Date: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 17:53:27 +0100 (BST)
From: Wookey 
Subject: CUCC 1995 Expo report
To: Cavers Forum 
X-Organisation: Aleph1 Limited

Background:

CUCC (Cambridge University Caving Club) has been going to Austria for the
last 19 years, and has discovered a couple of world-class caves in that time.
Stellerweg in the early 80's went to 928 deep, and is believed to have been
extended since by higher entrances, but confirmation of this has proved
elusive.

The last 8 years have primarily been spent exploring Kaninchenhohle, which is
now over 14km long, with about 100 leads to check out.

The expedition is manned largely by students of only a couple of year's
experience, and CUCC turns out a steady trickle of expedition hardened cavers
who go on to do their bit in the caving community.

We expect to have our own Web pages up in the next few months, with an huge
array of mind-numbingly tedious information about holes in the ground in
Austria. Till then here is a taste of what happenned in 1995.

Expo 1995 - summary for cavers


CUCC's 1995 expedition proved to be much more exciting than could be
reasonably expected.

Those of you who have been following the saga of KaninchenhVhle (or even
taking part in it), will have noted a certain grim determination creeping
into things, replacing the dynamic enthusiasm of the first few years. Despite
the fact that the people change, the monotony of the same miserable hole in
the ground for 8 years was beginning to get to expo. However, the events of
1995 have put an exciting new spin on things, prompting a return of that
sense of excitment and anticipation.

Things got off to a slow start after initial difficulties with the (France)
entrance being under 10ft of snow. A shovel was bought and a few exploratory
holes dug, but to no avail. They had to wait until it melted enough to show
where to go. Equally, the Top Camp water hole proved hard to find. 

The other thing that caused difficulty was the trailer that had been borrowed
(as someone has nicked expo's trailer). This proved to be a bit rusty and
generally not caver-proof, with 3 blowouts on the way there, the last
resulting in axle collapse on the PVtschen pass. This meant the trip took 38
hours, and made the trailer towers (Nick Proctor & Anthony Day -
Ex-president, for those who don't know) very miserable!

Being unable to get into France, people started down 'Main Entrance', as it
has become known. They wandered off to the host of question marks in the new
section beyond Vestabule, and below Gnome II, accessed by the miserably muddy
& catchy 'Stomping' passage. Here various holes were pushed, mostly in rather
grotty rift. Classic austrian cave with hading rift & tight pitchheads. Four
new bits of cave 'Limo's revenge', 'Splattery', 'Oral series', and 'Doubting
Thomas' (after Mike TA pronounced that it 'definitely wouldn't go'). Doubting
in fact went down about 110m to the same level as Knossos, before getting too
miserable. All these bits & bobs came to about 400m. 

Once the snow melted enough to sqeeze past, people went prodding around in
France and found some stuff; another route into twintubs below algeria ('Daz
Automatic'), a big chamber at end of mohr in hemd 'Regurgitation', a choked
pitch at end of mississipi 'black suspender', but nothing went very big, and
a number of things even stopped (eg bottom of totally huge Sultans of Swing
pitch in algeria!). The radios also failed to work after julian Haines had
fettled them quite a lot so he was dead pissed off. In revenge he built a new
drill battery out of an aerial pole which seems to be both practical,
effective & robust. It may even prove to be reliable!

Mike TA welded the trailer back together (typical CUCC response - bring a
welder & angle grinder to austria, rather than pay an Austrian garage. In
fact the trailer only made it back as far as the Czech Republic before giving
up the ghost, and being given to National Breakdown to bring back - we may
see it sometime this year...

There were relatively few people in Austria this year. Students: Steve
Bellhouse (new CUCC pres), Kate Janossy, Nick, Anthony, Duncan, Paul. 
Lags(in order of seniority): JulianH & his mate Hugh, Andy Atkinson, Wookey,
Mike TA, Waddington. Students from London: Scout (Dave collins), and Dave
something else. Finally Penny turned up for a festering trip (no caving
gear), and a pleasant re-orientation from clients & power-dressing, to expo
squalor. However, everyone there did their bit (despite severe inexperience
on a couple of cases), and 750 hours of caving got done.

Me & Andy Atkinson arrived at the end of week3 and went down RH route to
check out a QM near bungalow, and maybe go on to siberia, but we got
sidetracked and climbed up between garden party & squeeze - found some more
cave higher in the rift. Did some jolly joke rigging and interesting climbs.
Then went on to bungalow and found that passage here went on over pitch, then
down another pitch (18m), then to the head of an 80m odd rift. Fucknose where
this goes - it's above the flapjack area, but not really close enough to be
the same pitch..

Meanwhile Nick was being hard and decided to check out Gob rift continuation
(below the end of Yapate). He had rigged the RH route, and took novice after
novice down to gob, wearing them all out one by one. Things failed to go well
(mike TA jacked at the crap bit - citing 'old man's privilege, and Duncan was
keen but simply too fat to get through). Thus he finally got to rig it on his
last trip, getting down 40m? in big, but rather wet pitch. Oh well - maybe
next time.

