Tanya found this cave through the owner’s daughter late last year; the January trip was to cave this cave. However due to various reasons we changed our plans; one reason was there were rock climbers coming out of the cave. It was interesting in that one of the climbers knew of a cave just over the hillside; knowing of no caves had been reported on this hill we quickly jumped on the opportunity to cave the other cave, now known as Cotton Cave. This left the original cave on the project list. I had tried several other times to get a trip planned but it didn’t work; this trip I had a vertical oriented crew of Robbie, Rob, and Brian.
The cave requires vertical experience; in fact the cave has three drops totaling over 145ft. We managed to survey 475 feet with some very promising leads left for another day. I can see at least a few more trips to this cave!
Getting back to the day’s activities; we came prepared with ropes and more ropes. One rope was used to repel the entrance pit and was used to drop a nuisance drop immediately following. Large passage awaited us on both sides. Given a solid vertical crew we chose to keep going down; the idea was to determine just what was in store for future planning.
The second drop put us in a large room with various bone piles; the most intriguing was the skeletal remains of a large turtle. The turtle was much too large to be a box turtle which probably leaves only aquatic turtles; what an aquatic turtle was going this high up on the hill would be anybody’s guess. The cave is more decorated than originally thought; most of the formations are old and not active. The top two levels appears to be quite dry.
Robbie was bird dogging out in front while Rob, Brian, and myself surveyed. Robbie found the third pit and rigged it while we surveyed toward him. Given there was nothing in the immediate vicinity to tie into he had to use webbing and rig to some formations about 20ft back. The bolting kit we brought was not of much use as the walls and floor were simply mud and very soft rock.
The bottom of the pit landed us in a large fissure with a stream. The stream came into and out of the cave in very low leads, something that would require some serious digging if the stream ever dried. There were a few leads through some small passage; these leads opened into another fissure that immediately terminated.
Robbie was cold from digging in a wet, muddy section of the cave; he did find another strong lead but it would require a bit of cave modification to take the edge off some rock. While waiting for the others to ascend the third pit I went back to check a few of the open leads; and leads they are.
I’m very excited to get back to this cave. Hopefully I can drum up some interest; the challenging pit has been dropped and doesn’t yield any great interest to work on those leads until the other, much more promising leads are proven out.
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