With a date having been set, a crew of cavers found, caves and objectives known, the wait began. There had been little rain all summer and very little this fall, perfect conditions for the caves planned (though the local citizens of Marion would disagree).

· Hancock – Funnel Tunnel sumps after it rains
· Atwells Tunnel – hoping the low water levels would reveal a passage through the sump
· Rowland Spring – surveying the mud passage would be slightly more pleasant without having to get wet as well as muddy.

With heavy rain resulting from a low passing through the southeast, all plans seemed in jeopardy; there was talk of not going, rescheduling, of mutiny before Ken even got anyone underground…could it even be possible? Fortunately we had some hearty cavers, or just cavers desperate to get out of town. The plan progressed forward, though backup plans were quickly being assembled.

A group of cavers left Friday and caved Hancock cave Saturday, their report can be read in a different posting. I left Saturday morning; my plans were to check out Atwells Tunnel. I had initially planned on bringing my dive gear along as a backup if the water levels were not low enough. I was certain I’d need it now given the inches of rain received.

I met up with Brian, Tanya, and Dale in Marion; after lunch we drove over the mountain and to the cave. It had been two years since I had been there; it seemed much further away than I remembered it. We walked to the cave and found the water level to be the same it has been on previous trips. It wasn’t worth hiking to the sump; I knew there would be no visible duck under.

Gear assembled and hauled to the sump within the cave; here it was donned, return time agreed to, I started the swim down the visible part of the sump. The silt was heavy and suspended in the water column, tying line along the way the sump was inspected for a duck under. None was found; instead the sump progressed to the depth of 23ft where the roof and floor pinched to less than 10 inches. Given the visibility, the plowing of mud to continue forward, the dive was stopped.

Mystery solved; the idea of a quick duck-under and continued dry passage found to be completely untrue. The rumors of school-aged kids traversing the entire cave now suddenly didn’t seem all that realistic…just rumors.

After packing up Tanya mentioned a sink on the property she had been meaning to investigate. With the weather being sunny, bright, and warm who could pass up an offer to walk. The sink was clearly evident; better yet it has to natural drains in the basin. Some digging would be in order, but with the amount of water that must collect off the surrounding landscape there is probably cave there.

Afterward we hiked more of the property; Brian found a small cave while I found a dead cow. The cave entrance was small and looked like a bear den (given the proximity of the carcass further entrenched that thought). Brian scooped his find; the cave was only 35ft or so in length, ending in a small room.

No further caves were found; the relaxing hour hike was a spectacular consolation prize. We then drove over to Hancock to see how the other team was doing. Finding the hand line in the main entrance signaled the team must have gotten back the Funnel Tunnel. Not knowing their timeline we didn’t suit up to join them; but rather went and had a delicious Mexican meal.

Sunday at Rowland Spring consisted of Brian, Ken, Robbie, and myself. The objective was to finish surveying the large room. The cave was dry; the stream that runs through the cave had no water.

We managed to finally get the exterior wall completed and then preceded to fill in the interior content. In addition, we dropped into the breakdown and found a few smaller passages underneath; this area is the lowest spot in the cave by 4ft. Good thing the cave was as dry as it was.

Brian brought his camera, he had time to explore and photo document a majority of the big room and its splendor. I have yet to see the pictures, but will try to post a few on the web page.

The statistics for the day:

· 40 stations for 535ft
· We closed four leads
· Have two new leads.

There are a few promising leads for the next trip. The date for the next trip is not yet known, but hopefully we can locate a few additional cavers to assist with this beautiful cave.

A bad cold, the flu, eight inches of rain. The odds were again against me being able to finish the survey of Hancock Cave on October 13, 2007. I had even proposed to Dave Duguid that I would trade survey dates with him with the hopes that water levels in Hancock Cave would drop down after last week’s drenching. Mark Little, Melanie McCullough, and I woke up Saturday morning at Tanya’s house to a much clearer day than we had seen all week. Still I had plans to take photographs in the front part of the cave and maybe dig above Which Glob Pit because the rain had been so severe.