Then me, andyA & julianH went on the trip to end all trips. First we checked
out 'The forbidden land' which is the most appalling bit of cave ever in the
whole world. Tiny (wet, muddy) thrutch (at end of missisippi/rocky horror -
ie southernmost point of cave) comes out in bottom of boulder choke. All
muddy and shitty and desperately loose. We all traversed this terribly
carefully (about a 15m climb in total) and got into big space. It turned out
to be a huge hading rift running approx NNE/SSW which is just full of
mega-rocks. (one wall solid, one collapsed). We went about 60m in either
direction, but whilst doing this there was a horrible rumble from the hole we
climbed in through and we were sure that the end was nigh and we were
entombed here for the foreseeable future. In fact only a couple of rocks had
rolled down it and we lived, but its probably the scaredest I have been, and
definately the scaredest JulianH has ever been. We are _NOT_ going back, even
though it is big stuff that goes south off the end - towards stellerweg -
there has to be another way in somewhere...

So we started looking for said way in, going back up along bottom of rocky
horror, poking into every available cranny. Soon found a significant pitch
that no-one had been down, and a passage over the top - trivial traverse.
This was small and soon shrank to a nasty squeeze which I pushed ('the
brownie's cunt', after the nun's cunt, but off fudge brownie..). JulianH had
a miserable time getting back out until we moved some of the rocks out of the
bottom, cos he is a fat bastard. This came into bigger (3m wide) passage. We
ran down this in various directions. Again I got lucky, and after finding a
choke climbed 5m up a hole, which led into totally huge space (Staudnwirt
palace). Wandering along from this was beatiful white-floored passage, and
lots of batshit (!? - a first for KH). This was 7-10m wide and windy!
following the breeze I came into an even bigger passage (hard to see far side
- 'triassic park'). At this point I felt I had to go back and get the others,
and we proceeded to walk 250m down this huge stuff before getting cave
overload & going home happy bunnies!

Next trip Steve & Duncan & Kate surveyed another 350m on the end - still no
sign of an obstacle!, and it was awfully close to the edge of the mountain
(far side of hinter). Then me and Andy came back up the hill, surveyed the
bit we found down RH route near bungalow (semi-detached) and derigged all RH
route (6 tacklesacks + the coax that has been there since 1989). 

Next day we decided it was time to find a new entrance so we went in and
followed the batshit & breeze (the other way - downwind). We found three dead
bats and some dead moths and a skull of something else (bird?) so the surface
must be close, but wind went into a big choke and tiny impassable passage,
until andy disappeared down 'obviously choked' bit and found loads of
extra-scrotty passage, almost full of rocks except for top foot or so. After
loads of this (in a significant gale) we got to a place where distant huge
waterfall could be heard. 

After a bit of prodding we realised that in fact the noise was the howling of
the wind through a tiny bit of passage at roof level. I would have given up
here (yep, it was that bad...) but Andy was determined that the surface was
moments away and forced himself into this wind-tunnel (stopping the wind very
effectively). This was only 'jolly' small, but had a bulge at the end which
turned it into a total bastard (thus 'battle of the bulge'). I took my belay
belt off (our SRT gear was left at the bottom of the rope in algeria :-), it
was so crap. Beyond the passage size increased and we found a chamber with
loads of moths, mostly shagging. A few metres beyond this we had the enormous
pleasure of running out into the open air on the side of the hinter. Huge
grins, and major excitement!!!

We had left the survey book at the choke, so we had to remember some bearings
on mountains (to find it again) and then went back and spent some time
discovering two different other ways back (one each) which avoided the crap
stuff after Battle of the bulge. We also noted, whilst surveying, that there
were two places, one either side of BOTB where there were very
similar-looking chokes of small rocks in big passage, which could conceivably
be the same spot - thus a potential BOTB bypass - necessary for this to be a
useful route in for non-skinny cavers. 

We decided to leave our SRT gear and try walking back to france up the
outside. This proved to be pretty fucking exciting. There is a 30m cliff
above the new entrance - 161d, known as scarface as there has been a big
rockfall recently from the cliff above, which has removed all the bunde in
the area, making it easy to find. This cliff either requires an exciting
climb (Andy's route) or some appalling vertical bunde bashing (my route). The
next day we tried some different down-routes, but these were even worse, as
the bunde makes it impossible to pick your route sensibly from above.
Finally, on the way home, I tried walking down to the stogerweg & around the
vord, but that was pretty grim too, as I did miles of bunde bashing with a
huge sac and then had an hour's walk back to the restaurant. However I reckon
that a sensible route does exist from this direction - but it could take some
time to find.

So in summary we have removed all that nasty SRT from the cave (it is
currently a welsh caving trip!) but have made the walk-in rather more
exciting. 

After the success of the 'today we will find a new entrance' trip, we set out
on a 'today we will survey a kilometer' trip, but this proved less sucessful,
as triassic park stopped after another 250m (800m total). In fact you can see
it continuing about 15m up in the roof, so we have another staicase36 to do
1st trip next year. In the opposite direction at the t-junction near the end
(trifucation) there is a big 25m+ pitch, a bigger (70m+) pitch, and a 15m
drop to a rocky slope which is about 99% certain to be the back corner of
knossus!! - looks like nobody ever had agood enough light to notice this - we
could have been here 6 years ago.

All very interesting stuff, and there are 72 new QMs on the 1995 list! So in
the last 9 days of expo another 1500m was surveyed, bringing he year's total
to 2km, and the cave to just over 14km.

I confidently predict that a good selection of old lags is likely to make an
appearance in the light of the above: 'No SRT you say?', 'Miles of horizontal
passage?'. All we have to do is work out where to put the campsite for 1996.

Wookey