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The first trip I went on was a dig in Wesley Chapel Gulf. It
required you to stand on your head and grope at two rocks that wouldn't permit
you to go down any further. You could drop a rock through a small hole and it
would fall down a rock slope below. We worked on it for a bit and I went to get
some webbing. By the time I'd got back out they had given up and thrown a glow
stick down into the hole. We went into Wesley Chapel Gulf cave with just our
coveralls on and waded through the water upstream searching each lead to the
right for the glow stick. It never turned up. I squeezed myself into a few fun
holes and saw a nice room with some formations I believe on our way out. Before
we exited I submerged up to my neck and cleaned my coveralls. The water didn't
feel all that cold.
The next day Bill led a through trip through EOC, aka Lost River. Guy came
along. We entered the original dig and soon found ourselves in the Found River
Passage. It was a very large borehole river passage. Bill showed us a well
casing coming through the cave from the white house near the gulf, where the
breakdown separated Elrod Cave and EOC, & then we went the other way down the
Found river passage. We went through Dark side of the moon which had many
potholes and lots of sharp rock projections sticking up from the floor. It
looked out of this world. We also saw the vortex which wasn't taking much water
that day. It consist of a crawlway room whose floor totally fills with water
and all drains into two large holes in the floor about the size of 2 steel
drums. It would be quite a site when the water was up. Then we got lost for
awhile and Bill drug us through some wet nasty crawlways. We finally
backtracked and made our way to Western Avenue, the largest passage in the
cave. It was huge. We walked down to a mud mountain (the only spot in the cave
with a first aid kit since its the only spot that doesn't flood). There was a
neat formation on top called the volcano. It had many rimstone dams at the top
and resembled a volcano. Guy was cold so we quickly exited the cave. Bill
managed to forget which passage to take out so we looked around a bit.
The next day we went to Critchfield Springs Cave. It requires you to go through
a wet bathtub type crawlway for 200 ft before opening up into a nice size canyon
passage (not quite as big as in Toliver Hollow). Our job was to survey a nasty
lead at the end of the canyon and through a 700' crawl. We were belly crawling
and surveying. It got even better when we encountered pools of water. Nate and
I scooped ahead and found the 3 x 2 passage turned into a 15 ft wide and less
then 1 ft high mud filled passage. The whole crawlway had excellent airflow and
it looked like it opened up to 2' again on the other side of the mud fill. This
cave drains the water from Toliver Hollow so its possible if this area was dug
and pushed a connection and a lot more cave could be found. Later that night
Nate, Mark, Bill, & I went to check out a cave on an Amish farm whose sink
floods and spits out water during a lot of rain. We climbed down 15 ft using a
rickety wooden ladder. The bottom of the sink allowed you to ear dip through a
water crawl or crawl to the right through water until you came across a descent
sized breakdown room with coon crab molding all over. This room yielded a 100'
belly crawl in sand. Finally, you pulled yourself out into a stream passage
where you got to crawl, stoop walk and even walk in water (sometimes chest deep
in water). It looked promising. The passage continued to get bigger and
then... It sumped. Its a nice cave though and Mark & I plan on surveying it
this weekend.
The next day we trekked about an hour into EOC to a promising lead on the
western edge of the cave. We had to squeeze through a upward sloping mud tube
to get around a near sump and then crawl and slide in slick mud. We finally
came to a low stream crawl where Nate pushed a near sump to pull tape thinking
he was going to find virgin passage. He found more passage but it was already
known and surveyed. We exited raccoon run into a pot holy jagged rock passage
and spent the next hour looking for the lead. Finally Bill uncovered it and we
dropped down a 10' slot and proceeded to the survey. The passage was decent
size. It was crawling and some walking and stoop walking. We surveyed 300
something feet and left. Nate was worn out because wearing a wetsuit takes a
lot of energy. |