expoweb/years/2025/log_entries/2025-07-05e.json

{
 "date": "2025-07-05",
 "title": "Balkon - Bolting (some of) Mongol Rally",
 "place": "Balkon",
 "other_people": "",
 "text": "<p>We set off in the morning after a reasonable amount of faff. And Chris forgetting to put Jonty on the callout. Chris went ahead to \"get his things ready\", really it was probably to get some peace. When the other three arrived, Zen Chris quickly became Disturbed Chris. Unfortunately, his trusty peruvian rice bag had failed him, resulting in a quite damp oversuit. He used this reason to sit up above the balcony in the sun while the others went down to the balcony to get dressed. There was a reasonable amount of faffing that then ensued, including some cutting of chest harnesses, before Chris reappeared muttering about Peru and rice bags again.\n<p>\n<p>The group began the journey into the cave, Musky Hannah in the lead with her Wonderboom blasting tunes. The trip to Mongol rally was reasonably uneventful other than a couple of notes made about single-bolt hangs and some excesses of rope. Some of these pitches will probably need a bolt or two adding in the future. Upon reaching the crawl to Mongol Rally, the group dutifuly each crowbarred some of the crawl out, as per Lara's request. There is now reasonable room to crawl through with a tacklebag in tow, although Lara will likely be happy with a bit more digging. The first three had a bit of a cuddle while waiting for Chris, who gracefully declined to join the puddle upon arriving. Some more faff then commenced before Musky Hannah and Chris, who it had been agreed would do the first bolting shift, were ready to go. After they were off, Alice and Jonty ate a rather large amount of flapbuck before looking for a nice comfortable corner to hunker down and wait. There were a few different attempts before they ended up fetching a couple of the sleeping mats that Alice and Ella had recently brought down to the top of Mongol Rally ready for a camp. They then managed to set up an excellent lying-down spot where they could spoon for warmth under the group shelter.\n<p>\n<p>It was agreed by both Jonty and Alice that this was both the warmest and most comfortable Austrian cave wait they had ever done. There were a couple of trips through the crawl to take care of some important personal admin at the bottom of Hangman's pitch, and a visit to break into one of the bags of Suzie snakes, which was quickly consumed in its entirety. All in all though, they were camped out here for about 4 hours before Hannah and Chris returned, having run out of drill battery after placing 6 bolts. They offered to swap out, which Jonty and Alice were eager to do after the long wait. They then introduced the first bolting team to the spooning spot they had constructed, giving excellent reviews. After a bit of faff at the pitch head preparing the bolting gear they would need, Jonty realised he'd left his personal tackle bag at the mini-camp and returned to find the others already enjoying the spot.\n<p>\n<p>Alice and Jonty were very soon at the bolting front and began taking things in and bouncing some ideas about. Alice was the first to bolt, with Jonty's advice. She put in an initial bolt to make the second half of an existing Y-hang, after meeting a lot of resistance installing a spit into the already-present hole. The rope was then to drop down a bit of rift, where there was an existing hilti on the right wall. Due to the narrowness of the rift though and the layout below, they elected to drill a thread into a nicely-located flake on the opposite wall and equalise the deviation between them, keeping the rope central in the rift. They dropped to the next ledge, where Jonty took a turn bolting and installed a lowkey magnificent Y-hang, which now leads into an almost immediate deviation on the opposite wall. It now sits flush on the fall after a fair amount of post-hole hammering. They were just reaching the next ledge when Hannah and Chris turned up, having spooned enough by this point and wanting to come have a look. Chris made a lot of hmming and haaing noises as he descended the pitch, with a couple of \"interesting\"s thrown in. In the end he admitted it was good after editing one piece of rigging on his way down.\n<p>\n<p>The group had then reached the \"big ledge\", where a couple of hiltis existed, and had a bit of a think. The existing setup wasn't bad but was a single bolt hang and was woefully ungardened. Jonty took this as a personal challenge, and proceeded to chuck some rocks off the top of the pitch, while taking the time to save a few nice ones, which have now been left on the big ledge as a nice feature (which may get washed away in the coming rain). Jonty put in a final bolt to make a Y-hang for the top of this pitch, and rigged the rope into it, having to join the next rope on just below the belay (definitely not trimming off the last meter of the previous one in the process). Chris had already started on his way back up and the others followed behind. Upon reaching the bottom of Hangman, they briefly reconglomerated before Chris took the lead again. Jonty, now crossing the traverse for the 4th time and getting annoyed at how inefficiently it was rigged, made a few adjustments (with Alice's help) in order to avoid the unnecessary rising and falling of the traverse and loosely rigged line. This did involve a little bit of gardening of the lower part of the ledge, which he'd shouted up to Chris he'd be doing so as not to surprise him. Unfortunately, Hannah, who had still been there at the time, had not heard this and shouted down to see if everybody was ok after the loud banging began. The traverse is now in an easier, safer state but still needs an additional bolt to tension it into the optimal position. This wasn't possible at the time due to lack of drill battery and through bolts, but will be done on the next visit.\n<p>\n<p>Alice and Jonty started their ascent, Chris and Hannah having both disappeared about 15 minutes previously. Alice kindly offered to carry the drill bag for the first stint, after which Jonty picked it up at a rebelay a few pitches up. Just after passing Honeycomb, Jonty's left contact lense began quite badly misbehaving. He managed to make it up another couple of small pitches with some discomfort, after which point it became untenable and he had to unglove a hand and remove it entirely - leaving him with a good right eye and a quite blurry left eye. The caused a bit of bother with seeing things. To great relief the pair soon reached the watering hole, where Jonty made the freeclimb traverse across, with Alice worriedly holding the back of his harness - some quite wacky depth perception making things quite tricky. Alice took the lead for the rest of the way up, pointing out every little and big hole to Jonty, who was stumbling around a bit like a fresher. They emerged from the cave at about midnight to find Chris and Hannah waiting on the balcony, having just finished getting changed. Chris started off ahead, eager to get his hands on a curry, while Jonty got changed and packed his kit for the walk back - which was a somewhat similar exercise of relying on Alice and Hannah to point out holes and footholds. They arrived back at top camp at 1am, where Chris had the curries ready, and tried to be very quiet as most everyone else had already gone to bed.",
 "slug": "2025-07-05e",
 "time_underground": 13.0,
 "author": {
  "slug": "jonty-pine",
  "nickname": "Jonty",
  "tu": 13.0
 },
 "trippersons": [
  {
   "slug": "jonty-pine",
   "nickname": "Jonty",
   "tu": 13.0
  },
  {
   "slug": "alice-kirby",
   "nickname": "Alice",
   "tu": 13.0
  },
  {
   "slug": "chris-densham",
   "nickname": "Chris D",
   "tu": 13.0
  },
  {
   "slug": "hannah-urquhart-greaves",
   "nickname": "Musky Hannah",
   "tu": 13.0
  }
 ],
 "expedition": {
  "year": "2025",
  "name": "CUCC expo 2025"
 },
 "cave": {
  "areacode": "1623",
  "kataster_number": "264",
  "unofficial_number": "2005-05"
 }
}