Every year a group of reprobates cavers from around the globe descend on the Dachstein Alps in Austria for a few weeks to explore the unique karst landscape. This region is home to some of the largest and most spectacular cave systems in the world, and these expeditions aim to explore and map them, whilst having a lot of fun (and even occasionally doing some science) along the way.
On September 6th, 2018, the expedition managed to connect the deepest cave that they'd found so far, What U Got Pot, with the ancient cave of The Hirlatzhöhle in the valley floor. In so doing they created a system 1,560 meters deep and 113km long. This system, now the 9th deepest in the world, is still not fully explored, and the expedition group continue to push its limits.
Check out what we've been getting up to or get involved yourself!
We organise ourselves using a Facebook group where we plan the expeditions and training events, and post useful resources. Anyone is welcome to join and find out more:
The expedition is lucky to receive support from UKCaving who often donate rope, metalwork, and publicity to us. In return we write our our exploits on the forum, which you can read here: