Anybody want to go to Webster?

[worldnaut]

Dave Everton and I are heading up a trip to Webster on Saturday, December 30th. I thought that since it's during the holidays, some people who've been wanting to make a trip to Webster might be a little more free on that date. Our planned objective is to return to Marathon Crawl and continue survey and exploration in the direction of the Briar Hole/Van Lahr Sink passages. Last time we were there we did a leap frog survey and 5 of us surveyed 1160 feet in about 4 hours.

Our survey ended where a virgin low airspace belly crawl branched off to the left and the main passage continued on at a bearing of about 220 degrees. I did not explore ahead any on that day, (semi concerned about thunderstorms) so I have no idea how much of the main passage remains.

Chris always described MC as 2-3 thousand feet long but I think that's his memory from a single trip down the passage 20 years ago without wetsuits. The intriguing thing about that area is the airflow coming from the upstream section of Briar Hole cave where the waterfall from Certain Death in Van Lahr sink comes in.

Our survey ended less than 300 feet from the downstream sump of Briar Hole but if the main MC trunk continues another 1000 feet or so we're going to be very close to the upstream area of Briar Hole cave. I guess I wouldn't be surprised if the low airspace belly crawl doesn't end up being the downstream continuation of the Briar Hole downstream sump.

Anyway, if any of this sounds fun to anybody out there, mark your calendar and come on down. As always, the field house (with our new kerosene heater) will be open the night before if your coming from a distance that precludes an early morning departure. If MC is a little too far out for you, lots of other easier side passages are still waiting to be added to the map as well, although using Easy and Webster in the same sentence is somewhat of an oxymoron.

Here's some links from our last trip to MC on 06/10/06. One caveat. The line plot in the trip report is now seriously outdated, lacking all of the survey that's been done in Briar Hole cave beyond the first pair of tight spots.

http://www.caves.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1950&sid=37b5919add7e923d39b7180436d7685e

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTii8doODeI

[JonSidneyB]

Tell David that Jon says Hi.

[worldnaut]

Will do. Has he invited you to Webster? We're always looking for new victims...,, uh, I mean cavers. ;-)