Allens Lost Cave

Allens Lost Cave

Nate Newkirk, Mark Kraus, Scott Fee, Sean Lewis, Justin Drake, Rob Serbent, Anmar Mirza, Dean Wiseman, Kevin Kulwicki, Spike Selig

The Discovery: November 29, 2002

Today Nate Newkirk, Mark Kraus, and I were checking Spike leads. We weren’t having much luck finding the right landowner and decided to find the owner on our own. We discovered who owned the property and Mark worked his magic.

We asked the owner if we could check out a spring on the property. Even though the proprietor said there were no caves on the property, the owner let us check the spring. I led us a bit astray, and we came across three springs and later a sink hole. At first it looked like a swallow hole. This was not what we were looking for, so I climbed higher up on the hill to orient myself. Mark soon joined me in the field above. We were about to set out in the correct direction but did not know where Nate was.

Mark and I yelled for Nate and began backtracking down to the sink hole where we found Nate upside down and poking his head into a small hole in the rocks. He said it looked like it opened up about three feet high at the bottom and there was cave there. I looked and agreed, took off my shirt because I didn't want to get it dirty, and proceeded to bring out two or three large rocks with a little dirt. After slightly crushing my finger, the hole was Brian size. I wriggled down into it backwards and was sitting shirtless in complete darkness. I could not feel any walls! I yelled to Nate to give me the spotlight but he said he was coming down too. As I waited for Nate, I grabbed a couple rocks. I threw one straight ahead and it hit the wall quickly and glanced off. I threw one to my left and after a brief pause, I heard the rock hit and rustle down a slope. I yelled and there was a booming echo; I was getting excited. I threw another rock and it, too, flew through the air and landed what seemed to be many feet away. I yelled to Nate to hurry up. Finally, Nate squirmed through and shone the spotlight. Hell Yeah! It was massive!

Nate and I were sitting on top of a slope at the beginning of borehole 43' wide and 25' feet tall. We whooped and hollered and yelled for Mark to get down. Mark knew we had found something great and tried to squeeze down but didn't quite fit. After we freed him, he told us to scoop, and handed me his LED light. The passage continued on retaining its size. We climbed twenty feet down the slope to a stream and followed it upstream. We scooped almost 500 feet of walking passage with a small LED light, a large strobe light, and I didn't even have a shirt on. We had definitely found a big cave. Nate and I turned around at a large room with large walking passage continuing above and a stream crawl below. We went back and wormed our way out of the hole to tell Mark the great news.

The Scoop

After going back to talk to the owner, the three of us geared up and hiked back to the cave. We decided to go ahead and scoop it to make sure it was virgin and therefore unmapped. First we had to make the entrance large enough for Mark. I spent a fair amount of time wrestling a very large, heavy rock.

While we traversed the cave, we paid close attention to the floor and walls looking for any sign of visitation. We saw nothing. There was no graffiti, footprints, or trash. Nobody had ever entered this cave before. Our sense of smell told us who’d been inhabiting the cave, raccoons.

We proceeded to check out the whole cave. We walked upstream from Allens Avenue past Mini Mountain and Raccoon Junction, and begin stoop walking as we approached the Pebble Pool. We glimpsed a water crawl continuing to the right, but after thirty feet a large rock blocked the passage.

We walked back to Raccoon Junction and I climbed into an upper level lead. This passage was bone dry and had gypsum, crystals, and helectites. I followed the passage for about 500 feet. One spot required a rather tight six foot long squeeze. The passage was fairly easy to traverse. I first crawled but was later able to stoop walk some of the time. The passage widened as I pushed farther. I turned around where a large rock blocked the passage near the Slime Room. There was an easy dig there with passage continuing on the other side.

Next we checked the other in-feeder into the main stream. There was an upper level stoop-walk and a lower crawlway. Mark and I spotted Nate as he traversed across an exposed sloping ledge into the upper level. Mark took the crawlway and I quickly traversed the sloping ledge to catch up with Nate. The upper passage was mostly walking. We reached a connection to the lower level and waited for Mark to catch up in the crawlway below. We slid down to the lower stream and climbed back up another slope into the upper passage. Mark stopped where we had to chimney across another drop into the lower level. I belly crawled ahead and was rewarded with a very large room, the Black Hole. Dean Wiseman later called this room a tension dome and thought the divide between the St. Louis and St. Genevieve limestone could be viewed here. Most of the room’s floor funnels into the lower level.

I traversed to the right side across the breakdown ledge and saw a reflection up ahead. At first I thought it was a caver who had his Petzl Duo turned off hunching behind some rocks. I yelled out "Hello" many times with no response. Then I realized there were two green eyes staring at me. They moved from side to side as I called to it. I yelled back to Nate to hurry up because there was an animal. He yelled that he didn't think coming up there was a good idea because it might attack. I yelled some more and the eyes disappeared. I led on because no animal was going to scare me from scooping. At first I thought it might be a coyote because the crap we'd seen in that room was pretty massive for a coon. On the other side of the room there was a slot that went down twenty feet to water level with no way to get down.

We stoop-walked and crawled ahead through the upper level. I remembered Spike telling me that raccoons go straight for your face when they attack, but this didn’t worry me too much since I expected it was more afraid of us and had hidden somewhere. We came into Brian’s Borehole and begin walking again in large, breakdown strewn passage until reaching a terminus where large breakdown rocks blocked the passage. I could see going crawlway on the other side.

