Immediately following is the log for the 2009 digging season.  After this year's log, we return to the original that started back in 1996.

September 26--This is a summary of 4 weeks of digging.  Thursdays, Fridays afternoons and Saturdays and Sundays.  Greg and Dan have been very dependable help.  Charlie has been there every weekend and is doing a fine job of recording progress on video.  Rich Beyer came over from Ruch to help with cement work.  Suzanne O. has helped dig.  JD has been here too.  

For a good dig four people work best.  One digging , one at the 30' level switching the hook as the rope is pulled back down to lift the bucket the last 30', one to haul the bucket out of the hole, and one to empty it over the side.

The whole operation of using the jin-pole to pull up the buckets becomes a dance where three, four, or five bodies are all synchronized down to every step, push, pull, or duck with one purpose in mind: to get a bucket of dirt out of the shaft to be emptied, and an empty one back down the shaft to be filled--as fast as possible!  I like Milan's attitude, "I figured out how to shave ten seconds off each turn."  Now when this old man was pulling, I was thinking, "How do I add ten seconds without JD putting more dirt in the bucket?"  It takes a couple hours of working before anyone new to the system figures it out, but, O what joy when you're at the top pulling and you feel everybody else working together, communicating through the rope and timely yells, and the buckets keep coming one by one!  Fifty to sixty buckets is a GOOD day.  One day we got over 100 buckets!  Those buckets were a bit lighter and we got a fresh infusion of energy near the end of the day when a fresh digger, Suzanne, showed up, and we had one more puller.  

In the afternoons after work, I install shoring on the north wall, (the talc seam), with necessary cross-bracing.  The wall now extends over ten feet into the cave with deeper sections dug out in the floor.  The floor is now 2' below the original level of the cave chamber off the south wall.  The chamber floor had a couple feet of muds on it that were washed in during the slumping two seasons ago.  These muds were washed in around and through chunks of intrusive fallen from the ceiling.  This room has not been mapped and published yet, or even named.  Now, in its pristine condition, it is a visual display of the chemical and mechanical processes of cave dissolution.  One small area of the marble on a close casual inspection showed a maze of approximately 1" square boxworks, interlaced.  I see a need for some micro-photographs.  the marble is so white, that climbing on it should be done with protective coverings and clean clothes.  The state of construction at this point is not too conducive towards clean conditions.  

All the available culvert has been installed so the shaft is lived with steel up to the 30' level, from the bottom up.  Twenty bags of redi-mix concrete were packed in and construction has begun on a cement and rock collar around the culvert with a security gate cemented into the rock.  This will anchor the top of the culvert to the boulder pile at that 30' level, that forced the shaft westward.  The shoring has remained stable at this point for six or seven years at least.  It might be important here to note that the slump that occurred at the 60' level two years ago worked its way over winter up to the surface and manifested itself by subsidence inside the sinkhole on the east side of the shaft.  So that means, the movement of material into the cave, (make that "presumed cave"), from 60' down, up to the surface occurred totally outside the shaft, inside the sinkhole, seemingly along the eastern (up-creek), side of the shaft.  Digging below the 60' level has shown that this movement occurred along the intrusive-talc seam.  The airflow was a result of tapping into the loose rock that was on the undercut, hanging  intrusive dike wall of this seam.  Now the sinkhole was formed by an underground water source which was tapped into at the 20' level which worked its way down this seam.  The shaft below 30' is attached to bedrock on the south, west, and north sides.  The east side, below the boulder pile at the 30' level has always been muds, clays, and a few cobbles.  I don't know how much water enters the cave outside the shaft compared to inside.  I write this now, because by lining the shaft with steel culvert and cement and stone, all those rocks are hidden.  I want to note here also, since I'm thinking geological now, that the process of the sinkhole collapse seems to have been exacerbated by the dissolution of marble alongside the dikes and the subsequent weakening and collapse of the dikes.  remember the void in the adit between the marble south wall and the intrusive west wall.

