CUCC 2026 Expo to the Loser Plateau

[Samouse1]

Expo 2026, 50 years of Expo!

Yes, CUCC (and many, many friends) have gone to the Loser Plateau for the last half a century! The 1976 expedition consisted of a grand total of nine attendees, but set the groundwork for a huge push to explore the vast karst plateau, forcing it to give up its wonderful secrets slowly over the years. In comparison, we currently have over 40 people signed up, with several never having been on expedition before, some having been on so many expeditions they should be chastised and told to leave some cave for the rest of us!

(Kit can be transported over the unforgiving plateau by WookMule, though he demands payment in Gösser and survey data to nerd over)

The overall goal
The Schwarzmooskogel-Höhlensystem (known to non german speakers as the SMK) is at time of writing over 140km long and 1114m deep, so only a small cave really, being the second longest in Austria. All of the CUCC expeditions have pushed and expanded the borders of the SMK, finding new caves and then connecting them in. The Austrian cavers haven't been idly watching us take all the glory of course, they've connected and explored caves on the plateau, as have the Germans. Just over the hill, a mere stones throw away, lies the the longest cave in Austria, the ~150km Schönber-Höhlensystem. With nothing but limestone separating the two, a connection is almost inevitable! We just have the matter of finding the blasted thing...

This years goals
In the 2025 expedition, a return was made to Kaninchen Höhle (KH - translates to Rabbit Cave), which had not been explored since 2014, and the cave quickly made itself a firm favourite amongst its new generation of explorers, so a return was almost inevitable. Many exciting leads were pushed and new ones discovered last year , leaving us with more unticked boxes than we started with. One section, the Enniskillen Toad series is tantalisingly close to another series much closer to the entrance, so a hope is that a connection can be made there to save time in the long run. Another good lead is an as yet unnamed pitch series, which ate up 100m of rope with no sight of the bottom, dropping down close to Razordance, a section of Steinbrückenhöhle which had many promising leads but was a swine to get to. A return is planned to a pitch named Somebody Elses Problem, where an incredibly strong draft was inexplicably lost in 1997. Hopefully the wonders of modern lighting shows us a lovely stomping phreatic that takes us for miles and miles.

Another firm favourite, Balkonhöhle, is once again on the roster for the year, though this may be its last hurrah for a while! We plan to tick off some final leads from our underground camp, and push what we can into the blank spots of the map.

On the surface, the Plateau gods still offers us many holes to go at. A find last year, Kaninchenjäger (Rabbit Hunter) could well give us a KH back door (Kaninchenhintertür), allowing for even more exploration. Prospecting will always be on the cards as well, cataloguing whatever holes we come across, in the hopes of finding the next piece of the great Loser Jigsaw. Attention will be paid to an area between the SMK and another cave, Fischgesichthöhle, in the hopes of finding something that goes in both directions to tie this exciting cave in with the rest of the system.

(Surface prospecting is a truly awful experience, no one ever enjoys the sunshine on the plateau)

Who and when?
We go out in July, and come back in August. Expo prides itself on being a very "beginner friendly" expedition, its a first for many, including myself back in 2018! We have many students coming out, as well as some of the old fogies telling us about the good old days when they used to drive cars off canyons ("tackle: written off"), and survey miles of passage with a demagnetised compass (bloody fridges).

I (and hopefully others), will give updates on our exploits on here, and for anyone more curious about the expo, all the information and the logbook can be found here: https://expo.survex.com/

 

[Redmire]

Happy 50th, I hope it goes well. I do remember the incident with the compass. The end of Stellerweghohle, I think it was, ended up in mid air half way across the deep valley separating the Loser plateau and the Trisselwand. It taught us something about calibrating compasses before you start surveying. Once we’d recalibrated from fridge north to magnetic north the survey made a lot more sense.

