Dachstein 2026

[AlexR]

The Dachstein Expedition

A wild mix of cavers from the UK and much further afield have been coming to the Dachstein plateau since the 1960s, drawn in by a seemingly endless sea of limestone and the promise of the mighty Hirlatz under their feet. After decades of pushing all manner of brutal caves, some beyond -600m, 2018 finally saw the connection of WUG to the Hirlatz system. This now spans over 120km at 1560m depth - the 9th deepest in the world.

We have traditionally run as an open expedition which has trained a great number of cavers in the art of alpine caving, expedition logistics and underground camping. This continues to be reflected in our participants, in 2025 36% of participants were under 25 or in full term education, and 14 of the 26 cavers were new to the Dachstein.




You have a connection - what more do you want?

There was a slight lull in activity after 2018, not helped by Covid. But the connection had a slight caveat: There are several hundred meters of sump between the two sections. Consequently, cavers are fervently trying to find a dry bypass.
As pushing fronts became increasingly remote, two new camps have been established since 2024. This turned out to be well worth it, with the 2025 expedition adding 1,267m of passage to the system - the most successful in years.
The r.h. picture shows one of the current limits of exploration, Daylight Robbery, two days into the cave, and represents only one of 4 major open passages that have been discovered and made accessible through deep camps.
In order to pursue another wide open lead, Forbidden Fruit, a further camp will have to be established.
The above are downstream as well as upstream leads, with an excellent potential for significantly extending the Hirlatz.

On the plateau, prospecting continues. The current highest entrance lies at around 2000m, but the limestone reaches 2995m. With this eye watering depth potential in mind, we continue to scour the plateau in search of higher entrances. This is always a fantastic way for cavers new to expedition caving to practice their bolting, rigging, and surveying under the supervision of those more experienced. Oddly those who have sampled the delights of the lower Hirlatz over long time periods tend to seek more time in the sunshine.

As it stands, objectives for 2026 are:
- Find and push higher cave entrances through prospecting
- Infrastructure work (replace old ropes, remove defunct material, widen constrictions, establish a further camp, improve existing camps)
- Pushing deep leads: Daylight Robbery, Forbidden Fruit, Passage 33 and Deep Impact


The expedition

The 2026 expedition will run from 14.08.26-12.09.26, and with many excited cavers and fantastic leads it should be an excellent year!
In order to meet increased demand, we have extended the 2026 expedition from 3 to 4 weeks, with 31 cavers signed up and a total of 541 person days.
Similar to 2024, we will post updates of our exploits - watch this space.

 

[aspiring mole rat]

A very late update on our training weekend which was run on the the 6th - 7th June at the YSS. Big thanks must go to Andy and Jo for organising and providing training alongside Oscar.

We all arrived on the Friday night and got to know each other before going over plans for the weekend.
Saturday morning was either survey practise or rigging practise in Sell Gill. Survey practise involved surveying the entire downstairs of the YSS on distos, practising with both sexytopo and topodroid software before moving on to practising in the Hoffman limekilns.
Saturday afternoon was spent on the SRT wall making sure that everyones gear was right for the deep caves and long prussiks of the Dachstein. We fine tuned gear and practised knot passes (my personal enemy!) and other less often practised manoeuvres in the UK.
In the evening Jo gave us a talk on clothing and food and useful bits of kit to bring

Sunday was a whole day advanced SRT practise. People got to practise tensioned traverses, rope to rope transfers, free hanging traverses etc. We even broke out Andy's 7mm rope to practise descending on speedy ropes. I then stole Andy and his bolt climbing gear to have a little go myself doing that (I have been begging for AGES to learn and hopefully we find a little aven somewhere I can have an attempt at doing on the expedition)

All in all a very productive weekend and I think we all learnt a lot. At least I did!
Stay tuned for future updates on how this years expedition goes.

 

[aspiring mole rat]

And we (aka Andy and Jo organisers extreme and me their little minion) are officially off to Austria.

Somewhere in this car is the spanset rope in a shiny new tacklesack.

 

[aspiring mole rat]

Up at Camelot and prepping for deep multiday camp trips leaving tomorrow.
Can anyone guess how many sandwiches Gemma vacuum packed?

 

[Thurly]

5 plus a mackerel candle is my guess…

 

[Becka]

I've been going to Austria on caving expeditions for *ahem*, many a year, but somehow I'd never made it to "the" Dachstein expedition until 2026. I have caved *on* the Dachstein, with several trips with the VHO to explore caves near the peak, the Hoher Dachstein, from 2011 on.

Me about to abseil down the Sudwand from just above the Seethalerhutte (2740m) to push in Voodoo Canyon, 2011. Photo: Neil Pacey

I've also been into the main entrance to the Hirlatzhoehlesystem just above the valley bottom, near the village of Hallstatt, to help divers explore the lower reaches of the cave.

Walking to the Hirlatzhoehle entrance in the winter. Photographer unknown, apologies.

Nevertheless, I had, of course, heard many things about "the" Dachstein expedition and I was keen to see how the caves compared to those higher and lower in the massif. I arrived for the second half of the 4 week expedition and I had a fine fortnight of caving, prospecting and socialising based at the Camelot hut next door to the Wiesberghaus (1884m) on the Dachstein. This included a 4 day / 3 night camping trip down WUG, the highest entrance to the Hirlatz, with Philip and Jamie, part of the large Irish contingent on the trip. We dropped Little Dick, a fine, 70m shaft, and had a grand time. I also had some fun days prospecting including a memorable crossing of the Hallstatter glacier with Andreas, Jamie and Jemma to look for entrances down a sheer cliff in thick fog. We were, unsurprisingly, not very successful but at least I wasn't swallowed up in a crevasse by the fast-melting glacier.