More update from behind Oct 18--Very sad news.  Greg B. has died!! Died in his sleep Tuesday night.  He always liked to laugh, he liked to dig, and he couldn't help but praise and thank his Lord and Savior, although his health had kept him in pain for years.  He was a timber cruiser and spent his working life in forests inventorying plants and animals.  On our last dig, I took him for what must have been his last walk in the forest.  I showed him some old trails and deer trails I had been blearing around the dig, through some beautiful trees, and where forest floor was carpeted with vanilla leaf and Oregon grape.  Thank you Greg, for your positive attitude and for helping dig.

Yesterday, my son Aaron and his two boys, Isaac,15,  and Josiah, 7, helped on the dig.  Aaron filled the buckets.  Isaac switched.  I pulled and Josiah dumped.  Charlie showed up around noon when it started to rain.  he dug and Aaron pulled while Isaac switched and Josiah drug the buckets through the mud and emptied them over the bank.  I was hanging plastic, to try to keep the shaft a little drier, helping Josiah when he got behind, and worked on ditching and draining water away from the sink.  We also had to take all airing out of the shaft, clean and/or rewire everything and then hook it all back up.  But it's nice to have lighting at the bottom again--12 volt.

The 20 bags of cement were used to build a cement stone collar at the 30' level to cement in a security ate and anchor the culvert, building even a stone roof over the offset part, now lined with the steel culvert.  I built a foundation for the upper part of the shaft for another 20' of culvert to sit on, to maintain drainage of the underground water around the culvert and collar.  

i have been working hard at getting Elizabeth H and Suzanne O to help on some more technical levels.  I believe they have talents the project sorely needs.  They have both helped me a couple of times, digging.  Now digging I know, but what am I going to do with a whole virgin cave that needs inventoried, mapped, and more geologically defined?  My job at this point is to secure the upper part of the shaft with steel culvert which I don't have at this point.  Anyone out there able to help in that? 

 I packed another 15 bags of redi-mix and gathered up the biggest stone slabs i could find and move.  One about 2' x 3' 6", from a few hundred yards above the dig flip-flopped perfectly down the hill.  almost purely divine I think.  These and steel and cement and more stone will provide me with plenty to do until snowfall.

I'm on my way to go elk hunting so I went up and closed the shaft.  didn't want it to fill with snow!

End of update!

August 15-- This should have fireworks displayed right here.  Today was the 10th year anniversary of the discovery of air flow at the original dig of the CND, 1/2 mile from the Mistress Dig.  

We had a great dig today.  The old geezers, Charlie and David, working with my son, Nathan, just took more dirt out of the hole.  There were boulders broken up so the pieces could be used to construct a gate at the 30' level.  It was a day of jin-pole pulling, and lifting,  and bucket filling, and digging at talos that had washed into the cave some thousands of years previous or hundreds, or even recently, as witnessed by cedar chips I myself had made, was lifted back to the surface to dry in mountain air and sunlight once again.

    I knew that I was digging through the area that on Veteran's Day, 2007, Dan Sampsel and i had augered into: air space with blowing air, cave air.  What I found today would help me answer the question of where do I dig to follow that air and hopefully get back into the cave.  Now remember, I totally plugged up the air flow when I ran water into the bottom of the hole until the whole talus slope slumped down into--a void?  Now I'm digging out that slumped mud and finding the passages that the air was moving through that day.  From the angle and depth that the auger took-- finding air then hitting something solid-- it can eb seen that the air was in an area of much less vertical, almost horizontal cut back bedrock.  The space next to the ceiling remained clear.  This "ceilinged" space in the talus slope can be traced all around the south wall to the soon-to-be-inventoried, described, and mapped cave area discovered and blocked off since last summer.  That means that the air flow might not have been from down the East wall but from out of the cave room, (not even named), on the west end of the dig.  The dirt floor of the room was washed and slumped in there by me, sealing off the air flow that was coming through the rocky talus at the bottom of this dissolved-out room.  ("Her marble is as white as snow and scalloped as a melting glacier!" said Muddog #1. )  Probing at the base of the south and east walls seemed to indicate they were descending into the mud almost vertically, and more than likely, to  have always been choked with talus.  i dug with a post hole digger, a hole 10-12 feet deep below the collar, and probed with a bar another 2 to 3 feet.  i found lots of soft dirt down along a vertical wall of an intruded dioritic dike.  This wall is the other side of the dike that is the north wall of the cave room.  It is what prevented the cave room from filling up with talus.  

