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Cave Next Door |
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A typical cross section of the sediments in the "Boulder Patch". Interbedded sand and silt Sand and gravel Sandy silt Cave clay- light brown cherty Stream The Boulder Patch is entered through a low entryway. The room is 10’-11’ wide and at least as many high. It has a marble floor strewn with boulders of marble, water-rounded intrusives, and non-abraded intrusives. It terminates at its upper end where the marble walls pinch down to a joint fault dissolution crack. At this point there was a face of layers of sand and silt about 5’ deep. The hard cherty clay bottom layer was missing and a soft muddy silt was right on a hard marble stream-bed, overlain with a sand and gravel layer and then a silt and sand layer. The water was still entering through its original hole at the top of the dissolution passageway that was in the end of the room. Forty-eight hours later the water had stopped flowing from the top of the crack and was flowing right at marble floor level, a drop of about 7’. This seemed like very encouraging news and perhaps some kind of air space, at least represented by what was 7’ of water 48 hours ago, was nearby. By this time, we were working our way through the area known as Duck Run, a low keyhole shaped area. Water was found to be issuing from fissures in the marble bedrock just before the low passageway opened up into the next room. Many nights of continued digging has removed much material from the second room, and exposed another spring where the water flowed from when the first springs were blocked up. The second room, Spring Hall, has been similar in layered deposits to the first but more sharply defined. This room turned out to be about 10’ long. The width and height are still undetermined as of 9-24-99. The spring room ended in another low bridge with plugged passageways continuing into the mountain. On the west side was a sort of wall with silt filled dissolution features, small leads going in and up. About 7’ into the passageway a crack was found on the right side of the cave that had sand in it and no clay at the top. Probing upwards eventually revealed about 6" of air space at the top of the crack and for the first time, AIR FLOW. For the next week work continued sporadically, which was the safest way. Airflow being established was a great encouragement and Steve and I were sure that a limited amount of continued digging would soon bring us into open passage by the stream way. While we were pursuing this way, John Dodge would probe the airflow crack. He was able, over a period of a few nights, to open up the passage by removing sand until a body could actually fit into it. Steve helped in this. While Don and I were working down below, Steve and John were inching their way into the tiny passage above. The stream passage remained low, 4’ and showed no signs of opening into a large room as it had in the Boulder Parch and Spring room. Instead it remained low and wide with layered sediments on both sides. Speculative anticipation and high hopes was the mood of the weekend of September 11-12, 1999. The events would be pivotal. On Saturday, the stream passage widened out into a wide, low-ceilinged room. There were major drips from cracks in the ceiling. It was assumed that there was a lake of some kind, above the ceiling and at some point in washing up the steam, the lake would be emptied. How much water it held, no one knew. Saturday afternoon, Don was working down below with Steve helping, when the drip pattern in the ceiling began to change. A couple of small rocks fell out of ceiling on the right side of the room and at the same time the water that was dripping on the left began to run muddy and start moving along the crack. Don quickly backed out as he and Steve watched a large slab of the ceiling slowly settle down, then fall with a mighty whump! A gush of water, 2-3 cfs, surged from the ceiling 10’ back in the room somewhere on the right while water ceased to flow from the cracks in the Spring Room floor. We called the area Grateful Hall. Now, which way to go? To the right around the block that fell following where the water was coming from? To the left? It looked like we could go around the fallen block on that side too. Meanwhile John and Steve had pushed the airflow passage about 15’ to a narrow, 4 inch squeeze, that appeared to block further travel but it also seemed to get larger on the other side. Also the crack around the large chunk of the ceiling that had fallen was connected to the air tube. We left the cave to see what it would do. On Sunday afternoon, we tried to make further progress by going around the left side of the obstruction. The room was widened on the left. The ceiling was checked frequently. John and Steve continued enlarging the airflow passage and were trying to push past the tight squeeze. Digging ceased on Sunday when another rock fell from the ceiling on the left side of the