Dachstein Caving Expedition 2019

The accommodation in the Dachstein Expedition is based at the Wiesberghaus and the choice is there for which of the buildings you stay at. For me, I chose to stay in Camelot which is based for all expedition talks (outside of the pub) – it's where all your personal food stays, where the communal kitchen is and where all the caving gear is stored (be that outside). 

There is also the Glocken exactly opposite to the Wiesberghaus which has an upstairs sleeping area and all personal and expedition equipment can be charged here (both European and UK style plugs are usually available), however it is namely for the older members of the expedition, or you can stay in the Wiesberghaus itself. 

The Wiesberghaus is a fantastic spot, beer and food are available for order with the must haves definitely Frittatensuppe and Kaiserschmarrn. It will be the only source of meat during the expedition (unless you brought your own), this is because all expedition meals are Vegetarian. This really isn't a bad thing, but really depends on which team is doing the cooking on a particular night!

The Dachstein expedition can almost be thought of as a expedition and holiday on the side. There are days when you are pushing and exploring caves, completing the required objectives for the expedition and rest days as needed. But, if you want and there isn’t much happening you can easily take a day or two spent hiking, climbing, jumping on the via ferratta or heading back down the hill to spend a day in Hallstatt or Bad Ischl.

The second trip on the 22nd was with a slightly bigger group comprised of Adam Prior, Lydia Leather, Rob Watson, Nadia Raeburn-Cherradi and myself. The objective for this trip surrounding a possible connection between Burnies and WUG as the comparison between the two surveys noted an unsurveyed passage which could have had the possible connection to WUG (it sort of headed in the right direction) we also had to re-survey the connection to Burnies after an issue with Qave resulted in the last 3 stations being lost.

Unfortunately, this was also the trip I found out I still had a peanut allergy after eating an unmarked cereal bar, so storm shelter up, candles out to keep warm and a heartrate of 5000 I attempted to keep calm whilst the allergy past – obviously hoping that I wouldn’t be killed in a cave from what I ate! This was quite amusing tho as Lydia made sure for the remainder of the trip I did not forget about this! (N.B still need to go for that allergy test). So Adam, Nadia and myself left Lydia and Rob to push the possible lead, which was through a tight rifty meander. On the way out however we spotted lights and a much easier method of rigging.

My final trip into Bloodmoon on the 25th August was with Axel again – he we wanted to try and push one of the possible Isreali leads found the previous year, before we arrived at the entrance however we made use of our spare time to set up the tarp outside of the WUG entrance to make storing gear a bit easier in the area. Some doubious rigging was made to try and attempt to make the passage as safe – not sure much can be done with 8mm rope, significant rope rub and not enough anchors – but oh well, we made the best of a worse situation. The lead dropped into a tight rifting meander, as is common for Dachstein caves and ended in a tight squeeze – the passage could be seen to go forth, but alas was too constricted and unsuitable for capping! Tom Foord almost joined us but some almost incomprehensible reverberated dialect from myself stopped him from jumping down the sketchy rope. All in all a successful trip and the lead surveyed – now only one further lead remained which would be left for another team to explore.

Bloodmoon is quite a nice cave, the worst bit about it is the horrifically steep walk up to it, made worse with a heavy backpack – think 75 degree slope! It has around 150m of pitches and takes about 3 hours round trip if you are bouncing – a must visit if popping over to Dachstein.

Once down, we walked toward deep sludge removing all unnecessary equipment such that it wouldn’t get clogged in mud. We headed for the initial upper lead and with the trusty Crowbar and hammer in hand we made steadfast work in removing the boulder blocking the way, squeezing into what we had initially thought would be a large open and spacious chamber with possible lengthy leads. Yeah we had our hopes far to high and the new passage ended just after 20meters into a mud sump. So we quickly surveyed the area nicknaming it peanuts (a bit like when you pay someone peanuts or give me a peanut chocolate bar). So with that disappointment, we quickly surveyed the passage to blend the thoughts out of our minds before heading down to the lower passage.

Axel had been also going on about this lead, but I couldn’t quite put it together why he had been calling it “The Exhaler.” For a solid few hours prior I thought he had been calling it “The Excalibur” but shortly after arriving I quickly realised why it was called such. Looking down on the pitch-head seen a tight constricted climb down through a meander. There was not much room and it was heavily drafting. Axel got me to sort out the drill and pass it down with associated hardware such that he could rig a pitch to investigate what was below the constricted entrance and what a tight entrance it was. On the way back up Axel managed to get stuck in a position where he found it difficult to move either of his jammers up to maintain progression, simply as he had very little body movement.

Whilst this had been happening I had been sitting for probably about 90minutes at the top of this pitchhead with around 4 layers on getting cold. So after Axel had tired himself out and got through the constriction, it was decided to get the hell out and head down to camp. But unknown to Axel at the time, the cave had stolen his watch – forever giving this pitch the name of “Time Bandit.”

Camp in WUG is quite nice – the only depressing thing is the pitch series you have to go through to get water, but apart from that its quite a cosy stay. Chef Axel decided to make us some dinner after sorting through the carbide mess to pull out the sleeping bags and other camping equipment. On his menu was delicious Cous-Cous with a side of spicy sauce and mud, some cup-a-soups for refreshment followed by a desert of tesco value chicken flavoured noodles with a sprinkling of mud for seasoning. Quite delicious if I might say so. Following the fulfilment of this meal the 5 happy cavers decided to drift off to sleep and have some cosy dreams about the journey into WUG.