My plans to dig required tools, none of which anyone brought to Tanya’s house that weekend. After a leisurely breakfast, we stopped at the local hardware store where we bought a four-pound hammer, cold chisels, and center punches to help with the dig. Then we drove out to the cave. Apparently the drought had been more severe than the rain. I noticed that Bear Creek was still way down, and I returned to my original plans. Mark, Melanie, and I found the creek outside Hancock Cave to be dry, so we headed for the Funnel Tunnel.

I was utterly amazed that the Funnel Tunnel hadn’t changed since our last visit there in August. It was still dug open over ten inches high, and I opened it up even more to make it easy for everyone to get through. I think Melanie could’ve gone through on her hands and knees. We had gotten a late start because we expected so little, but now we had some goals to meet.

I dragged Mark and Melanie back to the Tortoise Shell Room and our first leads. We lucked out again because the lower lead (would’ve been six shots) tied right into the upper lead and saved a painful survey start. Although the survey dropped us down to a five-foot belly crawl, it opened back up into walking passage that tied back into the known passage after eight shots total.

We headed back to the Chocolate Wall, and I found the next lead (a two-foot high crawl into a flowstone mound). On the second long shot in, Mark was already standing. This lead had opened up into big walking passage. Too bad Mark and Melanie wanted to drive back to Cary that evening. In this new passage we found rimstone dams, cave coral, and a four-foot long strip of cave bacon. It also had Hancock’s signature pendants and large breakdown, but the really amazing thing was the flowstone shelf suspended four feet off the floor by the pendants. No one else may have noticed it, but I saw it form the outline of a viking ship with an unexplored passage beneath.

Our goal was to knock off the seven remaining leads. Instead on Saturday we surveyed 310 feet (cave length now 2.39 miles with 56 loops–38th longest in Virginia), knocked off three leads, and created two more. Too bad I couldn’t have kept Mark and Melanie in there all night long.

On Sunday I joined Dave Duguid’s survey trip to Rowland Springs Cave. We surveyed a lot of footage through fins and formations but never seemed to get far from the big room where we started. There I discovered that my new frog system falls into the class of “sit-stand-bang your shoulder-repeat” single rope techniques.

Friday morning was mighty damp. As I helped Philly Grotto set up for the 2007 VAR/MAR, the sky sprinkled every hour or so. I looked down at the cave description for the survey trip I was planning to lead to Middle of Nowhere Cave, and I added the phrase “may be damp” to the entrance description.
At 10 PM the signup sheets went out, and people hurriedly scribbled their names beside the trips they wanted. At least three people came over to me at Registration to announce that no one had signed up for my trip yet. By the morning, I couldn’t even find one of my sketchers and we were down to the two leaders. Cancel the trip.
I myself then signed up for Barry Horner’s trip to Alpena Cave. We had a blast with just six people making the through trip. Barry had dug open the back entrance, surveyed the cave, and used chemical persuasion to make the connection large enough for humans. Therefore, our trip included full descriptions of the exploration of the 2001 connection all the way through.
As for the character of the cave, I was a little reluctant about my ability to make the through trip because the description read that a 44-inch chest size was the limit, but Barry convinced me I’d fit. As it was, I don’t really know where the tightest spot was because I never had any difficulty with a squeeze.
We entered by climbing down the breakdown in the sinkhole entrance and then spent most of the time following a downstream passage. The ceilings were often high, and we crossed over and through very little breakdown. The most fun part was descending the cascading stream as it plunged from one pool to the next.
The least fun came when the ceiling dropped down near the stream. We laid down in an inch or two of water and scooted along. The scooting was easy, but the wait for the people in front of me made my legs cramp a bit. Fortunately the stream was low enough to avoid the passage becoming an ear dip, but unfortunately the stream belly crawl was about fifty feet long. Still a lot of fun because it didn’t get tight until I was near the end and could see people standing in front of me.
We popped out of that hole and headed straight for the entrance. After putting on dry clothes, we spent some time bouldering around Bear Heaven before heading back to the TRA site. The Lions Club dinner and dessert were tremendous (not to mention the sheet cakes), the presentations by Doug Medville and the Japanese Exploration Team were fun (with some great photos by the Japanese), and Ericka’s superb performance with the live bluegrass band astonished everyone. Overall a great VAR/MAR with good, cool weather in the end. Happy 60th Anniversary to Philly Grotto.

