Antics in Germany: Steebschacht calling

[AlexR]

Disclaimer: This is much more like a UK trip report, and I feel like a bit of a fraud putting it into the "Trips Abroad" category. But I suppose that's what it is.

About a year ago I took the advice of a growing part of the UK populace and went back to where I came from: southern Germany.
Here, faced with overbearing bureaucracy, insane property prices, and a directness that frequently oversteps the line to rudeness for an anglicised German, I focused on a far more pressing matter. Where am I going to go caving now?
Multi-day exped-style caving in the Hirlatz is awesome, but what about a standard weekend?

If you think Mendip is bad for access, you'd be in for a rude awakening in Germany. The Untere Naturschutzbehörde reigns supreme, there are no guidebooks to speak of, cave locations are not publicised, and gating is the norm rather than the exception. Your "normal" way in would be to join a club, spend a certain amount of time as a quasi-apprentice to then be allowed access to more or less closely guarded secrets.

So I count myself very lucky to have found Daniel and Leonie, the driving forces behind exploration at Steebschacht near Blaubeuren (hydrologically part of the Blautopf System). In contrast to other caving groups, they are extremely open and very happy for experienced cavers to join and get stuck in at the sharp end. The amount of effort they have put into excavation here is staggeringingly impressive, so I am very grateful for the opportunity of joining them.
The Steebschacht vertical entrance series descends for some 150m before hitting a horizontal level, which has been significantly expanded to ultimately give access to Absentia, the main drain. This takes the form of a very impressive underground river. More importantly for me, there are more avens than you can shake a stick at, so I've gleefully set to climbing one after the other over the past couple of months like a kid in a candy store. The latest exploit is recounted below.


Climbing above "Oberes Stockwerk" 23.05.26

The two Daniels, Leonie and myself met at the container for a leisurely 11:00, which is quite nice for me as it's a 2h drive. Though Daniel H. has a nearly 3h drive, so I really can't complain too much. He also brought beer replenishment, which was ideal as the crate I'd brought had run out last time. First order of the day was to ensure we would have cold post-caving beer, so we set to lower a couple of bottles down the shaft.
Then gear faff ensued as I sorted through all my climbing stuff whilst Daniel H. and Leonie went through the rock removal kit they would need for today - last time Daniel H. manged to wriggle through an unpleasant looking rift going off one of the avens that I've previously climbed, in classic Alex fashion I didn't fancy squeezing through a tight muddy rift with all my climbing stuff. At the end he'd managed to peek into a large shaft, to which they wanted to gain access today.
I wanted to test some new bolt climbing gizmos I'd sewn up, and conveniently there was at least one aven left to climb.
The four of us set off down the shaft, with Daniel G. just having installed a new entrance rope, the old one had definitely been showing its age. We soon reached the bottom of the ropes where I opted for removing SRT kit, though the others left theirs on. By UK standards the way on has been engineered to very comfortable dimensions, comparable maybe to the Cartgate in JH.
On the undulating journey to Absentia we picked up some rock removal kit stashed in a Curtec drum whilst Daniel H. and I chatted for a bit under Feenschacht, a pitch series above Schöne Neue Welt which ascends for some 100m but is ultimately blind. This is a bit of a common theme, so far all avens have proven to be inlets which simply become progressively smaller, though some of them intersect clearly much older paleophreatic tubes some 50m or so above the current water level. By and large, these show curiously small vadose incisions .

Where this level reaches Absentia, the exploration team has built a large platform to facilitate diving, the main way on in this area. Today, it was all about going up. From the platform, Daniel H. and Leonie almost immediately ascended up the last aven I'd climbed, whilst Daniel G. and myself traversed a little bit further to reach the second shaft series. Always following the main shaft, we eventually reached the end of the ropes with at least another 10m visible above, though it wasn't clear whether there was any passage above. Whilst Daniel ferretet down a crawl I put on my climbing kit, and once he was back we began our journey up. This started with an entertaining yoga move through a small window, though it was a little challenging to put in a bolt whilst dangling through this. A couple more anchors gave me access to a free-climbable chimney, which I was quite happy about as the rock was generally terrible. Back-and-footing my way up a chimney felt much safer.

Maybe 10m higher a large, classic keyhole passage became visible, though with a bit of loose material underneath it entering it required a bit of care. In contrast to the other avens I'd climbed you could clearly see how this paleophreas had shaped the shaft series later in its life, with the abandoned canyon beneath dropping into a now dry whirlpool and all the way down to Absentia in further steps. Ahead of me I could see a cone of debris that had been pushed into this tube, completely filling the incision and itself showing signs of erosion in the form of a small channel through the clay-rock mix. The 3rd picture shows this cone, looking away from the pitchhead. I fixed the ropes and called Daniel up so we could continue exploration together, crawling over partially calcited debris ended us in a chamber blocked by large breakdown ahead and a small aven above. The rock to our right looked absolutely destroyed, potentially by lithostatic pressure (it's too far down to have been within the reach of permafrost during the ice ages).
In the interest of Science, Daniel had a smoke to find out if there was any draught, I would call the results inconclusive. There might have been some from the aven, but the choke looked pretty dead.
The small aven had a concerting Damocles-sword style flake stuck in it, but I decided to climb up to it with caution. All the rock here sounded like a drum, so there wasn't much point in putting anchors in it. To my delight the flake was actually quite stable, which was just as well as this was my only possible handhold for squeezing past the thing. Which I only just about managed, only to find considerably more suspect flakes above. At this point I decided caution was preferable to rash bravery and retreated. There is no way to escape any material falling down, and even if you did it would block your exit.

At this point we'd effectively run out of time, so I bolted the pitch down (ca. 30m of rope, two rebelays, one deviation) and we made our way down. On the way we inspected a seriously suspect carabiner on a parallel pitch, which had turned into a disconcerting glutinous mess of aluminium oxide/ hydroxide.

We found Daniel H. and Leonie waiting for us at the platform, as it turnd out they had carried 15 batteries without needing them - they'd found a parallel hole full of debris which had been reasonably easy to remove, this ended them in the aven Daniel had previously peeked into - Lümmelschacht. It looks quite promising, though regrettably most of the walls seem to resemble a jenga tower. We made our way back to the surface together, where the reward for our foresight this morning was a nice, cold beer in the sunshine. We enjoyed a lovely early summers evening celebrating our finds over pizza, obviously with plans to return to our exploits.

I am happy to report that the above was just as muddy as Derbyshire, and I spent nearly an hour pressure washing all my kit on Sunday. Which is illegal in Germany. But with Monday being a bank holiday (i.e. also illegal to make noise) I couldn't exactly wait for my gear to fester. I continue to live in fear given my brazen disregard for the law.

 

[aricooperdavis]

Great trip report, Alex! National boundaries are totally inconsequential for armchair caving, this is definitely worthy of being posted in the "trips abroad" section. To be honest, as I'm now living in Cornwall anything 2 hours drive away is considered "abroad" anyway, so I may put my Mendip trip reports in here...

 

[AlexR]

Thanks Ari; actually whilst I was in the cave I reflected on how caves (in my mind) kind of exist outside of the concept of countries anyway. Or rather, they are so uniquely removed from the world above ground that whether a cave lies in one nation state or another feels really meaningless, especially as those bits of clay you're looking at have looked exactly that way since long before we started drawing arbitrary lines on maps.
Though the geology and climatic conditions are obviously very important.
Here I go towards becoming an armchair caver with philosophical ramblings