mirror of
https://expo.survex.com/repositories/expoweb/.git/
synced 2024-11-25 16:52:00 +00:00
138 lines
7.9 KiB
HTML
138 lines
7.9 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN">
|
|
<html>
|
|
<head>
|
|
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
|
|
<title>1996 expo summary</title>
|
|
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../css/main2.css" />
|
|
</head>
|
|
<body>
|
|
<h2><center>CUCC Austria Expedition 1996<br>
|
|
Summary for exCS Newsletter</center></h2>
|
|
|
|
With the promise of easy caving now that 161d had eliminated all that SRT
|
|
from Kaninchenhöhle, the 1996 expedition was the best-attended ever.
|
|
First priority, however, was to find the best access to Scarface on the
|
|
surface. Recces by Anthony and crew found that the walk via Hochklapf sattel
|
|
was, if anything, more serious than from our old topcamp, and nowhere
|
|
suitable for a new camp was forthcoming. A second attempt, from above,
|
|
engineered a suitable route with the aid of the odd bolt, handline and quite
|
|
a lot of hacksawing bunde. All but one rope was later eliminated, and most
|
|
people could get to the entrance (or back) in one to one-and-a-half hours
|
|
without too much vertical bunde bashing.
|
|
|
|
<p>Once top camp was populated and caving started, fat wads of passage came
|
|
thick and fast, but only for a while - then it pissed down for the whole of
|
|
week 2, including 5" of snow at top camp. Unlike 1993, however, it cleared up
|
|
again and was pretty good for the busy fortnight which followed.
|
|
|
|
<p>The climb up where Triassic Park ended so frustratingly last year was
|
|
achieved, but quickly led to pitches down, at first apparently heading for
|
|
Flat Battery, but now deeper than that with no sign of connecting. This put
|
|
the SRT back in with a vengeance, being effectively a 226m shaft. But not to
|
|
worry, as this could be readily avoided in the extensive horizontal leads of
|
|
"Puerile Humour Series". The holes in the floor here don't go far down, and
|
|
the passages ramify to the NE from Triassic Park. Two parties in here found
|
|
new entrances within five minutes of each other - 161e from "Yorkshire
|
|
Pudding" and 161f from "Completely Loopy" - or maybe they should be "exits"
|
|
as they are not terribly accessible on the surface :-)
|
|
|
|
<p>In this area, one passage, "Where the wind blows", heads out under the
|
|
east side of the Hinter, to end further north than Anglia, at a slightly
|
|
higher level. "Iceland" is parallel, but must be quite near the surface as it
|
|
is pretty much at the "edge" of the hill and contains lots of ice formations.
|
|
|
|
<p>The wide space between Triassic Park and the "old" cave has hardly been
|
|
penetrated, though Mike'n'Tina found "Alternative Universe" going some way
|
|
into this area about half an hour before Wookey did, much to his annoyance.
|
|
"Fogies' Folly" and "Dr. Snuggles" also go off on this side of Triassic Park,
|
|
but are not very extensive. Several deep holes in the floor were descended,
|
|
and the link into Knossos was surveyed exactly where expected.
|
|
|
|
<p>Other holes in Minoan Surprise and off Trifurcation yielded significant
|
|
vertical with "Yet another 80m pitch" appearing distressingly often. The
|
|
"Bottomless Pit of Eternal Chaos", whose name will be a pain to fit on the
|
|
survey, connects to one branch of "Interview Blues" - ending about 50m under
|
|
the floor of Knossos. The other branch of Interview is heading steadily
|
|
downwards, and at -451m is now the third deepest point in the cave.
|
|
|
|
<p>But SRT is still optional ! Instead you could visit "Stairway to Hell".
|
|
This is the boulder choke found last year which is so loose that they said
|
|
"I've never been so scared anywhere underground" and "We're never going back
|
|
- there must be a way round". The way round was soon not forthcoming, and off
|
|
they went through "Whimper Way" into "The Forbidden Land", finding passage
|
|
heading south under the Vord. and almost certainly connecting with parts of
|
|
Steinschlagschacht - explored in 1983 and 84. The dreadful weather in the
|
|
final week of expo prevented this from being re-rigged to see, and this will
|
|
be a priority next year. The explorer's minds were so numbed by the general
|
|
looseness of the way in to this series that inspiration deserted and passages
|
|
were named "Elin Algor" and "Tirolia Werke" after the fridge and the cooker
|
|
in the Potato Hut!
