Thursday, October 02, 2014

New River Cave Survey Trip with Ava the Caver

Pete Hertl and I made some bad choices about the best route out of the Triangle but arrived in time for the midnight tour of the Bat Ranch. The next morning I spent time talking to the scout troop from Holly Springs that was visiting for a cave trip. Eventually Pete woke up, and we spirited Ava Pope off to New River Cave for a survey trip.

Now that the cave is owned by the NSS, some spelunkers must’ve decided that the cave deserves their exploration. Too bad the spelunkers ran out of green string before they got to a junction.

We headed back to the Attic Room for our survey leads, stopping when Pete wanted to admire the various piles of scat. I knew where the leads were but had some difficulty finding the tie-in station. We surveyed into a room surrounded by breakdown whose entrance was beneath a flowstone bank. As the survey twisted around the blocks, we dropped deeper into the jumble.

Pete climbed up a shaft that I could encircle and shake his hand from three different sides.  That also let me know where we would need to survey next. We found the easy way to survey to the top of the breakdown and connect in with a known survey station. And Ava did fine reading the instruments while standing over a pit.


The last lead was just an annoying survey that led into another chamber beneath the breakdown. The survey totaled just 280 feet but completes (?) the survey in the upper cave. After that survey we headed out for a late Mexican dinner and then a very late night drive home.