately, with
|
|
all the shagged cars about there were plenty of batteries to spare! Del's
|
|
thermostat was knackered so a drive up the toll road took 45 minutes and
|
|
required at least one refill. That left Tony's nice 205 GTi - but that had
|
|
shagged rear suspension so you could only put two people in it without taking
|
|
big gouges out of the tyres.
|
|
|
|
<p>Back underground Jeremy went and gibbered at all the hanging death at the
|
|
head of the Endless pitch, and then Wookey and Dave F (who had become engaged
|
|
at the CUCC dinner for always going caving together) took Geraldine down and
|
|
did some fancy rigging down another 70 metres. One more (20 hour) trip
|
|
finished this off as the pitches stopped at a mud floor at minus 450 metres
|
|
with a hole at the end that "you might be able to get through Wookey, but no
|
|
one else is going to try" so that was surveyed and finished with, although a
|
|
tempting huge hole halfway up may be worth a go next year.
|
|
|
|
<p>More passage was found above the Yapate climb heading 60 metres straight
|
|
off the end of the survey, with three ways on at the end. This, along with
|
|
all the Left Hand Route holes that we never even got round to looking at, and
|
|
the rifts in Adrian's, holds most promise for '91.
|
|
|
|
<p>Finally, we ran out of time and people started buggering off home to avoid
|
|
the derigging. All able bodies were pressed into service to shift all the
|
|
string out of the hole and back down the mountain, along with all the other
|
|
Expo paraphernalia like Rebecca the stretcher (unused this year!), and lots
|
|
of tents, food, bolting kits and caving gear.
|
|
|
|
<p>We successfully turned Hilde's nice campsite into a bombsite with gear,
|
|
string and dead cars everywhere. Eventually it was all stuffed into the
|
|
available vehicles and everyone disappeared: Team Trinity off to hitch to
|
|
Turkey and back; Team Intrepid to do Swiss mountains, French Caves, Gorges,
|
|
and beaches; and the rest off home.
|
|
|
|
<p>So, another successful trip for CUCC, with 2.7 kliks of passage
|
|
discovered, mostly in pitch series below the 300 metres level, and plenty
|
|
more holes in the ground to go at in future. We may not be the most glamorous
|
|
expo on the planet, but it is one of the nicest, an excellent training ground
|
|
for future hards, and, well, someone's got to discover all that nasty
|
|
Austrian cave!
|
|
|
|
<p>This year's team: <span lang="sv">Jan Armendal,</span> Olly Betts,
|
|
Adam Cooper, Mark Dougherty, Tim Farrar, David Fearon, Mark Fearon, Annie
|
|
Heppenstall, <span lang="sv">Lief Hornsved,</span> Dave Howes, Matthew
|
|
Keeling, Juliette Kelly, Joe Lenartowicz, Keith Millar, Claire Purnell, Mike
|
|
Richardson, Del Robinson, Jeremy Rodgers, Tony Rooke, Hugh Salter, Tanya
|
|
Savage, Mark Scott, Paul Smith, William Stead, Peter Swain, Paul Theobald,
|
|
Julian Todd, Francis Turner, Andy Waddington, Jared West, Tina White, Wookey.
|
|
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<!-- LINKS -->
|
|
<ul id="links">
|
|
<li>Cambridge Underground 1991,
|
|
<a href="http://cucc.survex.com/jnl/1991/index.htm">Table of Contents</a></li>
|
|
<li>1990 Expedition info:
|
|
<ul>
|
|
<li><a href="index.htm">Index</a> (more detail than in this list)</li>
|
|
<li><a href="log.htm">Logbook</a></li>
|
|
<li><a href="cavegd.htm">161 Description</a> to date (ie. 1990)</li>
|
|
<li><a href="162163.htm">Entrances 162 and 163</a></li>
|
|
<li><a href="newent.htm">New Entrances</a></li>
|
|
<li>Surveying Report:
|
|
<ul>
|
|
<li><a href="svy1.htm"> 1: Calibration</a></li>
|
|
<li><a href="svy2.htm"> 2: Survey Production</a></li>
|
|
</ul></li>
|
|
<li>Bosch Cordless Rotary Hammer <a href="drill.htm">Drill Report</a></li>
|
|
<li><a href="sponsr.htm">Sponsors</a></li>
|
|
</ul></li>
|
|
<li><a href="../../pubs.htm#pubs1990">Index</a> to all publications</li>
|
|
<li><a href="../../index.htm">Back to Expeditions intro page</a></li>
|
|
<li><a href="../../../index.htm">CUCC Home Page</a></li>
|
|
</ul>
|
|
</body>
|
|
</html>
|