Paradise Lost Cave
The next morning we got up around 9 and drove over to the Wyandotte parking lot where we said hi to the CHUG grotto. We packed our stuff and headed over to Paradise Lost. I had hoped that someone would have updated this point but soon learned that no one had. We had previously decided that for caves in TAG we’d make sure to have verified GPS points and a verbal description. I guess we’ll need to implement that for Indiana too. I also determined that I would need to start writing in the ICS database comments that I’d updated the GPS point so that others would know the point was taken recently. I wondered how many of Indiana’s GPS-ed cave points were taken when the government limited GPS accuracy. Seems like many points are more than 200’ off. Tymme and I scoured the hillside for quite some time before Tymme happened upon the entrance. We now had an hour before we were supposed to meet the others but decided we’d at least see some of the cave. I rigged the rope at the entrance and climbed down the first climb down, crawled and chimneyed down the second climb down. The rope just made it to the bottom of the short 22’ pit. From here, Todd’s directions were helpful. We crawled into passage to our left, did a short climb down and followed the ledge to the left into more passage. We were trying to get into the big room but only caught glimpses of it from ledges that were too steep to climb down. I had worn my T-shirt and jeans and was quickly learning that the cave was very slimy.
After checking out a few different passages it was time to turn back. We exited the cave 10 minutes before 1:00 PM. I only had a T-shirt on and I was sweating inside the cave. It was even warmer outside. We quickly hiked down the hill and down the valley pausing to GPS a very noticeable cave entrance along the dry stream bed. We climbed back up to the parking lot where Sean was waiting. I think the same thing was on all of our minds; It’s November!!! It’s not too often you can hike around without a shirt on in November. Anyway, I knew to check my cell phone to see how late Brandon was going to be. He was in Milltown stuck behind some slow moving vehicles so we walked down to tour the entrance room of Wyandotte. Brandon arrived soon after we got back to the parking lot and we were faced with a lack of water problem. I was already quite dehydrated. Brandon had brought 3 Nalgenes but that wasn’t quite enough. Sean drove down and filtered some water from Wyandotte Lake while the rest of us drove to the parking area. Continue to Copperhead Pit
By Brian Killingbeck © 2005
