Caving: Hirlatz Hohle (30-Dec-04)

• Hirlatz Hohle


• 72:00 hours
• 1,625:45 cumulative hours

Entered Cave on: 30/12/2004 and Exited on: 02/01/2005 30/12/2004: From the Car Park (550m a.s.l.) we walked up the steep hill in very deep snow to reach the very cold Hirlatz entrance (870m a.s.l). We then caved all the way to Schwabenland in the East of the System and set-up our base for the next few days. 31/12/2005: From Schwabenland we headed out to Gorbatschoff-Step (1290m a.s.l) and then to Blaser (1100m a.s.l) continued pushing some of the Austrians previous leads. We eventually dropped through into a very large boulder strewn chamber (Gaping Ghyll sized) but could not find any obvious way on from the bottom of the chamber. We surveyed it then returned back to camp to celebrate New Year underground!! We were hoping to connect through with Asterixlabyrinth in the West of the system. 01/01/2005: New Year's day we went to Umstandsgang (1410m a.s.l) and again continued on from the Austrian's previous explorations. Unfortunately the pitch ended completely mud-choked and I ended up completely ripping my oversuit on our return to camp. 02/01/2005: Headed back out the cave to a very cold evening. The way back down the hill to the car park was interesting as it was dark, covered in snow, very steep and we were wearing soft soled wellie boots.