Surveying tiny passage

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Re: Surveying tiny passage

Postby Chads93GT » May 10, 2013 9:21 pm

My teams carry short wooden dowel rods with small lights attached to them to set stations. They will back through. All the way. And shoot back sites. Pull tape. And set stations. Back crawling 500' sucks. But we've done it. What sucks for me on book is I have to back out of said passage when t dead ends while the lead guy gets to crawl forward.

It all depends on how accurate you want your survey. Sometimes good enough is good enough.
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Re: Surveying tiny passage

Postby GroundquestMSA » May 10, 2013 10:35 pm

Ya'll must be tougher than us. This cave has since 1950 something been visited many times by cavers from Ohio grottos. None of them were able (or willing) to push it frontwards.
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Re: Surveying tiny passage

Postby Chads93GT » May 10, 2013 11:36 pm

If you map a tight passage you can't turn around in you are going to have to back out anyway. May as well have one person I backwards ao they can crawl forwards to get out. Not all tight passages lead to a entrance do you have no option but to back out. We always have our smallest guy push those passages first.
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Re: Surveying tiny passage

Postby GroundquestMSA » May 11, 2013 9:43 am

In this case we have a turnaround spot very near the sink entrance. We aren't going to survey until the sump dries up some anyway so we can either turn around and come out, or hopefully push all the way through. The initial exploration was quite scary since we pushed past a lot of nasty stuff that we sure didn't want to back out of. That's probably the only reason we went as long as we did, to find a spot to turn around.

Scott McCrea wrote:What VA county are you in? I can help with dome climbing or at least hook up with cavers that can.
firemedic1015 wrote:VA bolt climb? I'm in! When do you want to do it.


The dome is in Tazewell Co. I'll have to talk to the owner before turning the pros loose on the climb, but I'll certainly let you guys know if it's a go. I'm taking some lights with better spots in next time we survey so I can try to get a look at the top of this thing.

Scott- You still poking about Russell Co? I tried and tried but never talked to Christie. I'd like to get into that area a bit more.
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