by Extremeophile » Jan 30, 2011 11:17 am
I got some help from the forum and other friends to put together a pretty amazing trip so I thought I'd post a trip report.
Roger Harris (Boulder, CO) and I (Littleton, CO) flew to Nashville on Dec 30 and drove up to the Hamilton Valley Research Center - home of the CRF eastern operations at Mammoth Cave. We spent the evening looking at maps and telling exagerated caving stories. In the morning I led Roger and Tom Brucker on my first trip to Carlos Way. This is a map sheet in the northern most part of Mammoth Ridge. Bob Gulden had produced an excellent map of the area based on survey conducted in the mid 70's, but much of this needed to be resurveyed, and there were over a hundred leads left to be explored. I had recently volunteered to take over cartography of the mapsheet and this was the first trip to the area. We had a productive day, setting 68 stations and surveying just over 2000'.
On Saturday (Jan 1) I led Rick Toomey and Bill Steele back out to Carlos Way where we continued the effort and added another 46 stations for about 1,400'.
Roger and I had to get up early on Sunday (3am) so I could take Roger to the Nashville airport for his flight back to Denver. After dropping Roger off around 5:30 I decided to head to Chattanooga and find a cave trip. I got off US24 at South Pittsburg and found a had a voicemail from Peter Morgan. They had gone to Mystery Falls the previous day but found it flooded from recent rains, and were tentatively planning to visit Valhalla today around noon. I decided to head to Neversink and do a warmup before meeting Peter and his group of friends. I hiked up to Neversink, and did two laps rappelling and climbing. I derigged and headed back to the car where I got a voicemail from Peter that they were already headed to Valhalla. When I got to the SCCi property the gate had been left open by the hunting club, so I started up the road. My rental car only made it about a mile before the road became too rough so I hiked the remaining distance. I got to the pit as Peter and his wife Jane were finishing their first lap in the pit. There was a pretty good group of about 10 cavers from Chattanooga and northern GA. I was able to do 4 laps in Valhalla and then caught I ride back to my rental car.
I then drove to McMinville and met Bill Walter at his house. He and his wife Chris gave me a place to stay for the night and fed me an amazing breakfast. In the morning we fed Bill's cattle and then met a group at Blue Spring Cave. I went with Anne Ellmore and Bill out to the old F survey to improve on the original sketch. Anne's sons Matt and Clinton went with Marion O. Smith to work on a dig site. The dig didn't amount to much so MOS joined us soon after. We resurveyed a little over 700' of mostly borehole passage before heading out.
A pretty memorable 4 days of caving in Mammoth Cave, Neversink, Valhalla and Blue Spring. Surveyed over 4000' and did over 1200' of vertical.
Thanks to the CRF and TAG cavers for their amazing hospitality.
Derek