 

[Crustyface]

It's happening!!! The exodus is well underway of various extremely cool people packed into extremely hot cars, traversing France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. Herr und Frau Expeditionführer (Todd and Lara) set off on Thursday in a van stuffed to the rafters and arrived this morning, with the Sheffield-dwellers Harry, HannahC, Charlotte and Russell almost catching them up having driven through the night with four people on the insurance. A third car, from which I pen this missive, trails by almost a day and we expect that by the time we arrive the Base Camp will be fully rigged and fettled, shipshape and Bristol-fashion, ready for the big push to move kit up the mountain. Of course, the 8:30am curfew for driving up the toll road (verboten when the new cable car is in operation) means that we'll have almost a full day to fettle ourselves, ready to burst forth upon the plateau like a loaded spring on Monday morning. Other much anticipated arrivals by rail, bus, and plane will flesh out the initial group.

This reception stage of the "expo" is one that I've not been present for before, but as a veteran derigger I have been an enthusiastic partaker in the ruthless criticism of the rigging parties and now I approach the laborious tasks ahead with a growing sense of trepidation. A source of much comfort in the long sweltering hours in the back seat, between games of "Eye Spy" and niche Flemish radio stations, has been to peruse the travails of last year's team in the sacred texts that we call "The Logbook".

2025 Expo Logbook

The current year's entries will appear here:

Expo Logbook

- though that page may not exist just yet. Watch this space!

Christopher

 

[Cave baby]

Set up is well underway, with the early arrivals heading up to the Plateau early morning to catch the toll road before it shuts so that they can set up Top Camp. The tertiary team arrived early yesterday and, barred from using the toll road until the cable car closes, set about finishing setting up basecamp (with a reasonable amount of decompression)
Last few things being organised before we can start exploration, like getting food to the right place and soaking the lovely donated Spanset rope eagerly waiting for it's new home at the top of the hill

 

[Crustyface]

Setting up Top Camp! Early start, scorching temperatures and lack of water were tempered by excitement to finally be back on the plateau. Becka of course claimed the need to "plod" ahead due to "being slow", and we didn't catch up with her until The Stone Bridge. Enroute, we set up some base units for the Meshtastic radio sets, and marked their locations on the QField GIS map that we're going to use for prospecting.

The solar panels and other gear were manhandled out of the cave we had hidden them in over winter, and moved to the cave we use as our extremely bougie bivouac. Much discussion and delegation ensued as the camp gradually took shape.

Lots of things needed cleaning and fettling.

Finally, the camp was ready enough to be left overnight to await tomorrow's rain. Hopefully there's enough to fill the water butts and we can go caving with a comfortable expectation of being able to slake our thirst when we emerge, and have a nice dry place to sleep that isn't a massive walk across rugged terrain.

But for tonight, beer and ice cream!

 

[currywuss]

Setting up Top Camp! Early start, scorching temperatures and lack of water were tempered by excitement to finally be back on the plateau. Becka of course claimed the need to "plod" ahead due to "being slow", and we didn't catch up with her until The Stone Bridge. Enroute, we set up some base units for the Meshtastic radio sets, and marked their locations on the QField GIS map that we're going to use for prospecting.
View attachment 27057
The solar panels and other gear were manhandled out of the cave we had hidden them in over winter, and moved to the cave we use as our extremely bougie bivouac. Much discussion and delegation ensued as the camp gradually took shape.
View attachment 27059
Lots of things needed cleaning and fettling.
View attachment 27060
Finally, the camp was ready enough to be left overnight to await tomorrow's rain. Hopefully there's enough to fill the water butts and we can go caving with a comfortable expectation of being able to slake our thirst when we emerge, and have a nice dry place to sleep that isn't a massive walk across rugged terrain.
View attachment 27058
But for tonight, beer and ice cream!

Now to not burn it down...

