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Home arrow Logbook List arrow Caving Logbook arrow Caving: Hirlatz Hohle (04-Aug-01)
Sunday, 30 September 2007
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Caving: Hirlatz Hohle (04-Aug-01) Print E-mail
Trip Nr: 253
Date: 04-Aug-2001
People: Rich Hudson   Martin Groves   Pete Whitaker   Tim Lamberton   Peter Hubner   
Location: Hirlatz Hohle
Hours: 36:30
Cuml. Hours: 804:30

View Report for this Trip

04/08/01 - 06/08/01 (+15 Hours Sleep) What a magnificant cave. From the forest car park a steep tiring walk gets you up to the cave entrance. The short entrance ladder leads into a low crawling phreatic tube where the draught is so strong its blowing sand and grit in your face. A chamber is soon reached and the draught seems significantly less due to the size of the chamber. The entrance series in winter is ice covered so in dry summer conditions the via veratta style spikes, ladders, wires seem a bit excessive. Eventually the series of ladders begin. A few short ones pass and then the big ones arrive. Walking across a 70m deep void on a horizontal ladder then climbing up another 50m on yet more ladders is quite intimidating. At the top you traverse around this chamber with over 120m drop to the floor on more horizontal ladders untill climbing through the roof and into another passage. All of which with a rucksack full of camping gear and no lifeline. A bit of caving leads to another 70m ladder up a vertical wall. At the top a big trunk passage is reached and camp 1 gained. We were not planning on staying here so pressed on to the next campsite in Schwarben land (known to us as Mendip land). Lots of steeply inclined big passages were followed with short handlined climbs and more very exposed drops. Schwarben land was then reached (the name relates to a tight akward caving area in Germany) and the small ensuing passages and muddy climbs were followed again intersecting a main trunk passage. It was here that we were to camp. The campsite being 5km horizontally and over 800m of vertical height from the entrance. After a good night sleep we reluctantly got changed (cave temperature is 2ºc) and headed further into schwarben land on a pushing trip. After a couple of hours caving we reached the un-descended pitches marked on the survey. Here we split into two teams so as we could attack two different leads. I went with Martin and Tim to push a pitch 7-8m diameter by the side of the main passage. A series of bolts and not very reliable naturals got us to the bottom (20m) and into a chamber which continued across boulders down a 4m climb and into another chamber. This unfortuanately was the end of this lead with only a small meandering rift being the way out. I pushed on down this but it soon became to tight to even get my head through even without no helmet. At the bottom of the pitch Tim looked at a higher level above the chamber and in doing so unknowingly knocked a sharp jagged boulder down and onto Martins wrist. With blood pouring out and the tendons inside moving we retreated back up the pitch to where we had left the bag and covered the wound with a kitkat wrapper and snoopy loop. As is Austrian tradittion we surveyed what we had found and headed back to the camp. Tim headed over to the others to inform them, while I poured some strong anti-septic drug onto the wound and bandaged it up. Another night sleep was had and in the morning we packed up camp and started to head out. Martin coped incrediablly well on all the ladders considering the state of his hand. The way out was a lot easier as most of it was downslope. At hospital martin had X-Rays to remove all the bits of rock embedded in his wrist then had a plaster cast.

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