Cavechat.org

Last Saturday Dave Everton, Rand Heazlitt and Nick Benton returned to the frontier of Blowing Hole to continue the main stream survey. It over a 3 mile trip up river in deep water through the Moisturizer and finally the Super Saturator to reach the start of the survey. They added about 1300 feet of survey from the Black Break Room. At this point, they had been in the cave over 8 hours and decided to check ahead a little before heading out. They quickly entered a really nice canyon that Dave named "Clean Washed Way". After 6-700 feet and a nice big dome they broke out into 30-40 foot wide walking bore. They scooped ahead for a couple thousand feet in the easiest shallowest water of the entire cave. They passed numerous leads including several major walking junctions or splits. They turned around in going big passage. The current survey shows they are within 1300 feet of the entrance to Miller's Cave so they have certainly passed by or under Miller's. The next goal will be to find a connection and a shortcut to the borehole eliminating 3.5 miles each way and 4 hours one way travel time. Blowing Hole Cave is now 6.03 miles in length and appears headed possibly for 10 miles. If a connection can be made to nearby Binkley Cave 24.23 miles, it could be a 35-40 mile long cave system in another year. Just the weekend before a nice upper level passage was found of Chuck's Sewer Tube in Strike Section of Binkley using a 5 section scaling pole. This passage is near the closest approach of Binkley and Blowing Hole Caves. No survey has yet been made in the new upper level.

Gary Roberson
ISS

That had to be a thrilling experience. Congratulations.

Is this the Blowing Cave I may have visited at the '07 Convention? Small entrance, scramble thru breakdown jumble to a tight spot, eventually popping into stream passage and ginormous borehole?

Scott,

you are almost certainly talking about Breathing Hole Cave. It's ok, I have swapped the names by accident myself and have been in both caves frequently. Breathing Hole was a semi-popular destination during Convention and the scene of a quiet "rescue" at the tight spot. I know of no trips to Blowing Hole in 07' as at that time none of the major breakthroughs had occured.

Blowing is right next to a major creek on private property. Breathing is on a hillside in the State Forest. The easiest way to tell is water. If you were in mostly shallow water and lots of dry cave you were in Breathing. If you were in a wetsuit and often almost swimming you were in Blowing :) And yes, Breathing Hole and Blowing both have ginormous passage in places :)

Ahh, Breathing Hole. That's right. Thanks, Todd. Blowing sounds like a great cave tho.

Breathing Hole...Blowing Hole......follow the air...

Phil Winkler wrote:That had to be a thrilling experience. Congratulations.

I was lucky enough to be one of the three cavers on this trip. The potential this cave system has is absurd! Although virgin cave is commonly discovered on just about a monthly basis in Binkley and Blowing Hole, the magnitude of what we got into last weekend is unparalleled. Unless we can open up another entrance, current trips to the frontier are 12-13 hours at minimum. Most of the time you are walking/stumbling/swimming/eardipping/crawling through water, but if it were easy caving, it would have been found and surveyed long ago.

Nick