Beyond
my comfort zone: Caving in the Totes Gebirge
It's been six hours since we left the
quiet, calm space of the fossil level and started dropping down hundreds of
metres of spray-lashed pitches. Six hours fighting hypothermia with not one alcove
or sheltered ledge to escape the unremitting, icy gale. We're at the head of
another 50m pitch with anchors going in for the final bag of rope but I can't
wait any longer. I strip half naked to piss in the churning pool at the base of
a waterfall then battle for ten minutes to get dressed again, my useless, numb
fingers refusing to grip my central MR tight enough to turn it. Over 800m above
me the sun is baking the limestone pavement. What am I doing here, struggling
to hold it together?
Having
spent several weeks as usual this summer with the Cambridge University Caving
Club (CUCC) expedition to Austria, I took a few days out in the final week to
join the local Austrian club, the VHO (Verein für Höhlenkunde in Obersteier).
They were having their annual week of expedition to the Plankamiraarea, a few
kilometres east of CUCC's patch of the Totes Gebirge.
After five weeks of expedition caving
I wasn't expecting anything too stressful and I thought I knew what to expect
as I'd joined them twice before to cave in Wildbader Höhle. With my flaky
German I only realised we were heading on a multi-day underground camping trip
the night before we set off.
Wildbader Höhle was explored to -874m
in 1982 by a team of tough French speleos from the Société des Amateurs de
Cavernes de Rioz (SAC). Since 2013 VHO has been systematically resurveying and
extending the cave. However, bad weather in the past two years meant that they
hadn't yet reached the deepest horizontal level
because the only route down is via a wet
shaft series. I set off down to the underground camp with
two tackle sacks - my own, laughably small by Austrian standards, plus another
I was lent that was over twice the size. En route, three of the five of us diverted
off to start re-rigging the deep, wet pitch series. However, after a couple of
short pitches, we reached a big shaft where the overnight rain meant that a
powerful waterfall was shooting across it to hit the far wall, filling the
shaft with spray. Since we were sleeping in our caving under suits and the cave
temperature is only 2°C we weren't willing to get soaked so we left the rest of
the rope and headed back up.
Whilst unpacking at camp, I spotted a
wetsuit. Hmm, what's that about? It's for Robert, I was told. Strange, I
thought, surely he's not diving here? Then later, mixed in with the bags of
food, I saw a neoprene hood - err, so what's this then? After all, the
Austrians think British cavers are crazy for going anywhere near pitches with
water. They explore flood-prone caves in the winter, when water levels are low
and predictable as any precipitation falls as snow. Well, as far as I know they
do except that, just this once, and unbeknownst to me, our plan for this trip
was to try to bottom the notoriously wet Wildbader Höhle, dropping from the
camp at -400m to follow the master streamway down another 500m of aqueous
pitches. And so they all had their wet gear with them. WHY HAD NOBODY THOUGHT
TO TELL ME? I even had some neoprene back at the CUCC Base Camp, neatly packed
away, that I could have brought. And it looked like I was supposed to be in the
team of three going deep tomorrow.
The next morning I could hear them
talking about me but I couldn't follow what they were saying. Eventually
Paulina said that Robert and Glitzi would wear their wetsuits under their over
suits and that I could use her thin rubber suit which should keep the water off
my furry underneath it. I didn't really understand what I was being offered but
anything had to be better than getting all my clothes drenched. It turned out
her suit was a Russian-made, lightweight, membrane caving dry suit. Despite
being taller than Paulina I managed to get into it, though once I had my
harness on I couldn't raise my arms far ... but hopefully there'd be no
stretchy free-climbs. It felt constricted but also toasty and comforting -
hurrah, things were looking up. However, barely five minutes after leaving
camp, my wrists were being squeezed unbearably tight by the seals: this just
wasn't going to work.
I struggled out of the top half of
the suit then tied the arms around myself, so effectively I was wearing
pontonnieres under my PVC over suit. I was now perfectly equipped for wading
deep canals .... but that wasn't where I was heading. I was scared that, with
water falling on me, I'd fill up like a huge tackle bag without drainage holes
... and then what?
The three of us set off down the
pitches. The water levels hadn't dropped from yesterday and we were each
struggling with a beast of a bag. Together we had around 300m of 10mm rope plus
rigging gear, a hefty drill, spare battery and all the rest of the usual junk
you need. Around 250m down we got to VHO's previous limit of rigging. Here, we
slowed down as Glitzi started to put in thru-bolts whilst Robert began
surveying, doing notes and instruments. I was at the back, tasked with the
no-brainer, donkey-plus-Disto-target role.
Is this the worst water yet, I kept
pestering Robert. No, no, it probably gets wetter further down, as inlets come
in. Sheeesh. The low point was a long drop that ended with a 10m section of
broken ledges where the rope forced you right into the middle of the main water
course. I abseiled through, water pounding down on me and emerged to join
Robert at a small ledge. The shaft here was 7m in diameter. Some bits didn't
even have much spray. All innocence, I shouted to him above the din: could the
rig perhaps not have gone, err, a little further away from the water? Not
possible, I was told, firmly. Oh woe.
Fortunately below here Glitzi found a
dry parallel shaft series for a series of drops, so we escaped the spray and
the thundering din. Unfortunately the draft was even stronger. Pitiably, I
tried to hunch behind my tackle sack to shelter from it.
As we slowly crept deeper I knew I
wasn't the only one struggling to keep my temperature from steadily dropping: I
could see the tell-tale, jittery dance of the laser beam of the Disto
as Robert tried to take
readings and I felt for him as I watched him battling to control his hand shake enough to draw his
survey notes. I found out later that he and Glitzi were in just 2mm of neoprene
under their cordura over suits - madness. They also told me that, when the
original French explorers got hit by heavy rain down there, they couldn't keep
their carbides alight. There was nowhere to shelter so they'd put plastic bags
over their heads so they could breathe and then prussiked up through the
waterfalls in the dark. There's always another level of misery to sink down to.
Finally, seven hours in,
first Glitzi then Robert whooped and then I too touched down in the huge
chamber at the base of the shafts. I climbed stiffly up the boulder pile to
them, out of the gusts of spray, and we shook hands formally and grinned
inanely - we'd done it, reaching the deepest point in the cave. We stomped off
down the huge phreatic passage slowly driving some warmth into ourselves, took
photos and heated drinks on the Jetboil (an excellent, well-designed bit of
kit -
light and really fast to boil). I
then braced myself and breezily asked
so, what now? Do we finish the survey down
here? No, it's late -we'll just head out. Phew.
Five hours later I was at
last away from the water. My arms were sodden from ice-water running down the rope
and onto me from my jammers. The prussiking hadn't warmed my core despite
having to thrash myself and my fatter-than-me tacklesack up through some tight
pitch heads that vied with the most awkward that Yorkshire has to offer. We
made it back to camp before 3am after fifteen hours of effort. The other two
woke and cooked for us whilst Robert and Glitzi peeled off their wetsuits and
changed into their dry furries with shudders of pleasure. No such instant
relief for me but, from now on in, it was just a waiting game. I pulled off my
sodden outer layer and tucked up in my pit to slowly warm up so that I could
start the long process of drying off my clothes.At last, back within my comfort
zone.
About to start the two hour walk up from
the valley to the surface camp at Plankamira; left to right, Becka, Paulina, Robert,
Peter, Glitzi, Heidi and Robin.
The French survey of Wildbader Hoehle (1625/150) after exploration from 1977-1982.
Becka Lawson