It had been almost a year since having been to Grand Caverns; this time was to be a new experience. I took my two oldest boys with me; I had promised a caving adventure and some camping since spring. Our family trip to West Virginia during the summer months didn’t produce any caving opportunities and for camping, it’s just been far to hot.

Even though the typical format for the caving weekend is to arrive Friday night, we left Saturday morning; insuring we had avoided a front that produced a significant amount of rain throughout the entire region. We entered the park around 2pm and found no one around; there was only one camp set up. The ranger indicated that Carol had retrieved the key to Fountain cave. The ranger provided some additional detail to the lightening strike on Grand Caverns and the damage done; Carol mentioned in an earlier email that we wouldn’t be in Grand Caverns this weekend.

Concluding someone must be in Fountain, we geared up and hiked the hill. We found no sign of anyone at Fountain; the gate was locked and no key was sitting on the ledge. Not having a clue where anyone was at, we hike the remaining hillside to Jefferson Cave and then continued to the top. We wandered around the hilltop before returning back to Fountain; still no one. We then hiked over to Madison cave on an off chance the group was working a different cave today.

We returned to the park and goofed around until dinnertime. We ate at the Wood Fired Oven, Pizza of course. Returning back to the park no one had arrived; again we goofed around in the baseball field until bedtime. The kids tried their best at ghost stories amongst all the laughing until lights out.

In the morning we met up with the other campers, three. The group ridge walked a piece of property Saturday; the effort yielded no new cave. We ate a good breakfast and got Scott on the phone; he was interested in taking one of his kids into Fountain. A small group entered into Fountain cave. The kids enjoyed fountain and wanted to explore all passages; Dawson was sure he’d found a new part of the cave and wanted to map it. Next time I go into Fountain with the kids I need to bring a stronger light; I think the cave would have been much more interesting if the lighting was better.

Scott mentioned he had the key to Madison and we could go over there quickly. Dawson immediately remembered an earlier discussion revolving around George Washington’s signature. He was overjoyed knowing he would get an opportunity to see the signature. Madison is a much smaller cave; we found Washington’s signature surrounded by a slew of others. The three boys enjoyed reading the various signatures and wanted to leave their own; I don’t think they fully understood why that was no longer the proper cave etiquette.

Thanking Scott, we headed down to Crozet Tunnel. Crozet Tunnel was built in 1858; it was the first tunneling effort in the US where teams dug from both sides and met in the middle. A significant engineering accomplishment considering the year accomplished and that the effort yielded only a few feet of error. The tunnel is no longer used; there is a larger tunnel beside it for today’s larger trains.

Dawson and Dylan enjoy trains; yes we have a large collection of “Thomas” paraphernalia. Due to time constraints we didn’t bring lights; we would just hike to the tunnel and go in just a little bit. The boys thought it was cool; even though they were hoping a train would come through the parallel tunnel. No luck. Not hiking through left the opportunity for a future trip.

We had had a wonderfully productive survey trip last December in Hancock Cave, but then the rains and snow melt kept us from passing through the Funnel Tunnel for many months. On August 11, Dave Duguid and Will Summer joined me for another survey trip into Hancock Cave. This time we meant business. I knew that when Dave vigorously started widening the Funnel Tunnel to a size that allowed Will and me through (Tanya loaned us a great shovel).