|
|
|
|
<p>But enough of this caving - did we go on holiday just to survey 5km of new
|
|
passage (club record) ? Of course not, hence the presence of hang gliders,
|
|
bikes, windsurfer, diving bottles, michelin-man dry-suit, canoe, and up to
|
|
ten crates of Gösser *per day*. Julian H, keen to try out AndyW's new
|
|
canoe, almost immediately found himself turned into the current with a snap
|
|
decision between bailing out or going over Hilde's weir. Andy having made the
|
|
wrong choice earlier and gone over outside the boat, Julian elected to go for
|
|
it and made a fine descent, only to find that everyone had leapt into a car
|
|
to drive down to Bad Aussee to recover the body. Boats generally got their
|
|
own back on him later, when he mangled his toe in a pedalo at Hallstatt.
|
|
|
|
<p>Julian Todd got disgruntled when, despite a posh kite and various techie
|
|
instruments, he found that Helen, a novice with a crap glider from CUHGS, got
|
|
higher than him no less than three times on one flight. However, she failed
|
|
to stay higher than the trees on a later flight, and the Feuerwehr had to cut
|
|
one down to get their ladder to reach her fifty feet up in another one. They
|
|
were probably concerned that she didn't do Julian's party piece of puking on
|
|
Grundlsee from a great height...
|
|
|
|
<p>With 38 members present, the expo dinner was bound to be riotous, so we
|
|
were a little disconcerted when Hilde told us that it would be attended by
|
|
the Mayor of Bad Aussee, 'cos we had been going there for so long. However,
|
|
the deputy mayor and the head of the tourist bureau, having presented all the
|
|
old lags with "our valued guest" badges, bought us some beer and beat a hasty
|
|
retreat before it got too noisy.
|
|
|
|
<p>Wookey was to be seen wandering everywhere on the plateau locating old and
|
|
new entrances with a GPS "which always knows where it is". Unfortunately,
|
|
Wookey doesn't know where it is, so if anyone finds a GPS which isn't lost
|
|
but appears to have mislaid its owner, can they send it home please :-)
|
|
|
|
<p>So, 5.4 km of new cave and as many new question marks as old ones
|
|
finished. There were enough 1995 question marks near the entrance that no-one
|
|
has actually used the Knossos connection to get to Chicken Flied Nice this
|
|
year. This means that there is still huge scope for new stuff next year, and
|
|
still lots with very little SRT to do. If none of the above means much to you
|
|
any more then (a) it is high time you came out to expo and had a look round
|
|
the cave - do it next year ! or (b) 1996 journals available from CUCC
|
|
(contact James Hickson, c/o Pembroke College) cost £4.50 plus postage. High
|
|
quality A0 sized Kaninchenhöhle surveys at £2 plus postage from Wookey
|
|
will keep you adequately informed. The journals cover two years, and are
|
|
jolly thick, so don't whinge about the price ! You only get a full survey
|
|
once every five years or so, and these are very good, so cough up at once.
|
|
Failing that, start a virtual tour of the cave at
|
|
<a href="../../1623/161/triasp.htm">http://www.chaos.org.uk/cucc/expo/1623/161/triasp.htm</a>.
|
|
Work is [<i>at the time of printing this article (now finished) -
|
|
webmaster</i>] already in hand to add this year's stuff (the work-in-progress
|
|
is on Andy's webspace), and it might be done by BCRA time.
|
|
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<!-- LINKS -->
|
|
<ul id="links">
|
|
<li>1996 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="report.htm">Cambridge Underground report</a> (this link dead - not yet published)</li>
|
|
<li><a href="bcracc.htm">BCRA Caves and Caving</a> Report</li>
|
|
<li>Wookey's Compass Points <a href="gps.htm">article on GPS usage</a></li>
|
|
<li>This year's <a href="sponsr.htm">Sponsors</a></li>
|
|
</ul></li>
|
|
<li><a href="../../pubs.htm#pubs1996">Published accounts</a></li>
|
|
<li><a href="../../index.htm">Back to Expedition intro page</a></li>
|
|
<li><A href="../../../index.htm">CUCC Home page</a></li>
|
|
</ul>
|
|
</body>
|
|
</html>
|