October caving

The allure of unknown passage in Busted Turtle cave provided enough incentive to get back and continue surveying. Tanya and Robbie joined me.

I did not leave Raleigh until 7:30 in the morning having overslept; my new alarm clock has a feature were the alarm can be set for weekdays or weekends; my error now apparent. However with very little traffic I was able make good time and was not late. The weather the entire trip was not the best, cloudy and occasional rain. Marion had no rain, just wind.

The cave is less than 10 minutes from Tanya’s house; before we knew it we had driven through the property and were hiking to the cave entrance. We took out the log that was impeding the entrance (though I’m not sure it made it any easier to get out).
Surveying started in the entrance pit, lead number one. The lead was a large room that looked that it had great potential but stopped after 40ft. Lead number two was a bit smaller than I remembered; “small” surveyors will be needed to continue. So we skipped it in favor of lead number three. The lead led us southward. It was not well decorated, but Robbie thinks we located Peccary tracks; he’s going to follow up and get back to us on that one. The lead yielded some good yardage but eventually stopped too.

Onto lead number four, this lead resulted in much more interesting cave. We got into some really nice soda straws, helictites, and other smaller formations. Unfortunately we were not the first as was clearly marked by the “fresh” vandalism of the cave’s formations. Also of interest was the number of bones found. There had to be more than one set of bones, animals unknown. The lead had some smaller passage then opened up again only to stop. There is more cave here, but will require “small” surveyors.

Finally lead number five, a high lead that Robbie checked out; to my great disappointment the lead was only a single room. We surveyed that quickly and called it a day. The survey resulted in 370ft of cave passage, for a total of 800+ feet.

There are three leads yet to survey; two leads will require either smaller individuals or significant time behind digging gear. Both leads have a combined distance of more than 100ft and the likelihood they continue as the passages round a corner leaving one to dream of trunk passage ahead! The third lead is at the bottom and will require a bit of rock manipulation. It holds high potential as well, probably higher than the other two. I’m hoping we can get the proper body configurations and proper blasting skills to get to the remaining leads.

On Sunday, of which was an absolutely gorgeous day with the sun, cool temperature, and fall foliage, we set out to do some ridge walking. Tanya had two areas to check out. It was noted there was to be a cave above the spring Tanya and Ken had found on a previous trip, now connected to a huge culvert and a road overhead. Either there was no cave or it suffered the fate of being buried when the road was constructed.

Our next stop was just up the street to another spring with a documented cave nearby. After poking around the spring and walking the hill a bit, we set out to dig a promising spot. After twenty minutes we had ourselves another cave. I scooped about 100ft of it and it is still going. It’s small and has a few inches or water in it of course. Several people will be getting wet when surveying that one unless it drys up during drought periods.