05.08.2010

Memorial Day Cave
A rare photo of me . . . here I am sketching the passage during a survey trip with only Chris and I in MDC. We got 301 feet of crawling and stooping passage with LAA (Left Along Again) survey with 11 stations on a 15-hour trip.

Memorial Day Cave Trip Report
by Nikki Fox
 
Chris Coates and I meet the crew for breakfast Saturday morning at the Gateway for a hearty meal before heading underground. Our plan was to continue the survey on the other side of Harman’s Dig at the western end of Columbia Canyon. Our venture was almost cut short, however. When driving up to the cave, a gate was over the road next to the quarantine notice. We went back to the fieldhouse to see what the protocol was for such a closing of the area. Miles had us take him to the Ruddle’s to see was happening. It turned out they had the cows out in the fields around the chicken houses and had the gate down to keep them in. So we parked and got underground around around 10 a.m., without too much delay.

We made it all the way up to where we left off at FIS7 station in 3 hours. We brought 200 feet of 3/8 inch New England rope with us to dedicate to the area for the small pit we found the month earlier. We left it in some of the “larger” passage in the FIS survey.

Upon reaching the small room with several leads, we decided to check out the passage that went straight, which was along the same level. It was crawling for a while and the passage gradually became smaller. Eventually it branched into a Y with both leads being very small. The left one was too small for a person. The right one was slightly bigger, which was a passage fit for very tiny people, with air flow coming out of it. We did not survey this passage and decided to check out the high lead, which was back in the small room. This went to a beautifully decorated crawling passage with a couple of holes in the floor that looked down into the small room. So we decided to take photos and survey it with the LAA (Left Along Again) survey. (A joke Chris & I have going since last month Dave Riggs was going to come with us, but left word with the waitress at the Gateway Restaurant that he wasn’t going to be joining us. And this month Tim Bilezikian was originally going to come with us for a third person, and then decided not to that morning.)

Again, this passage was coated in a thick, sticky mud and was mostly crawling with a few places to sit or stand up. One of the highlights of this passage was the discovery of animal tracks! We think the critter was a rat. In the passage we surveyed, there was a small pool of water with sunken tracks and scratch marks of the rat, probably struggling getting a drink of water. Also in this area were straight lines with really small tracks. I think these were from a salamander. We made sure to get photos of the area before we trampled the area with out footprints. (See below.)

We stopped surveying when the passage started getting smaller and the floor more rocky. I could feel my knees becoming like raw hamburger. We headed back to the small room where we started the survey and decided to check out the last unknown lead before heading out. There were two small holes in the floor that headed west. Upon crawling down, you were meet with beautiful formations and soda straws. It ended after about 10 feet of crawling to a crack in the floor and another small pit. This one looks a lot more promising than the one we found last month!

Another exciting find was a slot in the floor of a section that was between LAA5 and LAA6. We tossed in several small rocks to see how far down it went. We heard the rocks bouncing off the walls on average for 12 seconds. A possible way to the other side of CC?

The air flow of the whole area was more than last month. We got 11 stations and 301 feet of survey. The passage trended northwest. We will be back for more in June, hopefully equipped with better knee pads!

Memorial Day Cave

Memorial Day Cave

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