    Now I guess I need to add a discouraging note here,  if for no other reason than to make it clear that I'm not one of those totally, hopelessly lost acolytes of hope that will always believe the impossible and can never discern cold, naked reality.  It might be that the cave I'm digging into is totally plugged with sediment.  That in ages past, a stream flowing down here washed right into the cave and choked it full of sediment, leaving no air but a pocket or two.  Oh well, keep digging, or it might be that I will dig right down into the talus right beside the cave and never know it!  It might be that the passages are so tight and narrow or dangerous that entrance is impossible.  

    "What odds!  We are knights of the Grail, vowed to the riding!"  Uh, make that , "Vowed to the digging."  I'll never know unless I keep digging.  My only request for success is that nobody gets hurt.  Nor, the cave.  This project never did come with a diagram and instructions, just a hole in a rocky hillside going down, down, down.

    With Charlie and Nathan pulling and emptying buckets, and me digging and filling, we made a bit dent in the pile of talus and talc at the bottom of the shaft and came a lot closer to being down to the level of the gravel floor of the ("soon-to-be-published-) cave room.  The west wall is diorite intrusive and going straight down, even coming inward.  Either this hole is going to bottom out or go into something.  Martha did some videos and Sage came along, not too convinced that I knew what I was doing, or that it really needed done, but seemingly sympathetic to our passion.  Much appreciated sympathy for a project that only keeps going down with no end in sight.  I say, "Well excuse me for not having X-ray vision!"  The shovel may be slower and more clumsy, but that just increases the expectation and surprise.  

August 12-

Working by myself, I split back-filling  wedging the  wood around the culvert on the wet side.  I moved 10 buckets of dirt out of the bottom by filling 3 buckets with lifting ropes attached, climbing to the top of the culvert, the 30' level, and hauling the buckets up.  I got ten buckets out.  Hopefully more next time.

August 10-

Yes, we dug.  I dug and Charlie dumped and tamped.  All things went smoothly without a hitch. We lowered another section of culvert down the shaft, adjusted it, and started backfilling the wet side with cedar shoring.  Charlie took a few videos.

August 9-

No electronics.  Just the 12 volt light at the bottom, Charlie's video camera recording while Charlie dug and deepened, and I dumped and tamped and back-filled.  We brought the backfill level up to the top of the 3rd section of culvert and climbed out for lunch.  After lunch, we installed the fourth section of culvert, aligning it and putting the cedar back-filling on the wet side.  We quit for the day, ready for another dig.

    As of this writing on Saturday morning, another dig hasn't happened.  I did make three trips down the shaft yesterday, August 14th.  Mostly back-filling the void behind the shoring in the SE corner at the very bottom.  The mud here is very soft and wet, and it is very important to keep all voids behind the walls filled, as the shaft is built down,  to prevent slumping behind the walls.  SoI spent some time lying on my back in the mud at the bottom stuffing back-fill material up into the void.  What I am trying to do is to build a shaft down the keyhole.  I want to get into the cave without the whole sinkhole following me in, while allowing the water to enter as usual.  And I'm doing this without knowing what is underneath me.  I changed some cross-bracing on the west end and headed down the hill just as the big red ball of the sun was sinking through the blue smoke haze, sliding below the western mountain horizon.  Will we dig tomorrow?

