This past few weeks, me and one of my friends began planning this excursion. It didn't take too long to figure out gear situations, vehicles, and times. We invited one of our other friends and his father who is and experienced caver. We left at 3:15 pm, and four-wheeled up to the cave entrance. We arrived at around 4:30 and put all our gear on. We were expecting mud, wore our coveralls.
The opening to the cave is smaller, and doesn't look like much. As we entered, straight ahead of us, there was a 30 ft. drop. Off to the left, there was an easier way down. We used a hand line and climbed down quite easily. At the bottom, the room was about 25 ft. across in both directions and about 35-40 ft. high. The second drop was about 50-60 ft. We rigged our rope and began the second descent.
The chamber at the bottom was about 30 ft. across and 50 ft. long. Both ends narrowed off into fissures. The upper passage wound upward and was a tight squeeze then a room etcetera kind of cave. In all, it had 5 rooms and 4 crawls/squeezes in-between each room.
The formations in the upper rooms were not the best or that colorful, but still impressive. You can feel the cave growing.The cave is relatively young and still being formed. Most of the rock was limestone. This cave is a summer or early winter cave. In the spring, water fills up most of the cave. There are few formations down low because of the water.
By the time we were done exploring the upper passage and had returned to the main room, it was about 6:30. We had taken off our harnesses earlier so they wouldn't get dirty as we were crawling around. We knew there was a second drop on the lower passage, so we packed our rope and harnesses into river bags and began our crawling through the lower passage.
From reports we had read, the lower passage didn't go too far back, but within the past couple of years, the silt level had lowered so we were able to crawl through. The first crawl was about 30-40 yards long, and at the narrowest point, no more then 20 inches high. Once past that tight squeeze, the cave opened up a bit, and was about a 3 ft. high room. on the far side of that, there was a third drop of about 30 ft.
We had brought drilling gear, but were able to natural anchor our rope. After changing into our harnesses in a small room off to the left of the third drop, we all went over. There was a fourth drop that we estimated to be about 50 ft., but the time was about 8:30. We decided to save the fourth drop for another trip, because our set return time was 10:30.
We began our way out of the cave, and by the time we were all to the main room below the second drop, it was 9:30.
We were out of the cave and loaded up on the four wheelers by 10:15. By the time we got back to our starting point it was 11:15, so we made a few calls notifying everyone that we were O.K. and just running behind schedule. By the time I was home, my gear was sorted and cleaned, and I was in bed, it was 12:30. What an adventure! This cave is not too popular and not even mapped. On our return trip, we hope to get down the fourth drop and do a bit of cave mapping.
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