 

[MarkS]

Becka of course claimed the need to "plod" ahead due to "being slow", and we didn't catch up with her

Sounds familiar

 

[Crustyface]

Progress continues! More heavy carries of food up to the camp, and of equipment into the caves. Gruffalohohle and Brotrezepthohle (new finds from 2025) have been rigged to the current limit of exploration and pushed further. A crack team of 4 spent 3 days underground in Balkonhohle, setting up the camp there and following leads from Enthusiasm Chasm. Kaninchenhohle has received by far the most attention, with one trip finding a crawl continuation at the far end of Where The Wind Blows, unfortunately limited by a head-sized constriction which will probably be removed, so important would be the shortcut it might provide to the Enniskillen Toad series and the leads there. Meanwhile at the other end of Kaninchenhohle, rigging has been completed as far as Touching The Void, ready for a big bolting trip today which is almost certain to connect into Siberia - their callout ambitiously claims "Somebody Else's Problem and nearby leads".

 

[Crustyface]

Progress continues! More heavy carries of food up to the camp, and of equipment into the caves. Gruffalohohle and Brotrezepthohle (new finds from 2025) have been rigged to the current limit of exploration and pushed further. A crack team of 4 spent 3 days underground in Balkonhohle, setting up the camp there and following leads from Enthusiasm Chasm. Kaninchenhohle has received by far the most attention, with one trip finding a crawl continuation at the far end of Where The Wind Blows, unfortunately limited by a head-sized constriction which will probably be removed, so important would be the shortcut it might provide to the Enniskillen Toad series and the leads there. Meanwhile at the other end of Kaninchenhohle, rigging has been completed as far as Touching The Void, ready for a big bolting trip today which is almost certain to connect into Siberia - their callout ambitiously claims "Somebody Else's Problem and nearby leads".

Plus photos!

Russell bolting a traverse above an undescended ~80m pitch

Russell rigging a y-hang above the undescended ~80m pitch.

Charlotte reaching the end of the rope, still far from the floor.

 

[Crustyface]

Alas, my own time on the Loser has come to an end for this year, but total numbers attending have yet to peak! We're expecting another batch of sweaty roadtrippers today, to join the trickle of bus and train travellers who have arrived through the week - a special mention for Adam's delirious 42 hour commute.

After a thoroughly productive week of caving we had a right crowd at base camp this morning as people get stuck into the important tasks collectively known as "nerding" - after all, in much the same way that it's no use discovering new passage if you don't produce a survey, it's no use surveying if you don't upload and connect your drawings into the main database.

Finds of note this week include many ways on from Jabberwocky in Gruffalohöhle, of which Galumphing passage, Terrible Claws and Vorpal Blade all crapped out, but the wet route down Snicker-Snack has finally reached a half-decent horizontal level at Tum-Tum Tree.

Prospecting efforts both east of HinterSMK and south of Grießkögel have identified some enticing new holes which were probably choked with snow in previous years, though work to document these in a cross-compatible format remains. Meanwhile, our resident American Phil Ballister has spent multiple days flying his drone to produce a highly detailed 3-D photogrammetry model of the plateau which could aid massively in future efforts - most exciting!

Deep down in the dark abysses of Balkonhöhle the same crack team (minus Russell who has a thesis to write) have used their second underground camp to push further into the aptly christened "Agoraphobia" series, as well as revisiting leads in Floodland that have been neglected for almost a decade.

And in our old friend Kaninchenhöhle last year's Touching the Void pitch has been dropped to connect to Fuzzy Logic in the Siberia series - inconveniently 40m below where it was hoped, but nothing some inventive re-rigging shouldn't be able to fix. Aside from the massive loop closure for the survey, this could trim up to an hour off the trip to the Somebody Else's Problem pitch which has thus far resisted efforts to push north to the coveted Silk Road series in deep Steinbruckenhöhle. Hundreds of metres of new passage have been surveyed further back in the Runnel Stone area, some on one Alex Pitcher Award recipient's first time underground in Austria! The names for these passages, "A Gassy Affair" and "Sharty Shenanigans", make reference to the generally tolerable side effects of this year's novel supplements to the Top Camp menu - Textured Vegetable Protein and Crispy Onions, both of which have proved incredibly popular and propelled us through the caves at hitherto unheard-of speed - though that may be simply the motivation to keep ahead of one's own flatulence.