August 8--

On the last Friday of July, I was able to sneak in a couple hours of work.  I knew Charlie would be helping the next day so I wanted the cross-bracing secured.  I cut the beams, started the generator and headed down.  Some things didn't go quite as planned, so to make a long story (actually at this point there are about six "stories" involved), short, after 3 more trips up and down the shaft- which isn't getting shorter at about 60 feet--the cross bracing was installed.  we were ready to dig deeper.  which Charlie and I did the next day.

July 20,  Tuesday--

With my wife, Martha standing by, I got a little work done this afternoon.  I started by lowering a 6' shoring plank down the shaft figuring JD had moved enough dirt to install it, which was true, but I needed something longer.  I'm shoring up the North wall with braces across to the south hanging wall.  I took the short one back to the top and lowered an 8 footer down.  The longer board was almost too long to jockey into position through the collar and I had to spend quite a bit of time moving dirt around to make it possible to get it into position, which eventually happened.  I was able to take the measurements of the cross bracing.  Boy, I need a couple more digs to happen, there's more dirt down there!  I dug out in the south-east corner hoping to get back to air under the ceiling, but although the mud was soft and hollow and I kept thinking I could feel fresh air, I could find no opening.  

  July 17, 2009----

                Well I guess I'll call this the "Old Geezer Dig."  We are talking Charlie and myself, JD and Don from the Eugene area, Rich from Ruch, and my neighbor Greg.  Every head tinged with time's frost.  Oh, by the way, I need to mention that on Tuesday, July 7th, I was interviewed at the Mistress dig by Paul fattig, a reporter for the Medford Tribune.  He ran a wonderful story on the Cave Next Door project in the following Sunday's edition.  Read the article on the home page.

So by the 17th I was ready to dig.  Let's find blowing air, boys!!

When we arrived a few informalities were disposed of and I gave a general orientation to those who were new on the scene: Shoring, backfill, jin-pole and its up and down use, use this knot, watch out for the jog at the 30' level, and please, don't drop anything down the shaft.

JD headed down below.  He removed the bolts while I rewired the #2 camera.  I had some wrong wires twisted together.  JD dropped through the collar after making sure the culvert was aligned between the tabs.  He found a bucket, a shovel and a bar, and with very little ado, figured out what being at the bottom meant.  I positioned myself at the top of the culvert to be backfilled and lifted the buckets when JD had them 1/2 full.  Rocks were positioned and clay stuffed and tamped.  I did that because I knew there would be settling.  This material was placed on the west, dry, side of the shaft.  While on the east, wet, side I was positioning the cedar bark shoring i was using to provide drainage and maintain the original hydro-dynamics of the sink-hole as much as possible.    I was planning on getting into the cave the same way all the water and sink-hole debris were going into the cave.  It didn't make sense that things would work out if I denied them their natural right at the expense of mine.  Their method was gravity while mine was paltry pride.  I had an idea who would win out in the end, so I'm keeping the drainage right down all those little passages the water has always used, draining through what I've followed down for 60'.  From the top of the shaft you can now look straight down the 60' to the bottom.  You can't fool water.  

Anyway, between receiving the earthen material from below, and the botanical material from above we back-filled the second piece of culvert into place.  Then we prepared another one.  This involved cutting the culvert to allow access to the adit area, dropping it down the shaft with Charlie  volunteering to be the bottom man under the culvert. Then prying it loose when it gets stuck, hoping we're holding it back from falling on him.  I guess we did; he climbed out of the hole after it was in place.  The adit was braced and backfilled around the opening.  The culvert was half back-filled

Meanwhile, on the surface, Don and Greg were cutting the back-filling  pieces of botanical material--wood--, and sending it down with the jin-pole.  It was quite convenient to just say I needed a 2' piece, and know I was heard on the monitor.  Charlie would tell Greg and Don what I needed.  Charlie was monitoring and recording the information.  Rich was working on transforming clear-cut leftovers into a convenience station.

it was getting late so we called it a day.

Progress?  How much closer to blowing air?  About  60 buckets closer to where we are going, where ever that is, and how ever far we have to go.  

