We took a bit of a detour on our way to Equality Cave, Illinois. The mileage stated on the sign early on was 2 miles off but we eventually pulled beside an old, condemned church next to 3 caver trucks. Of course Kyle Lapczynski and I had to tour the inside of the church. The interior looked crazy. There were books strewn about, the floor buckled up in waves, light shone through holes in the roof, and a decrepit piano sat against one wall. Despite it's mottled, weathered appearance, it still played which Kyle demonstrated with his foot not wanting to touch the deformed keys. We toured the other room with a less stable roof and a mucky floor and then walked back outside.
After gearing up, we soon spotted the trailhead to the right of several junk cars. The trail paralleled a local residence and started uphill. After a short walk, I spotted a very obvious sink hole and cave entrance on the right side of the trail. I extracted my camera gear and hid my pack uphill. After a couple entrance shots, we crawled into Equality Cave. The passage soon opened into a canyon and almost immediately I spotted several off shooting, side passages. We continued straight ahead on the slightly muddy floor following walking passage when possible. My mental image of the cave soon shattered. The exploration involved much more scrambling than I'd pictured. Balancing my two dry boxes and tripod proved tricky at times especially when climbing up or down slick slopes and traversing uneven floors. This section of cave had a distinct, jumbled, breakdown, canyon look. The walls weren't really breakdown but the irregularity of the projecting rocks and passage walls gave the cave a very disorganized look. As we traversed canyons and crawlways continually branched off the main passage. Eventually, we reached a room with a rebel flag and climbed into an upper level and crawled around slowly completing a loop. We tried climbing to the left of the flag and looped back around through a crawlway, narrow squeeze , and climb down. Through this section appeared mazelike, route finding remained straight forward. Everything seemed to branch and loop back to the walking route. We routed back toward the entrance and stopped to take a couple pictures at junk junction.
Then we walked back to the entrance area and I hid my photo gear near a recognizable stick across the passage. After that, we started on in a north easterly direction following much more defined, dry canyon passage. Again, passages split off to the right and the left but we maintained a north eastern direction eventually turning more east. We only crawled once. We did chimney a fair amount as the cave lost elevation and teh narrow canyons deepened. I really enjoyed this part of the cave. We reached an end and tried another passage which looped around to the end again. We could have probably found another passage but I felt we had traversed far enough from the entrance. Kyle led back and did an excellent job. As we neared the entrance, I took the lead and soon saw outside light. I grabbed my well hidden photo gear and we exited the cave and ate a snack. We then hiked down to our cars and I led to Lusk Canyon. To Lusk Creek Canyon
Equality Cave
Kyle poses just within the entrance of Equality Cave.
Kyle and Erin pose in the the crazy, jumbled, mazelike passage inside Equality Cave.
Equality Cave
Kyle Lapczynski presents Junk Junction.
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Equality Cave
More Kyle poses inside Equality Cave.
More Kyle poses inside Equality Cave.
Equality Cave
Kyle and Erin pose back-to-back on a rock ledge.
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