Chris Haydel, Jason Kern

I woke up at 6:00 AM this morning, packed my car, and had a bowl of cereal for breakfast.  Then I started the drive noting that gas was $2.04 in Kokomo.  I stopped at the Speedway just south of 465 on 67 to piss and fill up my tire (my tire has a slight leak).  The drive was uneventful.  I noticed that I would arrive early so I stopped by the Avoca Fish Hatchery to gage the local water levels based on Avoca Spring Cave.  Avoca emitted an average wet weather amount of water. 

 I met Jason Kern and Chris Haydel at Sullivan when I pulled up.  Jason drove an old, blue Ford F-150 pickup truck.  After a bit of talk, we walked down the trail to the gate and started into the cave.  Chris wanted to head as far upstream as we could so I brought my wetsuit jacket which I knotted around my waste and fastened there with my old blue cave pack which carried: food, batteries, a Nalgene of water, and laminated Sullivan Cave maps. 

We could hear water flowing from the entrance.  The 2cd climb down was a little drippy.  I led them to the backbreaker and soon we were passing the turn off for the Merry-Go-Round and on our way to the mountain room.  I watched the floor to the right and was a bit puzzled when I didn’t see the rebar and cement that had always been there (the IKC must have removed it).  Jason missed it almost the same time as me.  We’d had both used that as a marker to find the crawlway turn off. 

We entered the crawlway and soon emerged into mountain room.  We then climbed down the slope to the left into The Flood Route and continued to the North Y where we turned left.  We soon found ourselves in the Quarry room.  We scrambled over breakdown to the back right of the room where an obvious climb down drops into the stream.  We quickly got wet up to our belly buttons before climbing out of the stream and up some rope and webbing.  We traversed breakdown and soon entered into the stream again and turned right at the North Quarry Y.  Before long we were standing in front of the first bathtub.  I didn’t think we were properly prepared to enter and the weather outside didn’t look good either.  I could see about 20’ ahead of me.  At best, there was 3” of air at that distance though it may very well have been lower.  It looked pretty sumpy.  We’d made it there in less than 2 hours. 

 We had a snack before trekking back to the Mountain Room where we poked into a formation area in the upper back right corner.  We had to do some crawling, and a little squeezing and contorting to get there.  We ate lunch in the formation room and routed to the Spiral Room.  Jason and Chris were impressed with the amount of water in the main stream.  In spots, the current was very noticeable.  The water levels seemed about normal to me.  The deepest water was about waste deep.  We climbed up into the Spiral Room and traversed the breakdown staircase to the uppermost ledge where to my surprise a great deal of water poured out of the ceiling through a 3’ wide crack only 3” across.  I don’t recall having seen that much water entering there before. 

 We tried to find the Manhole.  I first walked into a small room with a couple leads and then came back out to and entered a vertical crack to the right (facing the crack) of the room where water dripped down.  It looked blind though I may not have inspected it as well as I would have had I not been getting drizzled on.  The next climb down to the right led to a small room.  To the left the passage was blocked by breakdown.  To the right you could climb down a little further and go through a very tight, awkward squeeze that required spiraling contortion to maneuver through.  Less than 40’ of crawling later we entered a standing room. 

Ahead, a stoopwalk-sized, circular tube continued to a terminus.  To the right there was a circular pit in the floor which dropped about 5 feet to water.  I free climbed down the to the water and peered under the ledge.  It seemed very obviously sumped.  Had I not been to the manhole before, I might have thought this was it.  However, to get to the manhole, Sean and I had gone down a pretty long crawlway and I distinctly remembered bellying down a long flowstone / rimstone slope before getting there.  We were still very near the Spiral Room.  There was evidence of at least one other visiting this area.  Somebody had dumped carbide near the climbdown to the sump. 

We exited and did a couple more crawlways one of which I really need to remember that I never want to do it again because it’s a very monotonous, army crawl which really sucks.  After exiting that I poked into a couple more holes and we decided to route.  I was a bit perplexed because what we found really resembled a manhole but it looked totally different than the manhole Sean and I had been to.  That manhole was a great disappointment to me.  It was in a small sitting passage where a short, muddy slope dropped 3’ into water.  A piece of webbing was rigged there. 

We routed back to the passage on the other side of the mountain room and visited Camp One, Grand Gypsum Canyon, Lost Formation Room, Helectites, and Speleothems before departing back to the back breaker.  We breaked briefly at the two standing areas in the backbreaker on our way out.  As I neared the entrance room, I noticed the very prominent sound of falling water.  It was much louder than when we entered.  Water poured in through a hole in the right wall and a dome to the left as we climbed out.  Many salamanders covered the roots below the gate as I keyed the lock and pushed open the gate up.  We were glad to see it was still light outside and that we’d missed all the rain.  The stream next to the entrance was flowing very well. 

After changing and starting a fire, Chris and I headed into Bedford.  We stopped by Avoca Spring Cave to check the water level.  It was pumping major water and probably about the highest I’ve seen it.  I knew we must have had a lot of rain while in the cave.  In Bedford, we ate at Casa Brava.  I had a Chicken Fajita which was ok (I’ve never been real impressed with that particular Mexican Restaurant).  After dinner, I dropped Chris back off and drove to Bloomington to meet Kyle and Erin.