On the way back to Mark I checked out another two side leads. One lead looped back and the other was a very low, slimy, belly crawl in water. Once reunited with Mark we headed back out to Raccoon Junction and ventured into the last unchecked lead.

It turned out to be a 368 feet long stoop-walk to crawlway to walking passage with many formations. We named this section Pristine Palace. It led us back to a balcony overlooking Allens Avenue. There was a very steep twenty foot, nearly-vertical drop back down to the stream level. Nate went down and I went back out the crawlway. We had satisfied ourselves that nobody had ever been in this cave before. When we got out, we made plans with the owner to begin surveying the next day.

First Survey: November 30, 2002

Today Mark Kraus, Nate Newkirk, Scott Fee, and I went back into the cave to survey. One of Scott’s first remarks was that the entrance passage really was as large as we’d told him it was on the phone. He was impressed. We spent five and a half hours surveying 1,306 feet through Allens Avenue back to the Pebble Pool and then looping back through Pristine Palace.

Campout: December 14, 2002

Today I met Nate Newkirk. It was very cold outside and was supposed to get even colder that night but we didn’t care because we were camping in the cave. We hauled our gear back to the dry upper level passage between Raccoon Junction and Mini Mountain.

We spent most of the day taking pictures and then went to work on a couple constrictions. Back near the Slime Room, I quickly dug into more passage. It was a very tight squeeze but we soon came to a very wide and long crawling room. The in-feeder to this room S’ed around and quickly became too tight. We found the Extension past Pebble Pool by hammering through some chalky rock adding a couple hundred feet of water crawl to the cave. Nate found a neat worm living in a spider web near Mini Mountain. It folded back upon itself as it maneuvered around the web.

That night, I was careful not to roll over since raccoon droppings were nearby. Both of us noticed that when you would wake up the cave would be dead silent for a second and then the sound of the constantly, running water would come rushing back into your mind. The next day we surveyed 550 feet ending at the Slime Room.

Brief Survey: January 12, 2003

Today I met Dean Wiseman, Mark Kraus, Nate Newkirk, and Sean Lewis. We split into two teams. Nate and I begin down Slippery Slides, a very narrow and winding passage which required a few contortions. Mark, Dean, and Sean begin surveying the wet crawlway entering Raccoon Junction. Nate and I soon met back with them and borrowed Sean to survey the upper level passage between Black Hole and Raccoon Junction while Dean and Mark mapped the other way. In total we surveyed 586 feet.

The Long Day: January 25, 2003

Today Anmar Mirza, Sean Lewis, Justin Drake, Kevin Kulwicki, and Rob Serbent got together to continue the survey and do a bit of blasting. I sent Anmar in with Sean to show him the rock we needed to blast at the end of Brians Borehole and then Rob and I begin surveying from Black Hole and through Brian’s Borehole. Upon entering the borehole, Anmar yelled back to tell us when he was setting off the blast. He then came back and surveyed with us until the fumes had cleared. Sean, Kevin, and Justin had continued surveying the lower wet crawlway and tied off in the Black Hole Room. By the time they’d caught up with us, I had already dug through into unexplored passage. It looked good at first, and then I dropped down about ten feet and the passage pinched. We’d added a whopping twenty five feet to the cave. Sean, Justin, and I surveyed this section, ate lunch, and looped the survey back towards Brians Borehole with Kevin. Then Sean, Justin and I spent an eternity surveying much of Wet Way nearly back to the Black Hole. It was dark when we exited the cave; we’d been underground for ten hours. Our total footage for the day was 1,293 feet.

Final Mop-up: May 31, 2003

It took awhile to get back to the cave but I finally got Nate to come back. We had quite a bit of mop-up to do and I was determined not to leave the cave until we were done. We picked up the survey where we’d left off near the Slime Room, and surveyed the dry crawlway back through the Mud Desert. We than surveyed the worst passage in the cave mopping up two short, windy, and low sections of Wet Way. After that, it felt like we’d done our day’s work, but we had one more passage to finish. I was glad to see that the water was lower in the Extension this time because I recalled getting soaked during our push trip. I was already chilled. We slowly wormed our way through fifteen foot rock slot and continued to map another couple hundred feet of rather wet crawlway. We’d reached the previous end, and we were finally done. To my dismay, Nate pushed ahead a little farther by slowly inching along the edge of the room while submerged in water. He said it opened back up again into a wet crawlway but ended in a sump ahead. Nate had put a wetsuit on earlier so he measured the last 87 feet. The extension explained why the passage we’d surveyed first that day widened about halfway back. The water must have long ago been pirated to the Extension and then later left that passage all together for a lower route. When exiting the cave, I was so glad to see daylight again that I missed something on my way up. I soon heard a bellowing scream and popped my head back into the entrance room. I had walked right by a hidden Spike on my way out. Nate hadn’t seen him either and Spike snuck within a foot of Nate before screaming and scaring the hell out of Nate. I thought that I’d stepped on Nate’s hand on my way out.

Mark, Nate, and I were ecstatic to be surveying another large cave so soon after finishing Redman. The cave taped in at 4,284 feet with 44 feet of vertical extent. We’d seen abundant evidence of raccoons populating the cave. Scott Fee told us he’d seen a blind fish during his trip. A few bats were also seen. The cave has been declared closed by the owner and the entrance has been blocked upon the owner’s request.

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