Rob Harris, Dave Duguid, Duke Dooley, and I headed up to Marion for a caving weekend. Although we started early Saturday morning, the hike up to Lovers Leap Cave was still quite warm. Unfortunately an entrance obstacle prevented us from surveying in Lovers Leap that day, and then the thunderstorm started. As it seems to happen on every trip, hiking down the hill from Lovers Leap was slippery after the rain.
We still had plenty of time to start a survey trip, so we headed to Worley's Cave. Just before entering the cave, another downpour started and we all got pretty wet. Inside the cave I led the team off to drier leads on the left side. I didn't remember that the ceiling was so low in this part of the cave. Dave managed to teach Duke and Rob how to survey, and their 106-foot loop only closed off by two feet. In the meantime, I began re-sketching areas of the cave not covered in the first surveys.
I managed to finish off the sketch for the big entrance room while the team poked into a lead just out of the twilight zone of the cave. They dug a little and then started crawling. Eventually Dave and Rob wandered out of voice shot. They came back reporting walking passage and multiple leads, and Dave promised to survey it after they made the passage more passable.
On Sunday the thunderstorms came and went and came and went... We found the drive out to Easy Way Down Dig wasn't too muddy for Dave's truck. Rob, Dave, and I headed off to work at the hillside dig while Duke took the time to drive back to Fayetteville. The dig was easy to find this time.
Dave, Rob, and I began pulling rocks, roots, and mud out of the slot, but there was no air blowing out of the small hole beneath the big old tree. As we dug, we discovered that the tree roots had broken up some of the rock for us and we found our way into a ten-foot wide slot. Everywhere along the slot seemed to have hollow floor, but air wasn't blowing up anywhere.
After banging on some soft rock, the long slot turned out to be quite useful. Dave could lie sideways in it and dig further into the hole under the tree. We left the dig covered in mud but willing to check for blowing leads another time.
Thanks to Tanya for letting us shower before the trip home.