I was really impressed that Dave and Will had their readings agree right from the start. There was a little bit of grumbling when I suggested they always choose passages to the right (because it was more likely to lead away from known cave), but they went along. The first right passage turned into a decorated stoopway but widened out before it joined in with a walking passage.

The end of the walking passage found us in several short domes, including the highest point beyond the Funnel Tunnel (almost 33 feet above the cave entrance). After surveying the domes, Dave discovered a survey marker we left in the 1990s. When I pulled out all of my notes, I realized that we had discovered the back way into the famed Noogah, closing a really big loop.

There were several leads in the Noogah area that we knocked off the map from there. One involved a climb up to a mouse nest with six mice surprised be Dave’s visit. Another low lead was too small for me, but Dave pushed his body through and sketched the room. We looped up and down to close some other loops in that area. The remaining lead in the Noogah area involves a high step-across onto an iffy rock, and we chose to save that one for a fresher start.

Instead we went back near the beginning of our survey that day and surveyed down a long water-sculpted passage with at least one shot over forty feet long. Dave and Will liked these long shots, so I next to them to the other side of the main passage to mop up the dry stream leads. It was easy surveying for Will, but Dave was the one who had to drag tape from one station to the next. Will and I just walked around in the main passage.

Nearest the Funnel Tunnel the stream passage got extremely low. Dave couldn’t even drag his body along the cobble after a certain point. Fortunately we could visually connect the stations from both sides, so I’ll be able to sketch that to the final map.

It was late when we got out, so we were stuck with the Pizza Hut. One would think that the only customers in the restaurant could’ve been fed in less than 50 minutes, but the staff seemed to be in no hurry. Around 12:30 AM, we bedded down at Tanya’s.

Dave, Will, and I managed to survey 760 feet of passage on that trip with more than fifty shots. Everyone knows that Hancock Cave is the longest surveyed cave in Smyth County, Virginia. The surveyed passage is now up to 2.33 miles in length (depth of 170.5 feet) for the survey we began in December 1996. This length means that Hancock is now longer than Patton Cave (2.040 mi), Buchanan Saltpeter Cave (2.060 mi), Clover Hollow (2.103), Cave of the Winds (2.147 mi), Cave Mountain Cave (2.200 mi), Kennamer (2.326 mi), and Sinnett-Thorn Mountain Cave (2.329 mi). It’s approaching the lengths of Trout, Fletcher, Ape, and Low Moor Caves, but there are only about seven leads left to explore this fall.

Anxious to continue sketching Rowland’s, Ken and I stuck a familiar deal. I would help him in Hancock if he helped me in Rowland’s. A date was selected; we set out to find others to assist; Will helped us on Saturday and Tanya and Robbie on Sunday.

Hancock

After a home cooked breakfast, thanks to Ken, we set out for Hancock. Ken had a plan already in place; the leads he was interested in were past the funnel tunnel. The funnel tunnel can only be passed when there hasn’t been, nor will there be, rain. Obvious to most all, the southeast is under near drought conditions.

Even though Hancock is currently over two miles in length, getting to our initial lead did not take long. The lead took us generally north and not into anything very tight. The lead eventually took us into a room that had been surveyed to via another direction; closing off another lead on Ken’s list.

While in the general area Ken had a few other leads. One high lead led into a formation choke; through the formations gray field mice could be seen milling around. One of the leads seemed very promising but in the end looped back to the room we had surveyed to earlier. There was one high lead, with a deep crag below, that I opted out of; it might be more appealing as the first lead on fresh legs.

Ken had one more lead to survey, a low stream passage; and the correct motivation, another home-prepared breakfast if we could break 750ft of surveyed passage. With 50ft to go, who could resist! I pushed in, however low meant really low. While lying on the bed of mud-glued coble stone, trying to dig it up, I simply called it quits. We surveyed what we could; fortunately it amounted to more than 50ft.

We exited the cave around 10:15 to a hot, humid, sound invested night. Receiving very low service at Pizza Hut landed us back at Tanya’s around 12:30. Keeping to his word, Ken made breakfast the following morning.

