Binkley Update

[SinkholePlain]

A hardcore team of five returned to the Never Say Never Passage in Binkley via the short cut opened earlier this year. Even with the short cut, which requires a low ear-dripper type belly crawl to reach the base of the Great Pit and then a 25 foot rope climb to the upper level, the trip is over 3 hours one way to the start of the survey. Dividing into 2 teams they added 616.2 feet of new survey plus resurveyed about 85 feet of the Never Say Never Passage to accurately place the entrance to the crawl they would be surveying into. Slim Tim McClain had reconned this passage on a trip a few months back.
After completing their survey for the day, the team was able to cross a pit on a ledge, which Dave Everton had dug the mud off of to allow them to safely traverse .. Beyond the pit, they discovered a large 40 foot high dome room that could possibly connect to passages above beyond "The Ripper" above Grand Falls. Rand Heazlitt and Tim Pride then scooped about 800 feet of stoopway and spacious hands and knees passage that continues on from where they turned around. Chris Bell traversed another 400-500 feet of virgin cave off the big dome room in the opposite direction. The stoopway could be a very significant lead as it heads northward into the heart of a big void in the middle of a five mile loop down on the stream level.
Since the re-opening and connecting of Guy Stover's Pit into the Binkley system earlier this year, it has become readily apparent what the Dog and Herr Gar, lead ISS cavers of the previous generation believed to be true, that there was lots of undiscovered upper level above the many miles of stream level cave. The re-opening of Guy stover's and its connection to Blowing Hole Boulevard found from a dome in Chuck's Sewer Tube in the Strike Section of Binkley in 2010 gives Binkley another large upper level trunk well over a mile in length. The updated length of Binkley is now 26.446 miles with the additional 7.00 miles in Blowing Hole the system is now over 33 miles. It appears now that a 50 mile long cave system in Indiana is not out of the question some day in the future. They team exited the cave after a 12-13 hour round trip.

[Scott McCrea]

[JR-Orion]

Great news.



I've read the Binkleys book and it sounds like an amazing cave.

[self-deleted_user]

Awesome! That is one cave I want to see someday, I just keep not being able to go on the weekends I have set for it! Maybe later fall will have better time =) I've been looking at the huge maps of it....wowwwww

Congrats! I love reading all the updates :)

[nathanroser]

Awesome, that puts it pretty close to being one of the 10 longest caves in the U.S. What else could that connect with to make a 50 mile system?

[caveflower]

I love Binkley Cave.

some, that puts it pretty close to being one of the 10 longest caves in the U.S. What else could that connect with to make a 50 mile system?

Well there's Blowing Hole about 7 miles long. We've been working on that one for about two years trying to conect it to Binkleys several leads are with in feet. Then there's Miller cave not sure how long it is. We just conected it with Guy Stover pit Cave. Just under a mile. OMG! So many leads we could work for another 50 years and never see it all.

[nathanroser]

I heard about the Guy Stover connection a few months back, but has Binkley actually connected with Blowing Hole yet or does it just look like the connection passage is coming closer to being discovered?

[SinkholePlain]

Blowing Hole Boulevard in Binkley crosses over a passage in Blowing Cave. The vertical separation is probably about 35-40 feet, but it under a huge breakdown room in Binkley-Big Bone Mountain. A small stream in Blowing Hole Boulevard of Binkley exits just before Big Bone Mountain. There is almost for sure an airflow and water flow connection of this stream with the waterfall in Flowstone Falls Dome of Blowing Hole. However breakdown on both ends currently stops connection. It is long haul for shaving equipment to work on either end. However some day if another connection isn't found, some of the project hardcore will take on the project of making the connection here. With Binkley 26.446 and Blowing Hole 7.00 a connection here now would put cave at 33.5 miles. Miller's with about.25 miles is with a few feet of connecting too. There appears to be nothing that will keep the cave from eventually reaching 40 miles with some work. 50 miles is more problematic but probably will happen sometime in the next 100 years of caving.

[nathanroser]

That's excellent, you guys are really pushing an untouched frontier.

[CaverScott]

[wyandottecaver]

Also,

Upstream Blowing hole still has good going passage at the far frontier that could easily add thousands of feet. Its just not getting the attention with good binkly's leads that are easier to reach. I also still think there is an excellent chance for more passage in downsream blowing, but it will take work....