 

[Alex trusson]

MY FIRST TIME ON THE PLATEAU!!!

This being my first ever caving exhibition I had only heard rumours and seen the odd photo of the Plateau, but to be finally on it was something else entirely diffrent.

(A buetful sunrise spotted after a exhausting day)

The views were immense, almost overwhelming but the more pressing matter was finding my Plateau legs. Step after step my ankels felt it to the BONE!!!! But eventually I became one with the rocks flowing across the surface.

As it was my first Exapo I had three goals to accomplish: do some prospecting, explore new cave and bolt some rock. With these in mind I began.

First I helped adam crush a long time matter of a cave with a draft that needed a dig unfortunatly, though a fun first mission was a failure and led to a un-pushable bolder choke.

(This is me and Baldock at the entrance of silvermoth cave)

The next few days we're spent down Gruffalohöhle a massive cave were you spend your time going up or down and if it was in england: "would be a Yorkshire Dales classic".

(This is a older survey of the cave with modern parts missing but we were pushing on from lead A)

Tunneling through this cave was an exhausting task. Full of tight pitch heads and huge chambers were even your torch struggled to reach the floor. But finally we made it to the pushing front were I was soooooo exited to tick of an objective on my list but then...
There was a pitch head to complicated to learn to bolt on. So I just watch in anticipation.
Then the moment came zipping down the rope into a massive chamber with a bolder floor. A fuzzy feeling entered the system, being wierd to be were no one had been before.
A few days later we were back. Exploring s pitch that went on from the chamber previously discovered and my time for bolting began. Walking the rock with a hammer, it was soo much fun, then contorting myself into a position to get the perfect drill angel. It was painful but I was flgrinning the whole way through. Now I can say "I was the first cavers to drop that there pitch!".

(picture of me bolting under the watchful eye of Baldock)

Now for the final objective to be complete. Prospecting.
Luckily for me Frank Tully and Ruairidh Macleod were going prospecting looking for a promising shortcut into Kaininchenhöhle. We didn't find any promising holes but here's a two pictures of me stood next to some tiny entrences that: "if they were in yorskshire this would be a capping job".

Overall a great experience and with Frank on the crew the conversation was always flowing.

Had a great first week on the Plateau and even saw a Gämse can wait for my next time up there.

 

[Adam 63]

After a 42 hour flix bus epic, I was kindly ferried to the tatty hut from bad Aussee. With a yearning for some Austrian limestone and some unfinished business from the 2023 I was very excited to get up onto the plateau!

Kaninchen Höhle:
I joined Dylan and Tom on a Kaninchenhöhle trip where, after taking in the epic south Wales esc passages that make up the heart and soul of Kaninchenhöhle, we found ourselves at the Runnel stone, an impressive chamber hanging on a false floor of jammed blocks! It was by climbing down and squeezing between loose rocks and underneath unnerving banks of sediment that we reached out lead. The lead, gracefully named scharty shenanigans, was a tantalising undropped pitch! Dylan whacked some lovely bolts in and we dropped the pitch only to find more vertical cave leading further into the depths of Kaninchenhöhle!

Silver Motte:
Elsewhere on the plateau, it was time to tackle some unfinished business in the form of a wee little cave called Silber Motte. This cave was abandoned in 2023 after a chocked but drafting slot in the floor refused to yield to some light but desperate digging. Ever since the thin black gap and rushing draft have lurked in my mind. We took turns at the dig face in a backwards half upside down digging between the legs situation, allowing us to prise out some quality Austrian limestone! The dig however did not go, as some jammed boulders barred the way and so in the words of Alex "I guess this is one for the moths".

