Copenhaver’s conservation trip
First,
travel back in time 2 days from Ken’s Worley’s survey trip report (he’s faster
than I am at getting things written up) to when Dave D., Dawson D., Jacob
Jackson, Ken Walsh, Dave T. and I all headed to Tanya’s house in Marion shortly
after work on Friday. We
stayed up late talking caves and such so Ken and Dave D. let the rest of us
sleep in while they drove down to the cave in the early morn to scope out the
situation (we weren’t sure about the muddyness because of the evening storms
the night before). Though the gate
was locked, they found that the cave was still there and the ground was dry
enough to drive down the hill.
After
they got back from the reconnaissance trip the 9 of us loaded up and went to
find pre-cave breakfast. This was perhaps
the biggest struggle of the weekend.
We finally found a breakfast-serving restaurant on the 4th
try. After a hefty wait we were
served a delicious breakfast and were ready to get underground. Tanya headed to the BP to find the key
to the gate while Carlin’s group headed a short piece down the road to Copenhaver’s. The owner ended up letting us in while
we were waiting on Tanya and Dave D. for the key...oh well. Then we drove down the hill, parked
near the cave and got geared up without muddying our feet (thanks to the protection
of the leftover tarp from the grotto canopy).
We
then headed to the cave to survey the workload. There was lots of trash at the entrance--barrels, tons of
barbed wire tumbleweeds, scrap metal, etc. Ken and Jacob worked on that intimidating mass while Dave D.
rigged the 2 part waterfall drop with the cable ladder. In the mean time
Carlin, Kyler, Dave T., Dawson, and I hauled up the trash from between the
entrance and the waterfall drop.
Our biggest find in this area was a 50 gallon drum full of mud that we
managed to haul out on rope, what a treasure! After the waterfall was rigged Dave T. and I headed down to
scope out the trash below. Dave
wanted to free climb the second part of the drop so without realizing what he
was doing he kicked a large rock down that was preventing the cable ladder from
sliding into a crack. I was not fond of the free climb idea so I found a small
boulder at the second drop and rolled it into the crack to block it so I could
continue down on the cable ladder without difficulty. Shortly after, Carlin and Kyler headed down the ladder to
help with the trash.
In
addition to the buckets we brought along for hauling trash, the cave graciously
supplied us with several big blue farm buckets that had washed in. One of them had landed next to a
massive mound of mud covered barbed wire and fencing so after pulling it out of
the salamander pool (with many larval stage salamanders of some kind!) I
started to fill it with pieces of old rusty barbed metal (no tetanus shot
required?). We were soon
joined by Kyler and Carlin who helped to fill more buckets with barbed wire and
carry them back to the bottom of the drop. Somewhere in here Dave T. and Dave D. took the first truckload
of trash to the dump, yippee! To
facilitate the raising of the trash I was stationed at the second waterfall
drop on belay while Ken was at the top lifting the loads and directing
traffic. The smaller buckets went
up easily but big blue caused a bit of a struggle as it had nothing to tie on
to so we spent many minutes cutting holes in the sides so we could get it on
rope and it was too wide to fit where the skinny buckets had done fine. After many tries and some coercing from
the cable ladder Ken’s excellent maneuvering skills got ‘er up. Jacob joined the crew at the bottom to
help with the rest of the trash while Dave T. and Ken waited up top. After the final loads were collected
down below we raised them up one last time. I guess people hauled them up to the entrance but I don’t
know the details... We did some pull-ups to warm ourselves up for the rest of the cave.
Dave T. then joined Carlin, Kyler, Jacob, and me down below
for a quick exploration trip of the rest of the cave. We took a few pics while we waited for Dave T. to get down.
From
the top of the waterfall Ken gave us careful instructions on where to go in the
cave, naturally Carlin was the only one paying attention...So, the crowd headed
down past the clean-up zone to the breakdown climb and over the rockwall to the
rest of the cave. According to
Carlin and Ken, we should have turned off shortly after this at the zen garden
to continue up to the top of the mud room. Instead, most of us continued on straight ahead down the
more obvious passage to the mudroom.
We played around here for a while sliding up and down the mudslides,
Carlin took some photos, and Dave T. crawled down to the (suposedly salamander
filled) sump. We spent several
minutes chasing a mouse-like creature around the big room, but just couldn’t
catch it or its photo.
After
a reasonably thorough tour of the cave we started heading out but stopped for
more photos along the way. Jacob
did some meditation and pushups with the Christmas goose.
Some photos were produced. We then ran into Ken, Dave, and Dawson
on their way through the mud room (they followed Ken’s instruction so were
coming up behind us instead of running head on into us). In the mud room Ken fished out an old glass bottle of something (maybe drugs, maybe mud, maybe cave aliens, no one knows)
After playing around for a while our group headed out toward the cable
ladder while Dave, Dawson, and Ken goofed around as to not congest things on
the way out. Our group scampered up
the ladder uneventfully with Dave T. on belay up top. Dave, Jacob, and I waited for Ken’s group so we could belay
them up. Ken was first up, and as
he weighted the ladder the unfortunate rock that I had placed earlier went
smashing down onto his head rolling off onto his shoulder and tumbling to the
ground. We worried from above
while Ken caught his bearings and Dave D. checked to make sure there was no
bleeding. After a brief survey it
was determined that he did not need to be flat-rocked, so
Ken headed up the ladder a second time...this try he was
unharmed. Dave D.
and Dawson followed him up, also unharmed. Dave D. and Dave T. derigged the ladder while the rest of us
headed to the entrance.
We
packed up the gear and headed to pick up Tanya for a lovely Mexican dinner
where Dawson learned some interesting tricks with straws, lemon seeds, and air
pressure... Note: Somewhere in there another load of trash was taken to the
dump (not sure where since I spent the entirety of the trip on the low side of
the waterfall). Then we all went
to bed happily ever after and woke up for Worley’s the next day! Fun was had by
all.
