Alan Cressler, Matt Kalch, Doug Strait, Manuel Beers

From Bo’s cave we ridgewalked up the ravine on the northwest side of Calloway Sinks to what was originally going to be Korn Cave.  A small 2’ wide x 1.5’ high, dug entrance descends to a 20’ crawlway where the passage cuts back under itself heading back to the left (looking in) of the entrance.  You’re now in a very small area with a low, dry streambed continuing left to breakdown.  To the right was the dig.  Manuel dug and dug and dug.  The passage was probably only 4” tall when he started but he worked it down rock by rock until his whole body slid in almost a body length. 

When his body was clear of the room, I did my best to enlarge my surrounding.  I broke off the flowstone cemented breakdown slope, knocked off rock projections from the ceiling, and worked more on the flowstone cemented rocks and dirt to enlarge the right side of the passage.  Eventually, Manuel made his way through and disappeared after determining it was big enough for me.  I disagreed and with only a sludge hammer to dig within a very confined area decided to head back out.  Twisting my right arm around in the cramped space was bothering my shoulder. 

I went back outside posing for a picture on the way out.  Then Alan and I ridgewalked the west side of the ravine along the Pennington Bangor contact.  I learned that the reason we see benches on the surface is because there’s a resistant rock layer there that isn’t easily eroded or dissolutioned.  We passed the Harzel bench on our hike up.  There was also a noticeably wide bench along the Pennington Bangor contact which Alan said is often caused by a prominent chert layer in this area.  He said that caves can form anywhere along the width of this bench. 

I asked if the deep caves in TAG usually started in the Pennington and he said that it didn’t.  They usually start at the Pennington Bangor contact and continue down through the Bangor.  On our ridgewalk we encountered quite a few sinks and a couple holes (one of which looked like a cave) that they needed to come back and check out later. 

We walked back to the cave and found that Matt and Manuel had pushed the upper limits but that the cave ended in breakdown.  Manuel determined that the cave wasn’t worthy of the name Korn Cave.  Alan offered up System of a Down cave but Manuel quickly rejected that name as well.  The came was finally called Rosy’s Jenga cave because of a balloon that said Rosy on it and because some aspect of the cave resembled the game Jenga. 

We packed up and routed back to the car.  Matt and I stood just behind the cab in the bed of the truck on the 4 mile ride back out.  It was quite enjoyable.  We stopped at the Tony Sinks parking area because Alan spotted a mushroom he wanted to photograph. 

That night, I felt sleepy again but refused to pull over and nap.  Instead, I pulled into a rest stop and got a Diet Coke which provided just enough pep to keep me going.  I arrived home between 1:15 and 1:30 AM EDT.  I think I went to bed around 2:00 AM EDT.