Sheep Cave Survey

Even though I couldn’t find all my survey gear, Emily, Mark D., and I headed to Tanya’s home for a survey weekend. I didn’t like driving in pouring rain and then pea soup fog. After Mark amazed everyone with his knowledge of hari paste and the origins of the Amazon River, Tanya read a short description of Sheep Cave that guaranteed walking passage on Saturday. Something to look forward to on a cold January day.

As I walked toward the entrance, I noticed that I was following a small stream and wondered if a water-filled entrance would greet me. Strangely enough, it was actually an old metal appliance-filled entrance with the stream dropping below that. Tanya refused to enter the cave via that entrance and walked Mark over the cave to the southern entrance. Emily managed to pitch the tape measure to Mark and find a survey spot roughly four feet from the nearest appliance. We still found the compass swinging by ten degrees for the high-angle shot at the top, and Mark discovered that his magnetic station may have also affected the compass. It was getting windy, but we eventually dropped a tape and negotiated a valid pair of measurements.

Emily and I then surveyed into Tanya’s entrance, after determining that Emily could not be forced into a rabbit hole that would lead to a balcony in the cave. I was bothered by the fact that I didn’t have a pair of reading glasses, but my strong light produced just enough light to work with my long arms. We surveyed underground to connect the entrances and then started downstream. It was a very strange game of leapfrog surveying that Tanya, Emily, and Mark played as they kept trading survey positions.

We were definitely in walking passage, reaching over 25 feet high. Unfortunately the twisting passageways took us to a terminus where the water at best sumped. It was an unnecessarily large room with a muddy floor and an escape route on a high ledge. I looked into the escape route and could make out daylight filtering in on the other side.

While Mark and Emily surveyed the escape route, Tanya asked if we could finally go deeper into the cave using the passage lead she had seen from the entrance. I had to tell her that her that the escape route turned out to be her promising lead. I think we found a great cave entrance area minus the cave; that's where the water eventually drains. Maybe we could see more in a drought.

Overall we surveyed 306 feet of cave passage that day, setting 20 survey stations and closing two loops (with closure rated as Good). However, we were never more than fifty horizontal feet from an entrance (although the sinuous passage made me spiral down to reach the lowest point in the cave). The deepest point is forty feet below the upper entrance. There’s some Sunday mop-up survey to be done, but maybe that can wait for a drier time with the hope that the cave will drain and reveal a new passage. We exited and got into dry clothes just before the snow began.