Chris looks down from an upper level during a project trip into Memorial Day Cave.

Memorial Day Cave Trip Report
by Chris Coates

Nikki Fox and I continued our dig/survey at the western end of Columbia Canyon off of John Harman’s dig/bolt climb. We surveyed 8 stations and gained about 235 feet of new passage in the FIS (see below) Survey.

The entire area is an extremely slimy muddy passage. We surveyed though the snug, sticky crawl. We didn’t notice any air flow until we where in the middle of the small crawl, where you could feel a cool breeze going by you. Once through, we surveyed until we reached the first intersection. We decided to bear left, where I went last time, which was the bigger of the two ways to go. 

The passage got bigger, with walking and stooping. We made our way to a very small, highly decorated room that had several small crawling leads on multiple levels. The main passage continued straight ahead and went back to a crawl. At this point, there were several pretty formations decorating the area with only slight amounts of air movement, which was blowing out of the dig. Overwhelmed with all the crawling leads, we couldn’t decide which way to go, so decided to go back to the first intersection and survey the right-hand passage.

Once there, we made one shot to a tight hole in the passage. Once I went thought it, I was hanging over at a pit. The sides of the pit are fairly smooth and has no mud on it, unlike everything else in the crawling passage. You cannot see the bottom while looking into the man-sized pit without possibly falling into it. We could not tell from the top if there was any passage that connected to a lower level or passage. We didn’t have any rope with us so we decided to head out and come back next month with some rope.

The beginning of the super-tight entrance crawl we dug out. Yeah, it’s tight . . . for 60 feet.