mirror of
https://expo.survex.com/repositories/expoweb/.git/
synced 2024-11-22 15:21:55 +00:00
207 lines
12 KiB
HTML
207 lines
12 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
|
|
<html>
|
|
<head>
|
|
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
|
|
<title>CUCC's Austria expeditions: Primer</title>
|
|
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href=/css/main2.css />
|
|
</head>
|
|
<body>
|
|
<h1>CUCC Austria Expeditions: Primer</h1>
|
|
|
|
<table class="trad"><tbody><tr><td style="padding:0 30px">
|
|
<p>The annual CUCC expedition to Austria lasts around five weeks each summer
|
|
and concentrates mainly on new exploration in the high alpine karst of the
|
|
<span lang="de-at">Loser</span> plateau (about 80km E of <span
|
|
lang="de-at">Salzburg).</span> Recent large projects are:</p>
|
|
|
|
|
|
<ul>
|
|
<li><b>Schwarzmooskogel</b> system formed from the linkage of several caves into one system, 120km or so long, and 1033m deep,
|
|
of which around nine tenths of the length (and the highest and deepest points) were explored by CUCC. This now includes connections
|
|
with Kaninchenhöhle (161), Steinbrückenhöhle (204) and Balkonhöhle (264).</li>
|
|
|
|
<li><b>Heimkommenhöhle</b> (Homecoming, 359) discovered in 2018 is on the edge of the plateau and has not been connected with any other cave yet and is a focus for exploration in 2024.</li>
|
|
|
|
<li><b>Fischgesichthöhle</b> (FGH, 290) and <b>Gluklischesmetterlinghöhle</b> (Happy Butterfly, 291)
|
|
were discovered in 2017 and despite being only a few metres apart were only connected in 2023. FGH has gone deep but we will not be visiting it in 2024.</li>
|
|
|
|
<li><b>Tunnocksschaht</b> (258) and <b>Balkonhöhle</b> (264) the focus of exploration since 2016.
|
|
In 2018 they both went deep and three connections between them were made. We will be pushing the deep end via the <b>Balkonhöhle</b> entrance in 2024.
|
|
</li>
|
|
<li><b>Steinbrückenhöhle</b> (204) the most major cave in the area and the principal focus of CUCC's work 2000-2008.
|
|
</li>
|
|
|
|
|
|
</ul>
|
|
|
|
<p>Over two hundred shorter caves have also been explored and
|
|
recorded over the forty year history of expo, and prospecting for new
|
|
entrances is still an important activity. Every year we discover more new entrances than we can explore.</p>
|
|
</td></tr></tbody></table>
|
|
|
|
|
|
<p>So much for the executive summary, but what does that mean for the new
|
|
expo member? What is actually involved in going on expo?</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Very few people, whether undergraduate or old lag, can afford the time
|
|
to go on expo for the full period. People come and go, and people pursue
|
|
their own particular interests within the larger context. But there has
|
|
to be some overall strategy and some degree of planning. It is no good
|
|
putting more resources into rigging than we have manpower to use, nor
|
|
concentrating on so few goals that the cave is always crowded. So it is
|
|
important that those doing the organising have a pretty good idea a few
|
|
weeks before expo of who is going, for how long, and how hard they expect
|
|
to cave.</p>
|
|
|
|
<img src="../years/2022/20210402_westernCaves.jpg" style="margins: 10px">
|
|
<br>See <a href="../years/2022/mission.html">2022 Mission</a> - <a href="/1626/359/359.html">Homecoming Hole (359)</a>,
|
|
<a href="/1623/290/290.html">Fischgesicht (290)</a> and <a href="/1623/291/291.html">Happy Butterfly (291)</a> - credit Nat Dalton</i>
|
|
|
|
<p>But don't expect too much from that word "organising" – expedition is not a
|
|
boot camp! No one will kick you out of your pit and make you go caving (except
|
|
perhaps in an emergency, such as a call-out). Nor is it entirely a holiday -
|
|
once the effort has been put in to rig things, it is important that people get
|
|
in there and do the work exploring, surveying, photographing and eventually
|
|
derigging. The "organisation" is essentially a matter of pre-expo
|
|
behind-the-scenes things like getting grants and sponsorship, buying tackle,
|
|
coordinating transport and the like. On expo itself, it is a matter of judging
|
|
which projects can reasonably be tackled by the number of people present, and
|
|