The rude awakening by the party was complimented by Axel prepping coffee for us, however word had spread the night before that porridge is my specialty so it was my turn to impress the guests. For breakfast a delicious serving of honey flavoured ready-break was served with a hearty side of raisins. The meal was delicately served with some additional mud for seasoning from the previous nights washing up (yes, the washing up in WUG is completed with mud!), yummy.
Camp was swiftly packed up after the morning faff was completed and the now team of three headed out towards Deep Sludge to take pictures on the way down PL2 passage. Switching between Emily and myself as models for Axel’s shots we slowly made our way through, that was until we got to a fantastic waterfall area which is exactly when the flash bulbs stopped working! Bummer. Pissed off and dishearted from ever undertaking cave photography again, we all decided to walk towards the Aven in PL2 passage to inspect if there was any possible bolting methods that we could take. It was also here that we stumbled across the perfect place for a second camp – that was if there was a running source of water that wasn’t at least 20minutes walk away. This marked the end of our exploration and we made our way back to the bottom of the pitches, sorted out some equipment before brewing a quick pot of coffee to share between us.

The prussik back out was quite uneventful. The biggest thing to note was how awkward the first initial 150meters of pitches were simply due to how much mud was on the ropes which caused all of the jammers to constantly jam up! A complete nuisance but manageable. For some reason my tired brain decided to make me pop my Gimp-Mac on at the bottom of the 110 pitch, which meant for 300meters I was overly warm, simply because I thought at any moment I would become overly wet. This didn’t happen until the toureleen, about 50m from the entrance. Silly me. The total out time for myself was just under 7hours, of which I don’t actually have an accurate time as I forgot to check the watch before heading up, but I know I was out at around 0100, so around 36+ hours within that cave.

Joel had left some hot drinks in a flask at the exit which Axel had poured for me as he heard me exit. A quick change out of the mud-fest clothes allowed me to sit in the dark watching the stars as we waited for the others to exit, who were only 30minutes behind.

All in all a fantastic trip and I look forward to doing similar on my next return trip to the region.

These delights included;
Succulent Fried TVP (marinated in pepper sauce, garlic, ginger, veg stock, lemon juice and jam – basically anything we could get our hands on) with a side of Onion soup, Mash and Deep Fried (in a wok of all things) chips. This was probably one of the biggest clusterf*** meals I helped prepare, and it was done between Joel and myself. I think at one point we had 4 frying pans on rings, full of oil, full of chips – definitely a fire hazard waiting to happen!

A Sweet Potato and Chickpea curry; This fine delight was put together on one of my rest days, as such I remember we spent probably 2 hours faffing trying to ensure the flavour of the curry was perfect, but not too spicy to annoy those who don’t enjoy the magnificence of spice and heat. Funnily enough it’s the only recipe I wrote down all the ingredients for, shame we forgot quantities….!

There were many other culinary delights, however it seems I forgot to note what they were, so instead I’ll briefly summarise what TVP is….. nah you’ll have to find out for yourself if you come on the expedition. All I will say is, its surprisingly nice.

Closing Thoughts...

All in all the whole expedition was fantastic and I would recommend anyone interested in tagging along to just go – don’t worry one bit about experience as you’ll quickly best yourself as soon as you head out. Joel, the expedition leader runs this as a training expedition as it allows for you to gain the experience you need to become a better caver. 

Just remember to pay your bar tab with Renata at the end of the expedition!

Some Panoramas!

WUG Excavations

Team Ireland in the Distance

Camelot looking off into the distance

The official expedition home

Misty Scenes

A cloud of mist moves over the Hoher Dachstein, picture by Emily Punzalan

Tiergartenloch

Jean-Paul and Éabha taking in the scenary, picture by Richard Cole

The Wiesberghaus

The Seilbahn moves towards the Wiesberghaus

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Equipment List

Below is a list of equipment that I brought with me - where I could be bothered, I marked down the type and brand of equipment used.

Other Notes & Recommendations

1) Don't Arrive on a Sunday! This is something we completely forgot about as a group collectively. On Sundays in both Germany and Austria, all of the supermarkets and grocery stores are closed which makes it quite difficult to get a decent shop done - we had to resort to asking Richard and Éabha to buy stuff for us and send it up the mountain on the Monday when they were coming up

2) Pringles fuels the Irish team on the expedition. They are a fine snack. Topics of discussion from Pringles include how many tins can be fitted into the Seilbahn based on the dimensions, weight and proportions of the tins in the Seilbahn!

3) A SIMPLE or equivalent descender is a better shout than the stop especially when going down WUG with the muddy ropes - my STOP kept jamming at one point due to mud clogging (but it is fairly new!)

4) Wetsocks (the Warmbac variety) are useless and you really don't need to bring them. I found them to be awkward and sweaty so after one trip just switched to a pair of hiking socks and regular socks, much better!

5) Definitely bring a second pair of footwear other than the hiking boots, like crocs or an old pair of trainers. Much more comfy than wearing hiking boots all the time!

6) Get an Allergy test before you start eating peanuts underground.