Pre-cave psyche outside Silber Motte.

Gruffalo Höhle:
More promising news comes in from the depths of Gruffalo Höhle! The hunt for the Gruffalo is afoot. After passing the twisted claws of the snicker snacker and slithering through an engaging crawl traverse, the Tum Tum Tree chamber is reached. This quaint chamber provided a generous three ways on. A promising key hole rift passage named the soup dragons lair drops excitingly down the Ninky Nonk pitch to a further pitch. Dropping down the next pitch leads to a too tight, Yorkshire black book style, pitch/downwards rift traverse. Not something you want in a remote Austrian alpine cave and sadly the end of that lead for now, however some chemical persuasion may change things. Elsewhere a dark hole dropping from underneath the Tum Tum Tree gives hope for the continuation! A final push de-rigg will hopefully reveal all!

Happy cavers emerging from Gruffalo Höhle!

 

[philipb]

Last year I took my drone to Austria on a bit of a lark. Bye the end of 2024, I was creating 3d models and geotiffs from preplanned mapping flights.

Over the winter (er I mean the two weeks before leaving for expo 2026) I refined my processes to be a bit more organized and we setup a QGIS project to view the results. The software used is flylitchi for drone control and Open Drone Map for image porcessing. If you are really interested ask me questions, for this post I'll just post results.

I did a set of flights around top camp so we have a set that is easy to verify in the field since we do not have to travel far to inspect features. We already found and (hopefully) surveyed one small cave close to the actual camp that was surrounded by bunde.

Here is the geotiff (georeferenced for easy import into qgis). This is an overhead view only.

Now for a screen shot of the 3d model. The model is way more fun in a viewer like CloudCompare or Meshlab. Also Godot adds the possibility of multiuser prospecting with the model. No need to leave basecamp!

Now for four model images and entrances I found based on them. The first is a model from 2025, that used only images shot straight down. Flights from 2026 used a set of 65 degree images (two set, taken at 90 degrees to each other) and a set of nadir (straight down) images to capture cliff faces better. This dramatically improved the ability to find entrances with horizontal development.

Collecting the entrance photos did remind me how hard it is to take good entrance photos, please use a bit of imagination. It is easier if you look in a model viewer so you can rotate and move in/out to align features in the photos.

Entrance 1:

Notive the lack of detail on the cliff face.

Entrance 2:

Entrance 3:

And the last one:

 

[philipb]

Last year I took my drone to Austria on a bit of a lark. Bye the end of 2024, I was creating 3d models and geotiffs from preplanned mapping flights.

Over the winter (er I mean the two weeks before leaving for expo 2026) I refined my processes to be a bit more organized and we setup a QGIS project to view the results. The software used is flylitchi for drone control and Open Drone Map for image porcessing. If you are really interested ask me questions, for this post I'll just post results.

I did a set of flights around top camp so we have a set that is easy to verify in the field since we do not have to travel far to inspect features. We already found and (hopefully) surveyed one small cave close to the actual camp that was surrounded by bunde.

If you have trouble with the images loading, got to expo.survex.com and let the anime girl decide you are not an AI scraper.

Here is the geotiff (georeferenced for easy import into qgis). This is an overhead view only.

Now for a screen shot of the 3d model. The model is way more fun in a viewer like CloudCompare or Meshlab. Also Godot adds the possibility of multiuser prospecting with the model. No need to leave basecamp!

Now for four model images and entrances I found based on them. The first is a model from 2025, that used only images shot straight down. Flights from 2026 used a set of 65 degree images (two set, taken at 90 degrees to each other) and a set of nadir (straight down) images to capture cliff faces better. This dramatically improved the ability to find entrances with horizontal development.

Collecting the entrance photos did remind me how hard it is to take good entrance photos, please use a bit of imagination. It is easier if you look in a model viewer so you can rotate and move in/out to align features in the photos.