obstruction. The cave seemed to be talking to us. "Not that way!" it was saying. On a note of discouragement we left that night, determined to return on Monday night to do what? John gave me the answer on the way home Sunday while watching a brown and golden sunset on the landing. He told me that if I wanted to be the first one into the Cave Next Door I had better determine to crawl through the airflow passage at the first chance. He believed that he had seen some distance into the passage and he felt that it was much larger further in. I began preparing right then and there both mentally and physically to find out once and for all where the airflow passage went. In the evening of Monday, Sept. 13, after a pondering 10 hours of work for NPS ORCA, I met Steve at the Cave Next Door, ready to do some major wiggling and squeezing. While I was checking the ceiling of the hall and passage, Steve went into the airflow passage-here after called the Trachea- as far as John had gone the night before. I was ready to follow. To my surprise, Steve wiggled back out reporting indeed a tight constriction with a rock floor, but it did appear to get easier after that. So I made my first trip into the Trachea. I wiggled, armed with a garden trowel and a rock pick and an attitude that said, "I want to get somewhere to turn around so I don’t have to wiggle out backwards with this raincoat on." As tube crawls go, it is not too bad. There is plenty of arm and elbowroom to help the wiggling and lots to push with the feet. There is a hole or two in the floor. After a couple tight turns, I came to the squeeze, comforted by the thought that both JD and Steve had been here, and back out. Wiggling into some kind of position I removed the trowel from my teeth with what I assumed to be my hand since it had a glove on it, and not a boot and made like a mole. There was a hole of some kind up to my left over my shoulder so I started putting anything that was soft up into the hole. It was a slow, tedious process, but I was, I reminded myself, for the first time at the ceiling of the cave digging a floor instead of underneath everything looking for a ceiling. After 30 minutes or so of digging I began to think that indeed I might be able to go forward one inch! If I can go one inch, I told myself, I can go 20 inches and by then I could see the passageway was larger. The rock floor on the right dropped off and it looked like it would be possible to trench around it. A tight corner to be sure, but easier going on the other side. It must have taken an hour of digging; Steve was behind, encouraging. Inch by inch. Spade-toss-push. Spade-toss-push. Well before you can say- Mighty Moles Mush More Mud Mom- backwards and forwards 100 times without taking a breath, I was moving through the crawl without digging. Ahead, another obstruction. Once I managed to crawl forward to this tight spot I could see definite larger crawl beyond. Determined to not have to go back out the way I’d come in, I started digging again. Easier dirt removal and room to swing my arms made this dig easier. I called back to Steve that it looked like I was going to get in and kept inching forward as digging allowed. Soon I was crawling without digging, then I was on my hands and knees, and then ahead I could see a passage with piles of sand on the floor and room to stand up. I called back to Steve again and sat there on a pile of mud shaking uncontrollably until Steve caught up and we began exploring. We were sitting on some muddy sand with the creek flowing from the left in front of us and down through a hole formed by a crack that must have opened when the ceiling collapsed below. Mud covered boulders of breakdown loomed in the passage beyond and seemed to climb up to a larger room. Choosing carefully each step and hand holds, disturbing as little as possible, knowing we were the first to put footprints here, we climbed over the silt covered rocks, rising above the mud and into a room with a breakdown floor, a 20’ ceiling, and patches of flowstone on the walls. Somewhere below us, the stream was softly murmuring for the first time in maybe thousands of years. A snail shell was found on the floor here, hence the name the Snail Room. Later a bone was also found. Exploring the upper reaches of this room ended in dead ends. Eventually, Steve found a passage through the breakdown and we were able to continue along a sandy floor with a marble wall and ceiling o the left and breakdown on the right. The passage led us to a hole in the floor through which you could see the creek meandering over sand bars with about a 12’ ceiling, and once again, airflow. Weak but perceptible. The cave still went but we’d had enough and turned around and headed back out. Boy, was I happy to be going out headfirst! I wasn’t quite sure how things would work out when I popped through the hole in the ceiling of the Spring Room. Oh well, that’s on down the tube. CONTINUED CLICK ON CONTINUED OR NEXT FOR MORE LOG |
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