Gas Kills

Dave Duguid and I stayed with Daisy, Tanya, and Smoke up in Marion Friday night. The next morning saw an early morning start off to Worley's Cave in Smyth County. No trouble climbing down the long sloping entrance room to get to the Sandwich Passage. We all slid through easily and then progressed into the room where the 2003 survey had left off.

Dave first slid into a crawlway downstream and announced that there was indeed a good deal more cave to explore. Our intent was to start into these passages from the old survey station, but it was not to be found after all these years. We went back two stations and surveyed in. By the time we got there, Dave was so proud of his station setting that he told us we could survey from any of the side passages and hit this station. We tested him.

While I sketched, I sent Dave and Tanya under the waterfall to survey down from the station where we left off in January. I could hear their voices through different holes the entire time. They found the old survey station, and then I heard Dave beginning to grunt. He sounded like he was only a few feet away, but he found himself sliding down a steep slope of breakdown with little ceiling above him. He never even made it close to the hole in the wall where I would've dug him out. When I plotted the data afterwards, it seems that the station where Dave started couldn't have been more than four feet above me. Therefore, I have to guess that he was crawling toward me at a lower level in this chert-riddled cave.

Then they tried to connect through another passageway. We could see one another's lights but get no closer as the passage pinched out.

I joined Tanya and Dave to survey at the base of the waterfall. Dave declared a side passage a dead end, but I could see 30 feet up a passage from there. It'll just require an easy dig for a small person, and it heads in a direction away from the rest of the cave.

Then we climbed up the waterfall. After I boosted Dave up, he found a great place to triple rig a cable ladder above the falls to make for an easy climb for Tanya and me. We surveyed through a hands-and-knees crawl and up into a 40-foot long chamber. Water dripped from the ceiling, and a waterfall dropped down one wall. However, the most notable feature of this room was the floor. The seemingly solid floor had many traps where footfalls into deep mud covered the tops of my boots. The most notable quickmud was right below the survey station.

After the passage sumped, all three of us were very wet. We beat a hasty retreat to the cave entrance with just 206 feet of survey. I changed my clothes in the coolness near the cave entrance while Dave and Tanya headed for the car. I arrived to find them still in their coveralls; apparently I missed them chasing the horses.

After an early dinner Dave and I headed over to Determination Dig near Rowlands Creek Cave. Dave was on a mission to make the surface dig into a cave. Eventually it was big enough for him to squeeze inside. He pulled some more dirt forward, and I pulled it out of the cave. This went on for 90 minutes. Dave kept going a little further inside, and I used Tanya's hoe to rake out the dirt.

At one point he warned me that I was about to have an unpleasant extraction. I thought he was referring to the skull that I found rolling toward me, but Dave insisted that his fart had nearly suffocated him. Maybe the two events were connected.