I guess I'm hoping for more ideas here. I am a member of the MKC (MI Karst Conservancy) and was up there earlier this week as I had friend from TAG visiting and we were doing the fun MI stuff up in the UP, included a stop-off at the cave. Which, I was excited about as there were some holes I had been wanting to check out, but never could, as we were always taking through large groups of geology undergrad students. I had asked Tim (who has been doing these trips for the last 10-ish years) if these holes had ever been checked out and he basically shrugged "i dunno I don't think so".
I have been told there is a survey for the cave, but have not been able to get my hands on it despite repeated requests. Considering they are always saying it is 640meters I'm guessing it has been surveyed at some point at least to some extent probably back in 1987 when they acquired the property it is on.
But the other day...one of these holes was simply a higher crawl about 15 ft that popped back into the main route (it was about a 10 ft climb up, probably why no one uses it hahaha) The other though was more of a crack not far from the main entrance. David (my friend from TAG) couldn't get into it, but after taking off my outer jacket I was able to. I went in a bit more than my body length (it stayed very tight, and was a downward sloping crevace that got smaller at the bottom) so because the only way I could get in further was putting weight on the smaller area which just had small "breakdown" loose rocks I was worried about them slipping and getting a foot/leg caught or something, and being too far in to have any help to get me out and very far away from any additional help so I didn't push it further than about 10 ft but I could see a good 20-30 ft still ahead before it bent too much out of my line of sight. It did look like the further in the more open it got overall.
Considering I've *asked* about this hole before and no one knew, I'm guessing no one has gone in there before.
But I'd like to somehow find out for sure. From whom I've seen of the MKC, there are probably 2-4 others who could make it into the crack (if they cared enough to check it out, the 2-4 I know of don't cave anymore to my knowledge) but at least if some peeps were around who *could* get in there I'd totally push it.
me up in the crevice
David was able to pass me the camera after that shot and I took the best I could get looking forward...it's really hard to gather depth/scale from the picture but it goes as I said...