Second Trip, January 31, 1987 A continuing story on Exploring a Tennessee Cave
We added the following to our survey team: John Huggins, Bill Luchring, Jack Pace and Jeffrey Smith.
We started climbing up at the point where Roger and John found the bypass on the last trip. Finding that the passage continued to the southeast and up with pits and a large upper room very high in the cave we named this The Upper Room. There was a walking lead at the back and one lead going down which was pushed by Jack and Buddy, it would be 1995 before we would map this lead!
On the way back down, we mapped a high passage going northwest through the best formation room found so far in the cave. A passage behind several large columns continued about 100 feet with soda straws covering the ceiling. The length of the cave was now 3,729 feet long.
A nice treat at the end of each trip to this cave was a catfish dinner just down the road, we would change clothes and just walk the mile to the restaurant! They have large ponds where they raise the catfish. The ponds are feed with water from another cave system.
Third Trip, February 20. 1988
Buddy Davis, Mark Gramlich, Roger Garratt and myself returned to push the southeast end of the cave as mapping indicated it as the best possible way for the cave to continue. We brought a rubber raft to try and avoid getting so wet in the entrance stream passage. We wadded in to the dry area at the first room with the two rock columns and inflated the raft. We could not quite reach both sides of the passage at the same time, so it was difficult to push our way up the stream. Near the end of the deepest section the raft brushed against the sharp rocks and started to leak air. On the return trip out it was useless, we gave up on the raft idea and just decided to tough it out on future trips. You are only in the water for the first and last 20 minutes of each trip and if you can keep to the sides in the shallow area you only get wet to the crouch, slip or step in the middle and your wet to the waist!
On reaching Davis Pit, the pit with the stream, several leads were checked to find a way around. One hole just prior to the pit lead to the bottom and a short upstream passage ended with the stream flowing from under a rock wall. Down stream was blocked at the pits edge. Finding no easy way around the pit, Buddy edged his way out onto the sloping ledge that went around the right side of the pit up a steep slope and over a lip revealed that to the left went down to the stream that was flowing across Davis Pit. This was very dangerous and on future trips we carried rope to use as a safety line in order to keep form falling down the 10 foot pit. This stream was much smaller than the one flowing out of the cave and the passage ended shortly with water dripping from the ceiling. We returned in 1993 to map a 300 foot side passage from this stream passage.
Back at Davis Pit we climbed up to the right into a passage that continued with easy walking about 200 feet to the top edge of a large room with rock sliding down to a good size stream. We decided that we must be back at the main stream level and wondered how much cave we had passed up.
Off to the left of this room was a large, lower room with crystals on the walls and floor, we named it the Gypsum Room. After a short investigation we decided to save it for another trip. This was turning out to be a major cave with 4,343 feet mapped and many leads waiting to be checked.
Fourth Trip, March 26, 1988
John Wallace was back with us, as he was unable to make the previous trip. I had been caving with John from the 70's, we meet at one of the Dogwood City Grotto meetings in Atlanta. I had contacted the Grotto after a trip to Alabama in which we wasted a half day looking for a cave that I do not think existed. However that stirred up a new interest in caving and I wanted to see more wild caves. I caved with John about every month for almost 20 years before he was killed in an unfortunate auto accident. John encourage me to continue my cave map programing, that was a gift that he had, encouraging everyone he came into contact with to work hard at what they loved to do.
Before climbing down the rock slide, we mapped the large room to the left and found large paw marks on the mud walls in sets of four as if a large animal had been trapped.
At the back of a side lead off this room, John pushed a crawl with sticks and surface debris. This is named John's Push on the map and could be checked later for a possible connection to a known cave on the side of the hill that we were caving in.
Returning to the rock slide, we mapped down to the stream flowing under a ledge. At the south end of the room was a small pool containing several small fish. They did not appear to be blind, as they would try to hide from the light behind our boots. The passage continued on to the southeast, we took the upper level with the survey and Roger followed staying in the lower passage.
Blood Passage was named for several red formations about halfway through this long, narrow passage. The lower level turned out to be a walking size dry stream bed. Again, we reached a junction, mapped the left lead to low crawls and returned to verify that the right lead continued for another trip. The survey totaled 5,910 feet and the cave was still going! There are some very long caves in the southeast, however most caves are under a mile in length, we were very excited to be exploring over a mile of cave and still going.
On the way out Buddy and I checked a lead going down between the pit and the breakdown. This led to the stream with a possible connection and a good walking lead going up stream.
I started caving in the 1970's and joined the National Speleological Society, local caving clubs and several survey clubs in the southeastern United States. I am also the autrur of a cave mapping software called CAPS, which is available on my web site.
For more information on caves and caving in the southeast, and the complete article with pictures, Please visit my web site at:
