Memorial Day Cave Trip Report
by Nikki Fox

On Saturday Chris Coates and I met people for breakfast at the Gateway. We had plans to enter MDC, which was to be my first trip into the cave, to work on “Harman’s Dig” at the west end of Columbia Canyon. This was to be a day trip.
 
We drove up the driveway, which was cleared of snow. Chris had to shovel out a spot to park off to the side of the road near the normal MDC parking area. We walked through the knee-high snow to the entrance and got underground around 10 a.m.

We spent the next few hours getting to Columbia Canyon and finding our way to Harman’s bolt climb. We found the last station at HBD3, which was taped on the upper lip of the tight passage.

There was a little air blowing out of the passage, which was moving the flagging tape, but it was not much. The passage appeared to be about 3 to 4 feet wide and varying 6 to 8 inches tall. It looked to be around 30 feet long before it went around a corner.

The floor was made of a thin layer of rotten rock (approx. 1.5 inches) over a really sticky mud. We made the first seven feet nice and comfortable so Chris could lay on his side and continue digging. After that, we were able to pry up and break the top layer, pushing it to the side. This allowed Chris to just barely squeeze through with the sticky mud acting like Velcro on his suit. 

Chris spent the rest of the time digging alone with his helmet off and accomplished several feet of digging until the passage opened up into a roomy 8 inches for roughly 15 more feet. The passage went to a little room followed by another belly crawl, which was a spacious 9-10 inches high. 

Next the passage enlarged to about 3 to 4 feet tall where it came to a Y intersection. Chris explored the left-hand passage and that turned into walking passage with several crawling leads off to the sides. Most everything was covered with a thin slimy mud. At this point he came back to see if I wanted to start surveying and he told me that we probably would not be able to easily finish that evening. We then called it a day, had some dinner and headed back to the surface. It was an uneventful trip out. We dropped off the waver at Greer’s office and our borrowed tools (thanks Mark & Vonney) back at the field house.
 
I suspect that anyone who is larger than us, wishing to do the crawl, will have to enlarge the passage a little more. We plan on going back next month to do the survey and push the new passage.

Hooray, a good lead for a change!

Here Chris is not happy that I wanted to document his muddy face.