Rowland Spring

Pulling up to the owner’s house we were rewarded with a bit of information. On the last trip we found a signature in the cave; asking the owner if he knew any of the names, a gentleman standing next to him confessed to being one of the guilty party. The individual provided details of using a rope and climbing hand over hand through the known pit; all the wild speculation of how the signature got there came crashing to an end.

Rowland’s is not a large cave at this point, however to get back to the survey area takes some time. There’s a series of climbs and of course a pit to drop. There was no water in the stream and the mud exceptionally sticky.

The start of the survey immediately put us into a large room, which we never surveyed out of. I don’t think we surveyed but thirty percent of the room. The room is very impressive; it is difficult to define where the walls are, our lights where not bright enough to penetrate to the opposite side. The room has very large blocks of breakdown making traversing the room quite interesting.

The survey tally for the day was 416ft; the remainder of the room waits to be surveyed and any leads off of the room.

I left my office around 4 PM on Friday afternoon. I enjoyed an easy drive past and through Boone out to Blountville, Tennessee. I expected to meet Zoey and the Girl Scouts at their camp at the commercial Appalachian Caverns. However, no one was in camp when I arrived. I did notice two people in coveralls up by the cave entrance, so I went up to talk to them. They were the trip leaders for the Girl Scout wild cave trip that hadn’t left yet (it was almost 9 PM).

I threw on my coveralls and joined Wes and Tanya and walked in to meet the scouts. Wes and Tanya had a lot of experience making wild cave tours as sporting as one might hope. They began by pushing the willing through a side loop that finished with a tight squeeze. They claimed that it was 7-1/2 inches at the tight spot, but I’m guessing it was more like 8-1/2 inches (since I fit). Wes had the girls crawling through the sides of walking passages, and they didn’t care that I kept meeting them as they exited the squirmy crawls. He even poured water from his bottle to make a sliding board that he had to pull the girls down. Near the end of the trip that evening, we found a mud puppy (a creature I never see in Virginia caves). We exited the cave around 11:30 PM Friday evening.

Everyone was awoken Saturday morning at 6:30 AM to begin the next day. This Girl Scout trip was being set up as a 5-day-long caving camp, so there were lots of things to learn. Teaching the drowsy scouts about cave maps at 8 AM was not my shining moment; the early hour really prevented them from showing much interest.

A local caver named Jared and I followed Zoey’s car out of the campground to head toward the cave (about an hour later than expected). However, the van full of scouts took about fifteen minutes more before they joined us at a nearby intersection. We then headed to Renfro Cave where we were allowed to split into two groups. The old saltpeter cave is marked by pinnacles exposed by the mining, and the girls in my group had a good time clambering around and testing their climbing skills. We headed back to the room nearest the entrance, and I passed out map outlines of the cave and keys to NSS map symbols. The object was for the girls to figure out where they were on the map and then fill in the map’s blank spaces. Blank stares. I think they later appreciated that sketching a good map isn’t easy.

We had an extra half hour to go explore, so I led my group to a dead end. They then took us high up in the cave where I spotted the alternate entrance. We were all too big to exit that way, so we returned to the vans a little bit later than the other group. The van took off for lunch, and then we headed to the same park to meet them. Unfortunately the park had multiple parking areas, so we ended up in different places. This led to a late arrival at Morrill’s (Worley’s) Cave.

I think we managed to enter Morrill’s Cave around 4:30 PM. We stayed in one long line as we trampled along the trunk passage. My group stopped about a half mile in with buckets and scrub brushes. The girls learned how to clear graffiti from the cave walls in their conservation efforts, and they were dedicated workers while we waited for the other group to return. The other group did not return. My group headed after them down the Railroad Passage, and I gave some advice to would-be cave photographers as we passed some pretty formations and deep rimstone dams. Everyone was back to the parking area by 7 PM, except the van driver and van. After a few wrong turns on the way to dinner with girl scouts, I skipped out and headed up to Virginia for Sunday caving with other TriTrogs.