suggesting the best lines of attack. This avoids rigging things which no one
|
|
has the time or will-power to push, and ensures that there is enough gear to
|
|
tackle the things which folk <em>are</em> keen to explore.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>There are important differences between expedition caving and a typical
|
|
Yorkshire weekend. On a tourist trip in the UK, a party will rig in, bottom the
|
|
cave and rig out (or, at most, there may be a separate rigging in and rigging
|
|
out trip on the same day). In Austria, a project cave will be rigged at the
|
|
start of expo, and then numerous working trips will use that rigging until
|
|
either the cave or the expedition finishes, and derigging takes place. This
|
|
clearly places a lot more wear and tear on the ropes, which also tend to get
|
|
muddier, so quality rigging is essential. Of course, some of this rigging is
|
|
new exploration, not just "follow the P-hangers", so it is an exciting and
|
|
challenging activity. Also, unlike a Yorkshire tourist trip, you must survey
|
|
and describe what you find – <a href="logbooks.html">logbooks write-ups</a>
|
|
form part of a long-term record
|
|
of what has been done so are rather more important than on weekend meets at
|
|
home. <a href="survey/index.htm">Surveying may be an entirely new activity</a> for first-time expo members,
|
|
but it is also a very important one, and one which it is worth making the
|
|
effort to get right from the start. We have been doing this for nearly 40 years
|
|
so we have a reliable <a href="survey/newcave.html">set of procedures</a> for
|
|
converting muddy notebooks into beautiful wallcharts.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>The caves in Austria are as different from Yorkshire and Mendip as those two
|
|
areas are from each other. There are few sporting streamways and few
|
|
formations. The caves are colder (often not much above freezing, and sometimes
|
|
below). They are often much deeper than Yorkshire trips, though the entrances
|
|
we are currently using mean that even the remotest places are not at vast
|
|
we are currently using mean that even the remotest places are not at vast
|
|
depths. However, pitches may be big, and close together in deep shafts of up to
|
|
a couple of hundred metres. Though often dry in good weather, run-off is rapid
|
|
and a damp pitch can rapidly become a serious proposition with near-freezing
|
|
water pouring down it. Rigging will sometimes seem unnecessarily gymnastic
|
|
until you have seen the pitch after a thunderstorm! Set against this is a large
|
|
amount of huge stomping horizontal passage found in the last few years, with
|
|
many leads still to push not needing a lot of vertical work at all.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>In Austria, expo is effectively split into "<a href="bcamps.html">Base
|
|
Camp</a>" and various "<a href="tcamps.html#id1977camps">plateau camps</a>". Base camp is in
|
|
the valley, near the gasthof, shops, river, lake and other facilities. It is
|
|
here that we have the bulk of <a href="baseops.html">the documentation, computers, log
|
|
book and survey book</a>. The plateau bivvy camp is a short walk from the cave entrances, and
|
|
are reached by a toll road (on which we have a deal which avoids paying each
|
|
time) which ascends 900m to a tourist car park from where it is around <a
|
|
href="../guidebook/walkin.htm">a 40 minute walk</a> (on good paths) to <a
|
|
href="../guidebook/vianip.htm">the edge of the plateau<a>. From here it is a
|
|
one-and-a-half-hour <a href="../guidebook/via204.html">slog
|
|
across rough limestone pavements</a> to the main <span
|
|
lang="de-at">Steinbrückenhöhle</span> bivvy site.
|
|
The main bivvy has solar charging for lights and electric drills.
|
|
|
|
<p>We also have other shorter-lived high camps such as <span
|
|
lang="de-at"><b>Organhöhle</b></span> (in 2017) and since 2022 also at Garlic Cave much further to the north west and closer to <b>Homecoming</b>.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>The plateau camps and and Base camp are linked by rugged mobile phones
|
|
using a specific Austrian carrier to get adequate reception. Your own phone will
|
|
probably not work so well and will not be reliable over much of the plateau.