July 4, 2009

Before David's log is put in place, I, Martha, would like to tell you the tale of getting to the Mistress in the first place today.  No easy task I assure you.  He had filled the back of the pick-up with large triangular pieces of foam that were covered with agricultural cloth.  Then he asked me if I wanted to take the dogs, all three of them.  Of course I wanted to take the dogs and give them a chance to have some fun in the woods.  So I made a little space for them, got them to jump in, and off we went.  We drove almost 15 miles up a curving winding mountain road.  Charlie looked in the back and said, "One of the dogs is missing!"   It was Al, our son's dog that we are watching.  Oh, no! Aargh.   What will I tell him?  I let his dog slip off the pick-up, never to be seen again?  So I started flipping out.  We turned around and headed back down the mountain asking 2 bicyclers if they had seen a dog.  Nope.  So on down we went.  About 4 miles.  Then I turn around and now MY dog is missing, gone, vanished.  AARRGGGHHH!!  You might say I'm attached to this animal.  Now I got almost hysterical.  My husband, David , probably would say that I was all the way hysterical.  Anyway, he turned around and back up the mountain to where we had first turned around.  No Obadiah!  So we turn around and head back down.  We pass the bicyclers for the third time and they tell us there's a dog down at the bridge.   I'm in the back.  The big , dumb dog that had not fallen out was smashing her way into the cab through the little window.  She knew everything was falling by the wayside, (literally), and wanted no part of it.  So I get in the back and start yelling Obadiah's name.  Sure enough , down by the bridge, (another 4 miles remember) I see his little fluffy face.  I believe he had tried very hard to run after us and was panting miserably.  Unharmed, just hot.  I don't know why we didn't see him on the way up.  So we continue on down the road looking for Al, the first idiot to fall out of the truck.  Even though I had my dog now I just kept right on crying.  13 miles down this curving mountain road and we spot good ol' Al.  Standing there and looking very confused.  We picked him up, threw him into the cab with David, me, Obadiah and Shelby, threw Charlie into the back of the truck, telling him not to jump out and finally got to drive the 17 miles to the Mistress.  What a way to start our day!  (I finally stopped crying about 10 miles up the road.)

 

This is now the real log of the dig for July 4th.

Got back to the Mistress dig with Charlie and Martha and another piece of hardware-software that will digitize the camera signal before it goes into the laptop.  We need to learn the software in the laptop a little better and make sure that the information ends up in the right files.  Charlie worked on labeling all the connections, making sure each plug was in the its proper socket and testing to make sure our power supply was still functioning with two more outlets on it, i.e., the laptop and the exterior hard-drive.  

          While all this new millennium stuff was going on, I             donned rain jacket and hel-

met, grabbed the axe, headed down into the shaft back into another century.

           Two digs before, the 4' length of culvert had gotten stuck at the mid-level,          wouldn't go down, and had to be lifted back up until the obstructions were removed.  It was now hanging in the shaft and tied off so it wouldn't fall.  i worked my way down the shat and around the culvert tossing the axe down to the 30' level.  But it bounced on down to 50' level.  Darn!  So I figured that meant that I would go all the way down to the bottom and I did.  Of course, it was a good thing because I found all this other stuff that had to be done in order for the second piece of culvert to fit on the top of the first piece.  More backfilling in the SE corner around the bottom culvert had to be done.  I used rocks that had been stored in the adit in the 2008 dig.  There was some major chopping and shaping of the wooden beams the adit was constructed out of in order for the second piece to slide into the tabs of the bottom one.  Now there's a neat piece of work: standing straddled and braced in a wet 4' square shaft, chopping away with a one foot stroke, and four double a's in the helmet for light.  I then scurried on up to the id-level repeating the exercise with 20 more feet below me.  When I felt everything had been trimmed to allow the 30" culvert down, I couldn't help but wonder how we had gotten the first one down.  Had the shaft changed shape?  I hope not.  Anyway, that is what the steel culvert is for.  I returned to the surface and the 21st century and looked at the image of the culvert hanging in the shaft on the laptop screen.  Camera #1 was up and running.  Martha and Charlie were learning about the software and how everything worked with a couple more components in the system.  They were searching cyberspace.  I was eating lunch.  We had another camera for the bottom of the hole but it wasn't hooked up.  I headed back down to untie the culvert and lower it down.  It was still tight as I went through the side around 30' but was unable to lower it down and set it on the top of the first one.  Then when I climbed on down to the bottom I found that some bolts left in the receiving tabs prevented the new culvert from meshing.  Needing some wrenches I headed back to the top ad we called it a day.  