Entrance 1:

Notice the lack of detail on the cliff face.

Entrance 2:

Entrance 3:

And the last one:

 

[Samouse1]

So what did the UKC rope actually get used for?

Apart from pushing rope, a chunk of it was used to rig Strange Acrossfall, a Tyrolean traverse.

But not just any Tyrolean, a 20m Tyrolean suspended 20m above the floor, all to avoid a down and up!

Last rigged in the 90s on spits of all things, Wookey spent several trips making it slightly safer and more in line with modern standards.

A big thanks again to UKC for sponsoring the rope!

The web of rigging

A bloody long way

A bold Benedict Hyland using the traverse

 

[Pegasus]

Love that second photo

 

[flakey]

Going to have nightmares about that first photo.

 

[DanTheCaveMan]

Kaninchenjäger Höhle - The Hunt for the Rabbit Continues

Kaninchenjäger Höhle (Rabbit Hunter Hole) - abbreviated to KJ - was an exciting prospecting find from some of the Cardiff expoers from 2025, but was found right at the end of that expo and so still was an open lead! As such, we were excited to return to the cave this year with the hopes that it may provide a backdoor to the nearby Kaninchenhöhle (Rabbit Cave) - abbreviated to KH - and that the rabbit would be hunted, hence the name.

Our first trip to KJ involved first refinding the entrance - which was well remembered by Ned - and rebolting the entrance pitches to allow for a better hang. The cave had a unique crucifix shaped entrance on a sloped slab, and a short traverse gave way to a beautiful 39 metre hang past a jammed boulder. The cave quickly opens up to an impressive vertical shaft that ends at the bottom in a snow plug and jammed boulders that give a false floor. A further 15 metre pitch drops you into a drippy and chossy chamber that we were not a fan of surveying!

Rebolting the entrance pitch to KJ.

The cave quickly drops again down a 19 metre pitch that ends in a J hang onto a ledge that avoids the rather deathy choss slope directly below the pitch. This is where our first surveying trip got us to, but we were excited by Ned's description of the following pitch that drops into a beautiful shaft with a huge amount of ice slopes.

The drippy, chossy pitch - wonderful.

After a couple of setbacks with threats of storms and getting distracted by other caving prospects, we returned a week or so later to push the cave further, and I promised Jono, Colin, and Pierre a day of finding passage immeasurable! Equipped with his new drill - lovingly called Bertie Bosch - Jono made quick work dropping the icy pitch and explored the bottom of the shaft. Much to our dismay however, he reported back that all of the holes either ended in snow plugs or ice, with any continuation of the cave being blocked - damn! Finishing up on the surveying, I explored the final pitch myself - there sure was a lot of ice and it was indeed very cold! I also swung into a small window below the pitch, but alas this too ended.

Having over-promised on how much cave we would find, I had a rather disappointed prussik out of the cave - the backdoor to KH had been shut, at least for now! Perhaps inevitable future warming of the plateau would give us a way through KJ into KH, but time would have to tell.

The unfortunate derig - sunny at least!

Surveys (plan and elevation) below and cave info can be found at: https://expo.survex.com/1623/2025-tb-01/2025-tb-01.html

 

[Fulk]

Hiya Dan, I'm not being facetious or taking the Mick . . . but was 'J hang' a typo – or is it an esoteric rigging technique?

 

[DanTheCaveMan]

Hiya Dan, I'm not being facetious or taking the Mick . . . but was 'J hang' a typo – or is it an esoteric rigging technique?

The pitch (p19 on the survey) did not go straight down from the rebelay, and so you had to swing/pull yourself onto the ledge (next to the p63) to avoid the chossy slope directly below.

If you descended too far down to swing in, you'd maybe have to do a changeover and prussik up the loop to get onto the ledge. As it wasn't a straight down hang and more of a curve that hung below the ledge you needed to get to, it was shaped like the letter 'J', hence J-hang.