expoweb/years/2025/log_entries/2025-07-09a.json

{
 "date": "2025-07-09",
 "title": "Gruffalo - plateau, No such thing as bad weather (just idiots who go out in it)",
 "place": "Gruffalo",
 "other_people": "",
 "text": "The first day of the 2\u00b0C prospecting hellfest! Having decided to set off Wednesday morning to enable a night of drinking and roistering in the tatty hut loft on Tuesday night, an intrepid gang of cavers set off for top camp with various missions in mind. Keeping to my self-designated role of Prospecting Princess, I corralled a crack team of Hamish and Dylan to revisit one of the promising entrances which Buck and I had discovered on the plateau-bashing bonanza the previous Saturday. Following the inevitable pre-departure faff we set off on the Balcony route at about 11am, turning off at the Tunnocks Col (around 47.694787,13.821477) to head west roughly following the route previously taken. It was cold and overcast, with low cloud constantly threatening rain. The entrance proved far more difficult to find than we\u2019d anticipated, requiring several spates of bunde assault and downclimbing vertical cliffs. However, Dylan eventually managed to track the entrance down and we began assessing our options.\n<p>\n<p>\n<img width=\"40%\" alt=\"Entrance to Gruffalo\" src=\"/expofiles/photos/2025/JoelStobbart/pigs_in_there_with_utm.jpg\">\n<br><var>33T 411160 5283056</var> is 47.694779 N 13.816002 E\n<p>\n<i>the entrance to the cave now known as Gruffalo, previously called Pigs... In There?</i>\n<p>\nThe draught had decreased compared to Saturday, possibly due to the far lower air temperature outside, and the snow outcrop around 8 metres in was smaller. Undeterred, we began bolting a Y-hang over the entrance to allow access down the vertical shaft. Once this was complete I went down for a poke while Dylan faffed with surveying equipment and Hamish fell asleep in a bothy. The weather was truly horrific now and I felt mildly bad for abandoning them at the entrance \u2013 there wasn\u2019t really anywhere inside the shaft to provide better accommodation, however, so I pressed on down to ascertain if this lead went anywhere.\n<p>\nA couple of deviations later and following a good bash at the menacing snow outcrop with a crowbar, slightly reducing its potential to squash anyone entering the continuing shaft below, I could see that the vertical passage carried on into the hillside. I began descending down a mildly terrifying frozen waterfall, complete with twigs, rocks and potentially small animals held in suspended animation within its depths, for another 10 metres. At the base of this was a lot of mud and choss, and a small hole continuing at floor level on the right-hand side. Lacking faith in the floor\u2019s stability but with no other option due to having reached the end of the rope, I unclipped and wedged myself into the hole, which comprised a small chamber with an annoyingly-placed pointy boulder which had to be straddled to enable access below. After traversing this, I was faced with a further horizontal crack in the right-hand wall, roughly 2m by 0.5m, surrounded by choss and hard to see through from a safe position, but seemingly with a long drop beneath. I managed to clear the majority of the offending rocks but one irritating boulder stubbornly remained, which will require dislodging to make this pitch safe. There was an absolutely stonking outwards draught at this point, and some of the boulders I cleared down through this hole went a fair distance down, though contact with various walls made it hard to ascertain the depth. The echo of their falling also made this sound like a much larger chamber.\n<p>\nHaving run out of rope and feeling slightly underqualified to continue pushing this unsettling cave, I decided to return to the surface to reassure the others that I hadn\u2019t died. Once I had reached the surface, Dylan decided to take a look. Wearing only a grey wizard poncho and a pair of shorts he went down as far as the snow outcrop, before declaring it was \u201cdrippy as fuck\u201d and popping back out again. We began surveying from the entrance, with me brandishing the SAP at various points on the way down and relaying data to Dylan who was poised over the entrance like a large and threatening bird. We got as far as the deviation above the ice wall before deciding we had had enough, and, firing some splays down to the hole at the bottom, we made our cold and soggy retreat (this will need rebolting as a rebelay to allow people to better survey from this point on). As the cave hadn\u2019t yet dealt us any serious injury we settled on Gruffalo as a provisional name, to reflect its large and scary but ultimately benign nature. After having packed up our gear and retrieved Hamish from his bag, we set a course for the Fishface path, which makes a far better approach to this end of the Tunnocks valley than cutting down from the Balcony path. On the ridge behind the Gruffalo entrance (i.e. south in the Fishface path direction), Hamish and his lucky crowbar discovered an unprospected area of several promising holes which may drop into the same passage as is reached through Gruffalo. Lacking time to explore, we gathered GPS data and entrance photos before lurching towards the Fishface path, and then slowly and painfully back up to Top Camp. Upon later reflection, I decided that Gruffalo was probably not as scary as I\u2019d initially thought, and therefore demands further viewing (perhaps with a spare pair of pants handy).",
 "slug": "2025-07-09a",
 "time_underground": 3.0,
 "author": {
  "slug": "joel-stobbart",
  "nickname": "Joel",
  "tu": 3.0
 },
 "trippersons": [
  {
   "slug": "joel-stobbart",
   "nickname": "Joel",
   "tu": 3.0
  },
  {
   "slug": "dylan-wase",
   "nickname": "Dyl",
   "tu": 3.0
  },
  {
   "slug": "hamish-weir",
   "nickname": "Hamish",
   "tu": 3.0
  }
 ],
 "expedition": {
  "year": "2025",
  "name": "CUCC expo 2025"
 },
 "cave": {
  "areacode": "1623",
  "kataster_number": "",
  "unofficial_number": "2025-js-04"
 }
}