05.06.2008

050508 Needles US
During the morning we drove the Needles Highway in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

In the evening, we hooked up with NPS Ranger Jason Walz to survey in Wind Cave.
Wind Cave National Park
Chris sets a survey station in Wind Cave.

Western Wonderland Roadtrip

Wednesday we had a survey trip planned in Wind Cave — the other National Park Service-owned cave in the Black Hills. This time Park Ranger Jason Walz, who is originally from North Carolina, would be leading us through this tiny-passaged, third longest cave in the United States. Wind is most famous for it’s amazing boxwork that is everywhere. US Park Service online trip report reads – “Jason Walz, Nikki Fox, & Chris Coates 5/6/08
Jason led an evening survey trip to the NWT survey along the north edge of the Historic Section. They surveyed 219 feet for the evening and left some leads for a future trip.

We arrived in the afternoon ready to help resurvey a passage that hadn’t been visited since it’s original survey in the 1980s. We had been warned that this cave had a lot more crawling and was more like swiss cheese with the 127 miles of cave in multiple levels all sandwiched on top of each other. Wind was rather dry and sandy in the part we went to. The boxwork ranged from paper thin to half-inch in thickness. In one section, we saw popcorn growing on the ends of the boxwork. Apparently, regular formations we see here in the east, like flowstone, stalagmites, columns, drapery, soda straws, etc., are very rare in Wind due to the lack of water in the caves. Jason took us by one of the highly-decorated rooms in the cave, which had water and white flowstone. Not very impressive for us, just regular cave speleothems, but pretty none the less.

An odd difference from eastern versus westerns cavers is attire. Jewel is 49 degrees and Wind is 53 degrees. The standard cave garb of choice for both caves is BDU bottoms and a short-sleeve synthetic top with a poly pro top in your pack. To me this seems to be very underdressed. What would happen if someone was injured? The person would be hypothermic in a short amount of time. We were warned by many people not to wear our cave suits because we would be too hot. This was not the case for me. I wore my coveralls all three days underground and actually got cold each time because I wore less clothes underneath the suit then I normally would wear!

Also, the Park Service has a rule about how cavers wear their cave packs. No backpacks allowed, only side packs can be worn. I can see how this is needed in Wind cave with delicate boxwork covering everything. In Jewel it simply was a hassle.

Wind Cave National Park

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