 

 

Yesterday---July 3, 2009

Dan has been looking at the videos we took.  Charlie has been digitizing some pictures off what has been recorded.  Martha and David have been learning how to manage the web-site and how to add and delete information.  Yesterday we made some major changes and made the first step toward bringing the Mistress into the new millennium.  We learned how to publish what we had changed!!  So today. Charlied and i went up to start putting the dig in order to get back to air and on the web at the same time!!

    We ran another phone line down the shaft for camera #2, cleaned up the area by organizing the tools, extending the platform area, and making safety equipment more available.  Saw sharpened.  Made a list of all missing components.  Tomorrow we get another "bucket" out of the hole.  How close is the opening?  
 

~ 2009 Digging Season ~

 

          One trip was made into the dig during winter; no snow-shoeing was necessary although that was mainly because the drifts were frozen and we could walk over them.  The winter months were defined mostly by Charlie doing his “homework” which resulted in having a few new additions in the “Techno” category.  My head is still trying to wrap itself around this technological change.  I was most comfortable with technology circa 2000 B.C., but this 2000 A.D. stuff doesn’t respond the same way to picks, shovels, and bars.  But by the first dig of the season, somewhere around the end of March or the first of April, hard to say what with global warming and all, we had collected together an audio-visual surveillance  camera, and hooked it up to a monitor (TV set) and DVD recorder on the surface.  All the equipment was powered by a gasoline generator, the same that supplied the 12 Volt lighting at the bottom of the shaft.  We spent the day testing the equipment, hanging plastic tarps down the shaft to control the spring “waterfall” and keep it out of the culvert.  There were maintenance chores on the surface, wiring and running wires down the shaft. All the systems we tested were successful.  We were able to make a DVD recording of all the activity in the shaft.  Now there was only the two of us, so we weren’t officially monitored by somebody watching at the TV set, but we were recorded anyhow.  Our signal coming out of the shaft on telephone cable is split at the top, with the other side going eventually to the laptop and the internet, while we are digging, discovering, shoring, or whatever.  On this day that wasn’t happening, since we don’t have the antennae in place yet or about 100 other pieces we need to get into place.  Our goal is to take the hours of video we recorded and make a three or four minute video clip out of it to post on You-Tube, in conjunction with website changes.  We are currently learning about film editing and DVD formats (“Can’t we just keep digging?” said Muddog Two to Muddog One.  “Shhhh,” said Muddog One, “they need these pixels in cyberspace."  There is a paucity of reality, not the virtual type, and our mistress must help to make up the difference.  Now put on these clothes so you’ll look like somebody on a computer game and let’s leap into cyberspace!”

 

Second Dig, 2009 Season, April

 

          Charlie and I were able to gather one more person to help, Rich Beyer.  It was his first time helping.  Rich was able to make sure we had the camera aimed better, keep his eye on the generator, and start splitting and sharpening spillings to drive into the mud at the base of the last piece of shoring to control the mud that peels off as you dig out the wall to place the shoring.  Very important, especially under such wet conditions.

          This dig was exciting for me because I got to dig with Charlie pulling the buckets up through the collar and culvert (I hope someday you can actually see this on You-Tube – we have video) and backfilling the culvert with rock and mud on the west, dry, side while we jammed cedar posts and blocks for backfill on the East side to allow for water channels down the shaft.

