Plans are afoot for the next thrilling installment of cave exploration in the Dachstein. If you're interested in finding out more then you can join the Dachstein Caving Expedition 2009 facebook group (or type in http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=42531638868). The formal website's died a death. 

Dates are still being decided but looking like late July til late August as one of our leads requires minimum snow on the plateau.  We're based as usual at 1800m altitude in the vicinity of the Wiesberghaus.

Cost: dirt cheap: ?60 fee to the exped to cover hardware, communal food, etc...  A day rate of ?2.50 for accommodation, a weekly supplement of approx ?10 each to cover fresh food, fuel, etc.., and your own transport out there.  All in all you could realistically do a month of exploration for less than a couple of hundred quid, excluding beer (there's a bar in the Wiesberghaus...).

Projects for this year include the 700m deep Wot-Have-U-Got Pot (purely vertical down to -600m then we've hit a very large phreatic borehole that descends to -700m). This is the most unusual cave we've ever found and surely represents our best lead for decades.  The other main site is the 600m deep monster called Burnie's Pot. Very hard and a totally different beast to the other one!  Depth potential in the area is more than 2.2km.

Both caves will require installing an underground camp, and whilst the bitter end of Burnie's is only accessible to fit & experienced cavers, the other one is far less strenuous.  We'll be taking our usual range of old has-beens and keen young tigers. If you lack experience then don't let that put you off: we've been recruiting and training first timers for decades. Drop me a line if you're interested in joining the best expedition in the world!

32 cavers went out over a period of a month, and 32 came back, amazingly enough!  This year we got away with only minor injuries, including a dislocated knee, dislocated shoulder, and horrendous genital disorders (not mine, for once)!

Wot-Have-U-Got Pot is now over 750m deep and ongoing. Exploration was hampered by appalling weather for the first week, the need to re-bolt a lot of the cave, and an individual who failed to listen to the grownups......

We established a permanent camp site at -700m which we will be using for the next couple of years, I imagine.  In October a small crew will be returning to camp in the cave for a week of misery & adventure.

All in all a fantastic month of exploration in the finest caving region in Europe.  And in my humble opinion that's a fact!

We were sponsored by the following:
Fischer Fixings, Beast Products, JA & RE React/Confined Space Rescue Stretchers (Jopo), Fourth Element.  We'll be doing a talk at Hidden Earth, no doubt.