Hi,
Once again I'll plug our thread here on the forum with a lot of background information about the Dachstein expedition, why it is great and why every aspiring (or experienced!) expedition caver should sign up immediately
https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=24809.0
We would definitely like to enter the (very generous!) UKC rope sponsorship deal
The Dachstein expedition is a long-running expedition, with the first British exploration occurring in the area in the 1960s and serious regular exploration occurring from the 1980s onwards. Various clubs and groups have been involved over the years, including the BEC and Cardiff University alumni, but last year we finally confirmed the connection between the 112km long Hirlatzh?hle, accessed from the valley, and the expedition-discovered WUG Pot, accessed from the plateau at an altitude of over 2000m. This has raised the depth of the Hirlatzh?hle to 1560m, making it the joint ninth deepest cave in the world and the deepest cave ever explored by a British expedition. This year the hunt is on for connections to various higher entrances to push us up that ranking even further!
Despite all these achievements, the Dachstein has for many years been a training expedition. It has been and continues to be very popular with students and newer cavers as a place to cut their expedition teeth. While there is some hard caving to challenge any caver (and you will hear some true horror stories from the past), the current deep cave is comparatively easy for experienced cavers (although still a serious deep Alpine cave), and there are a range of other shallower caves currently being pushed. There is also almost unlimited scope for prospecting. With the retreat of snow and ice from the glacier, many previously snow-plugged entrances are becoming open, giving new cave within a reasonable striking distance of the bar. Yes, the Dachstein is lucky enough to be based at the Wiesberghaus mountain hut, complete with bar, seilbahn to carry your gear up the hill, charging facilities and other comforts - no bivying outside for us (unless you want to!).
There is, of course, more to life than caving (blasphemy, I know) and the local area also has other mountain huts to visit for food and drink, climbing, excellent walking including a major glacier and some fantastic via ferrata from very basic to seriously extreme. We also have a few 'tourist' caves, including an ice cave which is an excellent place to practice your photographic skills.
As a training expedition, we have always been very aware of cost for cavers, particularly poor students. We are probably one of the cheapest expeditions - driving to the exped with a group of people can save considerable money over an expedition that requires flights, accommodation was ?5 a night last year, and we try and keep our fees as low as possible (?70 exped fee and roughly ?10/week for fresh food and vegetables). It would be very easy to raise our fees to bring in more money for rope, hangers and maillons, but this would make it even harder for our poorer students to justify the cost.
The cost of going on an expedition (and for many of our members, this may be their only expedition of the year) has been raised even further by the increasing cost of insurance. I am expecting to pay around ?70-80 for my single trip this year, more than my expedition fee. The new BCA insurance is very welcome here (and we are hoping to help people further by organizing this as a group for a discount).
Donations, such as the ?1200 from the Ghar Parau for (primarily) a cave-link set can make a massive difference on an exped like ours run on a shoestring budget. If we were to receive UKCaving rope it would greatly help our (currently diminished) rope stocks. It might also benefit the less experienced and newer members more. When resources are low, and stocks of rope, hangers and maillons are dwindling, these resources have to (by necessity) restricted to the 'core projects' of the expedition. This tends to mean that surface prospecting and speculative exploration of shallow caves has to be restricted for that year, and that can have a negative (and unfair) effect of newer cavers who do not have the experience to safely push the deep caves.
When we have enough equipment, we can spread our wings much more widely. It is very important to me that we maintain our training focus; this year I would like to see an increased amount of prospecting for new cave, and we have several shallow caves which need to be pushed looking for connections to WUG to push the depth of the Hirlatz. I would also like to buy a third expedition drill (currently we have a good expedition drill and a usable 14V drill, in addition to personal drills) so that less experienced teams can use this for prospecting and exploring shallow caves.
I have assembled a (currently small!) 'social media team' for the Dachstein, and I am happy to commit us to writing reports on this forum before, during and after the expedition as required by the competition - and I would hope we do much better than this (after a unfortunately quiet year last year due to media secrecy over the connection).