01.10.2009

Shovel Eater Cave
Another work weekend in Shoveleater Cave. This awesome antler formation was found at past the LAZ survey.

This is me in the tight passage. Unfortunately, we forgot to pack our survey tape, so we did not get any work done!
Shovel Eater Cave
Shovel Eater Trip Report
January 12, 2009
LAZ Non-Survey
by Nikki Fox,
Trip participants: Chris Coates and Nikki Fox

Chris Coates and I entered the cave a little after 10 a.m., Saturday. We decided to go the old route into Hell Hole Hall, avoiding the Ohio Bypass and its water. We knew we were going to be in a tight space while continuing the LAZ survey, which Chris and Dwight made in November, and wanted to avoid being wet at all costs.

Our plan was to continue the LAZ survey where it opened up into a room. Chris found this decent-sized room last November. From what I’m told, Dwight and Chris pushed the canyon after the last station until Dwight could no longer fit due to the formations. Chris continued for about a half an hour on his own until he found the passage to dump into a room.

After entering HHH Chris and I meet up with Dwight and then headed towards HHA11 to drop down into the slot canyon at KNC4 heading downstream to the LAZ survey. Dwight seems to think this is can be called the Upper Rushin’ Rift? (LAZ report from November 2008). We made it back to LAZ 14, where a large breakdown rock choked the passage and proceeded to unpack our survey gear only to find we had forgot our tape! I was upset since I really wanted to take a stab at sketching.

We decided to rectify our forgetting ways and push the passage back to the room to check out all the leads while taking photos to document all the pristine formations along the way. We knew if anyone else larger than either of us were to try to make the journey the gentile helictites, stalactites, columns, frost and soda straws would be destroyed. (I would upload the photos from the trip if the GVKS website would let me.)

An interesting note: we found many of the formations to have an amber tint to them. Soda straws had amber tips on them and on rare occasions the entire straw would be a translucent amber. There were several “antlers” in the passages on all the levels of the slot canyon. I call these huge, thick and massive helictite formations antlers.

Once we dropped into the room we ate lunch and proceeded to check every lead in the room. Below the a waterfall there was a small pool of water that drained further down into the floor too small for people to follow. There were two places to drop down below the floor into the same type of canyon passage as we took to get into the room, only smaller. It looks like a continuation of the same passage we came from, following the water downstream, deeper into the cave. We pushed one of the two slots the farthest we could on all levels and could not get past a certain point due to our bigness. I left a note at this small-person lead.

It was also in this passage that we had rocks fall on our heads from above. Apparently Bob and Aaron were above us near the HHA7 station and kicked a rock down the slot. We heard their voices and were able to tell them where we were. They decided to join us.

The Numbers:
Survey: LAZ (well, sort of)
Leads Found: 1

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