Thanks to everyone for helping me feel at home on the expedition and for cheerfully pitching in with all of those chores that make an expedition happen. I've learnt a few, new tricks (vaccuum packed, home made underground meals, bolt climbing taken to another level, a massive, whistling kettle and an outdoor shower) and I loved my time up the mountain.

Each year the furthest extent of the Hallstatter glacier is marked. It is retreating by many metres annually and this means that the glacier is also thinning at an alarming rate so a huge volume of ice is being lost. All of Austria's glaciers are vulnerable

One day I walked up to the edge of the glacier by myself and sat listening to the torrents of water pouring off it. These disappear into unknown holes and there are doubtless caves that the melting glaciers will soon reveal. But its tragic that glaciers have to die for us to find caves this way.

 

[Pegasus]

What an inspiration you are Becka xx

 

[gassygal9000]

Sadly our Dachstein expedition this year is over, and we have said goodbye to Camelot and the fantastic bunch of people who have inhabited it over the last month.

This was my second year on the Dachstein expedition. Last year 3 of us Aussies stumbled upon this exped, with no real idea what we were getting ourselves into. This year two of us came right on back. The caving is epic, and (at times) very pleasant, but what really dragged me back out there was the company. This exped is made up of such a good bunch of fun, generous, capable peeps and I wanted to see my Dachstein friends again!

I was fortunate enough to get to go straight down WUG on a 6 day and a 5 day trip to Camp 2 with fellow Aussie Ciara, and our dear friend and totally obsessed cave nerd Alex. We met Alex on the Dachstein expedition last year, and I came home with pages of notes about how Alex does this and that, and we should adjust our climbing/camping/layering systems etc. etc. The three of us seem to make a pretty well balanced team. Alex is our almighty leader, climber, prepper and knower of the cave and things. Ciara is our wise and responsible surveyor, always dragging us out to bag those extra few metres, and rein us in from doing anything tooooo stupid. And I toddle along behind to ensure that the snacks get eaten and the fun gets had. We pushed some leads and whatnot, found plenty of new cave and generally had a jolly grand time living our best lives as mole-people.

On the topside, I managed to squeeze in a day of climbing in the sunshine with future expedition leader, upcoming trad climbing maestro and biggest of sweeties, Jamie. We clipped a few pitches of bolts on the oksenkogel (or something like that), then veered off into our own choss-venture to the top. A pleasant little morning out, with even pleasanter company.

Somewhere later in the trip we got to have a go at PL2 too. If we can get back to the bottom one day, there's a good hope of joining it to WUG and making WUG a bunch deeper, so pretty worth a try I reckon. To make this trip extra special, I got to cave with dear sweet Wolfo, another special friend from last year. Poorly hidden behind his murderous threats, and hardman stoicism is a generous, caring, selfless bean, with all the answers to everything. To join us on this potentially slightly big day trip, we found a new friend and victim, Steve Macnamara. By all accounts a mega experienced deep caver and connoisseur of cheerful suffering, his apprehension was overcome with promises of glory, and a good amount of begging. It ended up being a super fun day with lots of meander milage and all the fun wiggling, climbing and exposure that comes with that. I even found us some bonus, extra tight wiggling to bypass a boring walk. We didn't end up getting to the bottom, we ran out of bolts to rig the big pitch (and were maybe getting a little tired and cold). But we made some progress, and it'll definitely go next year. Good fun!

With new friend Steve, now thoroughly field tested, and Oisin 3 (KMD), certified good boy, we got down for another 5 day trip to camp 2. Team Sour Pussies spent 2 days pushing the Moist Sourpuss Meander. What looked like a very big clean pleasant lead that had been handed to us on a platter, rapidly deteriorated into glorious tight mud squelching meander. The team spent a valiant 2 full days dropping a series of increasingly wet muddy pitches before it ended in a clearly sometimes sumped choke, and definitively writing off that horror forever. We took a jolly to Austrian Airspace and Daylight Robbery (big pleasant new stuff) on the last day to give the guys a little taster of the less nasty side of exploration in WUG.

Somewhere in there I did some prospecting with a very fun and capable group of kiddies - Joe, Monica, Margo & (less kiddie) Steve. We found approximately nothing, but got our fill from banter and bush bashing.

A bunch of other stuff happened too. We got to play with spikey feet when Andreas took us out over the glacier. And we went to the water slide park in Munich with Axel and Paul on the way home! And we had many nights talking shit in the Weisberghaus bar with everyone. And we had a wicked BBQ in obertraun.

I had a fantastic time, and once again learnt so many new things to take back to our isolated corner of the caving world, Tasmania. I am infinitely grateful to the entire organising team, who's massive efforts year round make this happen. Special thanks to Andy who came all the way back to the Dachstein and back up the mountain for days and days of packing up. (And Axel for doing f***-tonnes of shopping, but most importantly my snacks).

 

[Pegasus]

Have been to Tasmania many times visiting caving friends, it's a wonderful island - khublakhan was a fab trip, happy memories. Thanks for the above post, loved reading it - you have a way with words

 

[mud sheeran]

The Dachstein has been first expeditions, it been a amazing time and learnt so much and meet some amazing people. One of my favorite time was prosecting prosecting with Andreas, Paul, Vladimir and osion and getting up close glacier and getting explored the bunder.( that trip did kill my boots and walking poles) I learn so much about srt and efficiency ( mainly from paul and Alex ). I had lovely trip down wug with Jamie going to the top of the 110. I think going that deep into wug i did more reblayes than I had ever done in one trip. I should also say I wouldn't able to one Dachstein if wasn't for Ghar Parau foundation. I am extremely grateful and thankful for them. I have learnt so much on my 2 weekend i will take forth in my further caving. Mainly the idea that it better to efficient and safe in my caving. Also big thanks to Joe and Andrew for organizing it.