|
|
|
|
Trips are mostly organised by the people in top camp (we even have a whiteboard),
|
|
and it is usual to spend periods of
|
|
three or four days or so at top camp, alternating with festering at base.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>On the other hand, the plateau a nature reserve where camping is
|
|
theoretically not allowed at all, so we need to keep it as low-profile and
|
|
undamaging as possible to avoid being banned. We have a special limited permission, which he have to apply for each year. Camping is essential, not only
|
|
for caving convenience and efficiency, but also for safety. Meeting these needs
|
|
consistent with local politics is something of a balancing act which needs
|
|
everyone's cooperation.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>If we have a spell of truly awful weather, usually everyone will come
|
|
down to Base Camp, and this is a good time for getting surveys drawn up,
|
|
passage descriptions written, log books up to date etc. It's also not
|
|
unknown for a certain amount of beer consumption to occur. This is also
|
|
the case at "expedition dinner" which is usually organised somewhere in
|
|
the middle of expo, when the greatest number of people can attend.</p>
|
|
|
|
<h3>What to read next?</h3>
|
|
|
|
<p>Obviously, those coming on expedition will have a better and more
|
|
productive time if they know more about what goes on, what has been done
|
|
previously and what our particular caves are like. I'd love to think that
|
|
everyone would find time to read everything on the website. In reality,
|
|
however, not everyone wants to effectively memorise the guidebook, and
|
|
devour several books on the history, culture, geography, geology, food,
|
|
weather and other <span lang="la">minutiæ</span> of their holiday area.
|
|
Even if you are that sort of person, it helps to have some idea of where to
|
|
start – there's about three long novels' worth of stuff on the site and much
|
|
of it is of mainly historical interest, concerned with caves whose
|
|
exploration is considered complete.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>We have attempted to condense the "how to do it" material into an
|
|
<a href="index.htm">Expedition Handbook</a>.
|
|
This is a fairly big chunk of stuff to read, so an effort has
|
|
been made this year to provide a "primer" page for each section, which should
|
|
be read by <b>everyone</b> new to expo. It is particularly important that you
|
|
understand the aims of each activity, since a job done badly is actually worse
|
|
than a job not done at all. This is especially true of cave survey and passage
|
|
description, or, for prospecting, the recording of locations.</p>
|
|
|
|
<li>Or just dip in by using the "Seacrch" function (top left menu) and search for, e.g. "cake".
|
|
|
|
<p>To get a feel for what trips are like, it is perhaps worth dipping into
|
|
one of the <a href="../years/2018/logbook.html">logbooks</a>
|
|
<a href="../years/2001/log.htm">for</a> <a href="../years/2003/logbook.html">recent
|
|
</a> <a href="../years/2017/logbook.html">years</a>. To
|
|
get an idea of what expo will be trying to achieve, there is a "<a
|
|
href="../years/2018/index.html">mission statement</a>" for the current year. And
|
|
to see how much potential there is, a glance at a recent <span
|
|
lang="de">Steinbrückenhöhle</span> <a
|
|
href="../1623/204/qm.html">Question Mark list</a> is a revelation. Leads are
|
|
numbered by year, with the oldest first. Following links from any of these
|
|
leads will get you into the relevant section of the <a
|
|
href="../1623/204/204.html">cave description</a>, which gives an idea of the
|
|
sort of caving.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>For the ambitious, there is a complete description of <a
|
|
href="../1623/161/161.html"><span lang="de-at">Kaninchenhöhle</span></a>,
|
|
which absorbed almost all of CUCC's expedition effort from 1989 to 1999 and now
|
|
forms the largest single component of the <span
|
|
lang="de-at">Schwarzmooskogel</span> system. The description runs to about 90 A4
|
|
pages when printed, so is rather too much to digest in one go. We recommend
|
|
looking at the printed survey to get an overall idea of the cave and which
|
|
parts have the most potential. However, as this is too big for a web page,
|
|
there are now useful survey fragments incorporated throughout the main
|
|
descriptions.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>If you want to delve deeper into the site, <!--it's worth a quick look
|
|
at the site <a href="../rdmap.htm">road map</a>. This gives you an idea
|
|
of the structure of the site and where you can expect the graphical links
|
|
to lead. There are also plenty of textual links, as exemplified by the
|
|
expo --> use the <a href="../infodx.htm">site index</a> and don't forget to use
|
|
the Search capability at the bottom of the menu on the upper-left of most pages.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>And please do skim-read the <a style="color: red" href="rescue.htm">Rescue guide</a> before
|
|
you do anything else. It's not like the UK.
|
|
|
|
<hr /></body>
|
|
</html>
|