After a good night’s sleep, Dave Duguid, Diana Gietl, and Tanya McLaughlin took me back to the upper entrance of Rowland Springs Cave on Sunday morning. A warm breeze blew into this entrance, so no one got cold when we weren’t moving. Dave improved his earlier survey notes, Diana balanced her tripod and camera on dolomitic flowstone, Tanya learned how to pose, and I cursed at blue flash bulbs. While we didn’t do any entranceway shots, I think that Diana managed some nice formation photos (based on her 1-1/2 display screen).

We exited after several hours and then regrouped at the lower entrance of Rowland Springs Cave. The cold wind was roaring out this entrance, and I could see my breath plummet down the hillside. This was new cave to me. We climbed down to the stream level and then back up a cable ladder into a huge room. Dave and I discussed how to sketch the room, and then he began a massive cross section to capture the immensity of this relatively short cave. Meanwhile Diana rigged Dave’s new rope to drop a 30-foot pit.

After Diana discovered passage at the bottom, Dave, Diana, and I surveyed down the pit, with me in the middle setting station. While hanging on rope, I measured 95 degrees for the azimuth down to Diana, and her reading was 30 degrees off from mine. What a way to start a survey! However, the fact that both our clinometers read 85 degrees vertical drop meant that the trig works out to less than a foot in error. With me hanging on rope and Diana sliding down a slope with nearly vertical measures on a compass, that was the best pair of readings Dave could get from us.

The three of us found an active stream passage at the bottom of the pit, and a few high leads would’ve taken us back up to other levels. We continued surveying away from the known cave passage, and the stream eventually gurgled into a small hole in the wall. The stream-level passage ended shortly thereafter in mud plugs, so we headed uphill. It was nice to leave the wet stream, but a cool breeze took over at the higher level. Diana took us up a dry slope until we arrived at some incredible formations. Delicate white rimstone dams and thick draperies were much prettier than anything else I had seen all weekend.

We stopped surveying at big borehole-like passage, with promises of lots more formations for the next survey team. Unfortunately my time lying in the stream and the prospect of driving back to the Triangle that evening made us turn around at that point. The next sets of surveyors have a lot to look forward to. We also did pretty well with our survey, eighteen stations covering about 275 feet in under four hours. Overall, I sure can’t complain about a regular weekend with five cave trips.

Some may consider Durbin, WV to be in the middle of nowhere, but fans of the Green Bank Observatory, old-fashioned railroads, and caving know better. I showed up Friday night after registration closed, during the party where Smiling Bob Gray and his wife were spinning the tunes. It was incredibly cold, and I lost one leg of my convertible pants, the only long pants I had brought along. The folks I knew at VAR were mostly already signed up for trips and weren’t planning pickup trips of their own. I didn’t think my options were looking very good unless I wanted to join Dwight Livingston on a Cassell Cave through trip.

However, I was pleased to find a cancellation on a horizontal trip with Doug Medville with possible surveying or ridgewalking. Score! On top of that, it was only a few minutes drive away. A drive up a forest road until the cars could penetrate no further and then a 1.5-mile hike. Normally that long a hike in caving gear would be unpleasant, but the cold temperatures and heavy clouds made the suit quite comfortable. The hike along the forest road was filled with foot-deep mud puddles that the ten of us avoided whenever possible.

I was hiking at the front with Doug when we neared where he thought the cave might be. His only trip into the cave had been in 1973, and the surface drainage had changed a bit since then. He knew that a pit was nearby but didn’t know if it went anywhere, so Van carried along a cable ladder. We found the pit easily, and I free climbed down without any problems. At the bottom the echoing lead with water beyond it was too small for me to fit into. I spotted a shorter person down the climb, but it was too small for her as well.