          It became real obvious that a few hours of digging were going to make a big difference down there.  We are six feet down to where we got good air flow (before the water and mud slide thing we did happened) at seven feet.  The West wall is still open with small air pockets above the talus, the North shored side is fairly dry, with all the water coming down the shaft or outside the shaft draining off the Southeast corner where the talus – instead of rocky compact mud and gravels with boulders in it – is soft and oozy mud.  Before I left the shaft for the day, I drove many spillings into and under that wall to try to control this mud.  This is the area that in the fall of 2007, at least a yard of material moved on down the talus slope and into the cave, with our watery help.  I don’t see yet how and what to do to make it possible to dig through this area, keep mud and water out, and allow me in.  Probing shows a rock wall a few feet back behind the shoring to the East and the sink. Water must be moving on down through this area and to the South back under the steeply sloping South wall/ceiling.  That is where the dig remains at this time, the last week in April.

 

          Now this is what I would like to see happen.  First of all, I want to see our website reflect all changes at the dig, any new discoveries or video within a 24 hour period.  Then as the season progresses, with any internet connection, have the website reflect progress at the dig as soon as possible with high speed access and whatever band-width is available, within minutes.  Eventually the areas to the West of the shaft where we discovered the cave room  last summer that is still currently blocked with talus, will be open again.  Perhaps at that time, as I continue building the shoring superstructure downward, making access not only safe for cavers, but more importantly, safe for any cave we find, the opening in the SE corner will be accessible also.  The hard part will be controlling the urge to just discover and not shore.  We hope to never proceed without thorough discussion and a well thought out plan that will keep any areas we find in the most pristine condition.

          We will need to put in an airlock door.  We will need to install some kind of a security gate at some place in the shaft.  We need to line the whole shaft with culvert, backfilling to the surface.  We need to map the Mistress shaft with its adits, marble, ledges and intrusive dike walls.  We need to initiate an inventory program of each section that is opened up and hopefully even raise a little money to keep constructing shaft or trail by an Ebay auction to name rooms, rocks, and formations. 

          What else is down there where the sink is going to?  What will it look like?  How big?  Is any of this possible?  Where do those mud-dogs come from that show up at the bottom of the shaft?

 

Tuesday May 19, 2009

Suzanne and I took the measurements of the Mistress.  She is going to make a map of the shaft.  I feel this is important because the dig is entering voids--caves--and will lead into new discoveries.  Thank you, Suzanne.

 

Saturday, June 20,2009

 

Charlie, Martha, and I spent the better part of the day at the Mistress.  We worked on videos of the Mistress and the jin pole.  I re-arranged some shoring at the top of the shaft to allow a piece of culvert to be fitted down the shaft.  I will have to do some more re-arranging at the 30' level.  I have some videos but I'm not sure yet how to make them into something that I can use on the website.  Finalizing, editing, MPEG 2, formats and software.  How do I put it together so I can get there?

 

Following is the original log written in 2003

 

.......updated   2/10/03

In the summer of 1996 while involved in preliminary hydrology studies in and around the Oregon Caves Monument, Steve Knutsen was searching the area for any springs to sample for some proposed dye tracing. He found a resurgence on the bank of a creek about the same elevation as the Oregon Caves and some miles away. A few rocks were removed from the bank at that time. Later, at Steve’s suggestion, a couple of guides, Brad and Josh, who were working for the Cave’s Company did some more rock moving and started a notch in the creek bank. Why look here for a cave? There was a seam of marble exposed in the bedrock of the creek. The water flowing out of the creek bank seemed to have very slight temperature variations, as cave water would and not creek water just flowing through rock piles and log jams along the creek. The water also seemed to have more even flow than the near by creek had, being a major water contributor in late summer and fall but increasing only a little from 1 cfs to maybe only 2cfs in the winter. All these factors were positive for the existence of a cave, but how big? A 4" crack or cavernous halls?