Just up the stream from there, Doug remembered the cave we were headed for. Unfortunately it seemed to terminate after about 20 feet. Maybe he was wrong. In any case, the hillside hadn’t been well ridgewalked, so we had lots of opportunities to find the cave. Doug found another entrance just below a pair of springs. I dropped down into it, saw a lot of water dripping from the stream above followed by a 9.5-inch high crawl. We elected to save this lead for the hike out.

We ridgewalked for another hour or two, finding lots of springs but no reasonably sized caves. Five of the party had headed back to the cars, not that Cheryl Suitor had a key to get her clean stuff from my car. Back at the wet tight lead, two folks explored it while I dug at one of the nearby springs. As it turns out, they found the place we were aiming for: Middle of Nowhere Cave. It was fun naming the other FROs we discovered along the way: East Edge of Nowhere, Going Nowhere Fast, etc. We chose not to survey that afternoon since half of the party had already departed. Everyone liked the idea of going back at OTR or Fall VAR when it’s drier. Maybe Lisa should add that cave to her trip list for the Fall VAR.

When we returned to camp early in the afternoon, Ericka Hoffmann and I wandered through Durbin with her camera shooting some interesting black-and-white shots of the railcars and store fronts. I put on one leg of the convertible pants and explained to the Baltimore folks that it seemed that the best way to find the other leg was to advertise the missing one. Fifteen minutes later someone returned my missing leg. I now have my own Cinderella story.

I got even luckier later that evening. Gordon Birkheimer set up a poster showing twenty different cave entrances, and the goal was to name as many as you could. I teamed up with Ericka, and we nailed ten of them. That was enough to tie Craig Hindman and Carol Tiderman, and a coin toss won us a T-shirt, some stickers, and the title.

Diana and I left Durham around 2:30 on Saturday amidst one of the more beautiful sunny days we’ve had in some time; the weekend was to be so nice there was a brief right side / left side struggle in my brain. Perhaps the weekend would be better spent outside than underground. But the desire to connect the two entrances prevailed, even if we had to connect the two by a surface survey.

Getting into Marion around suppertime was a pleasant variation to most trips. It was nice to enjoy a relaxing dinner and conversation with Tanya, and still get to sleep before 11pm. I even got a chance to walk Tanya’s dog, Daisy, that evening before the sunset. Our start was a bit slow on Sunday, but after breakfast we rolled out toward Rowland Spring.

The plan was to continue to survey in the upper entrance. There were two leads to complete before trying to figure out how to navigate into the lower section. And, of course, to leave ample time to perform an overland survey should it be necessary.

We started the survey off of station C20 that lead us generally west for a few shots before ending. We proceeded to the lead off of station C12, leading general southeast. There were several deep rim stone dams along this passage, and a formation choke that was blowing copious amounts of air; I would guess air from outside based on the location.

The second lead brought us back to the hole in the floor that leads to the lower section. Since Diana and I brought our vertical gear we decided it would be better to drop the vertical section and determine the best route to safely get all cavers to the lower level.

As Diana prepared to drop the pit, the airflow passing though was clearly evident by Diana’s carbide flame curling in the direction of the pit regardless of which way she faced. The pit ended up being much deeper than expected, 48ft to be exact. I was going to drop the pit and help her look for the lower entrance climb; but she found the station left from survey B quickly. We opted to pass Diana the cable ladder and rig the other side. Tanya and myself cleaned up our gear and left for the lower entrance.

Upon getting to the climb, there awaited the cable ladder. Soon we were all in an enormous room. From this room we were able to detect the sound of the stream on the northwest side of the room. While taking a break; I checked out a possible lead to the north of the room and found continuing passage, and a dead possum.

Getting back to the survey, we had the task of trying to sketch the room. We started with the south end since it appears to have no going leads. It wasn’t long though before the continuous airflow in this room chilled us to the bone. We opted to connect the two entrances and call it a day.

We surveyed 292ft of passage, with only one set of instruments…that is another story. The surveyed passage is now over 1000ft and has a vertical drop of 116ft. The most significant statistic though, there is more cave to be surveyed!