In the summer of 1998 work was resumed on the resurgence. At this time a small notch had been cut in the talus slope of an alluvial deposit (quaternary?) where the water exited the hillside. A brief investigation showed that the resurgent stream was flowing out of the alluvium over marble bedrock underlain by an argillite with a 7’ to 10’ drop to the creek. We, David Hodges and Don Young, started following the water by the simple procedure of removing any rocks or boulders that were loose where the water was flowing. By this method a tunnel was soon created. The walls were formed by stacking rocks along both sides of the water, until a ceiling of suitable stable, clay layer was reached. Boulders and rock walls to a suitable depth and height to stop erosion reinforced the sides. This hole was digging itself. The rocks were generally loose with no or very little mud and gravel around them. As we went into the mountain large rocks were used for walls and small ones were carried out forming a tunnel with a natural clay roof.

It was observed that the water was flowing through cracks between the boulders where sand and silt had been washed out by the water action. It seemed that over the years the water had taken various passages out of the alluvial boulders. The boulders were up to 3’ in diameter. Bedrock was followed up from the creek, starting with argillite at creek level changing to marble where the resurgence exited the hillside. Bedrock was not seen again that summer. In the first year approximately 20’ of tunnel was carved out from 5’ to 8’ high and wide. The walls, floor, and ceiling were the creek alluvium and no more marble was seen since the entrance.

Digging resumed in the spring of 1999 and the first marble appeared at 25’ in from the entrance. The marble soon formed a ceiling about 5’ high with a marble wall on the east side and alluvium on the west side. Three or four speleogenic boulders were found between 25’ and 35’ into the tunnel. At this point the water was coming from the east side which appeared to have a marble roof. More digging caused the water to move to the west side of the tunnel where the water was flowing out of a 1 foot hole in the marble at the top of what appeared to be a joint dissolution cave passageway about 10’ farther back into the cave. The notch showed a marble ceiling approximately 7’ back from this hole on the west side. Digging was stopped until we could determine how safe it was. Stopping was wise. Within one half hour of vacating the tunnel, a large (2’x3’x5’) speleogenic boulder peeled off the east wall right where we had been sitting. Soon another speleogen joined this one and now leans against the east wall near by. Any boulder small enough to remove was taken out and the large ones, speleogens and placer boulders, were stacked on the west side. It should be noted that these speleogens seem to have been formed and loosened in situ by the dissolving action of ground water and cave water flowing through a plugged up cave. However, at this point, we couldn’t be sure that we weren’t moving along a cliff face or amongst large marble boulders. We also considered it quite possible that all the alluvium could have been washed in by the creek forming the initial plug in a cave. At this time whether this is true had not been ascertained, since not all the ceiling in this part of the cave was exposed. The boulders were typical of the creek outside the cave. All the marble showed dissolution characteristics with protruding chert lenses. The deeper we dug, the smaller the alluvial boulders became.

We continued by following the water, stone by stone, inch by inch. More marble started showing up to the east side and slowly moving across the ceiling from the west. It was still not possible to say that this was a cave, and not a heap of marble boulders. Any dangerous work was done from a distance with long handled hoes and long pipes that would pick away at the base of any dangerous rock. When severely undercut, the boulder would fall out of the bank that held it. Then the long handled hoe would be used to hook the rock and drag it back to where it could be safely handled. Small rocks were thrown out of the tunnel. Moveable boulders were used to support walls in the alluvial entrance and immovable boulders were left in place. A large rock, 3’x3’x2’, was found in the middle of this area. The upper half of it showed no water action. It was undercut by the water, and fell and broke into manageable pieces. It appeared to be a fractured chunk of the intrusive dike noted in the bedrock of the creek outside the cave.

Soon after this rock was removed, natural water action undercut and collapsed a large section of the east wall. As the rubble was cleared away and more marble was exposed, it became apparent we were indeed in a cave. On August 16, 1999, I the author, David Hodges, recognized this resurgence to be a cave. This was witnessed by assistant, John Dodge. At this point in the digging we were almost through the first room in the cave.   We called it the Boulder Patch.
 

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Last modified: 08/17/09