Zicafoose Trip Report

[cavescom]

Trip Date: 7-21-2007
Trip Participants: Mark Passerby, Keith Sweeney, Lee Passerby
Trip Time: 15 hours
Zicafoose Map Book: http://www.cavediggers.com/zicmap.pdf
Trip Photos below...

Lee and I headed down to WV from Michigan on Friday and got to the entrance of Zic by about 11 p.m. We set up camp and crashed for the night.
Keith showed up bright and early on Saturday and we were off and running in Zic to check out a few "leads" on the route to and near Camp 3 the most important of which is near HI304. I thought this area may be the source of the wind and wanted to check it out a bit more thoroughly. We knocked a few leads off the list on the route to Camp 3 and arrived at HI304. Keith was able to push past a rock where Bob had stopped on an earlier trip and soon realized that the passage had looped back around to known cave.

We then checked a lower passage below HI304 which yielded a fantastic small pool now named "snowball pool" because of the white snowballs found in it. This passage though soon looped back around to known cave.

The wind was very clearly coming from Camp 3 and beyond and is just circulating down through HI304 and through the other lower lead. So we now are down the lead list to the bolt climb at the end of the cave......which by the way is now complete thanks to an earlier trip by Keith and Bob!

The bolt climb successfully reached the top of about a 60'+ wall and yielded 2 leads both of which will require extra rope. The first is a 40' drop down to a continuation of the main passage(see illustration 1 below) ,which is blocked at HI356 by a massive 50' pile of breakdown. The second is a ceiling channel that continues on the other side of the window overlooking the 40' drop.

A Camp trip is being planned to map and continue on in this section soon.

Illustration 1


Camp


Entrance


Lee Passerby


One of the thousands of gypsum flowers on the route to Camp 3


Ceiling covered with pretties


Fantastic display


Keith and Lee in route to Camp 3


Mark and Lee taking a break


Mark Passerby, Cavediggers.com

[GypsumWolf]

Cool report. How much wind is moving? Is the wind the main reason for pushing this cave? (I'm not very familiar with why this seems to be a significant cave).

[cavescom]

Big volumes of air that when constricted are really impressive....the cave is 3.6 miles long but I think there is many many more miles buried in the hill and if it were to reach Freelanders Well hmmmm see this zoomable map http://www.cavediggers.com/zoomify it may well be the deepest in the State...but we will see.
If you zoom in on the aerial photo you will see a dividing line down the valley...everything to the left drains to one spring on the west side and everything on the right drains to a spring on the east.....there is a layer of shale called the Taggard shale that divides the two cave systems however there are places where this shale is squeezed out and broken up....here is the kicker all the holes in the bottom of the valley which drains to the west spring move big big air out(in summer) and everything on the hill that drains to the East spring sucks air(in summer). The two systems may not be hydrologically connected but the air is and if we tie them together it could be a major cave albeit with one entrance and little hope for another...i.e. everything has been checked double checked dug on and cried on and Zic seems to be our only way up into the areas where we are heading......
The current end of the cave is "Senate Hall" a massive passage with a tiny stream, big air and the feel that it may break open.

So how did Freelanders Well which is way up on the hill develop a 20' diameter phreatic tube that drops at 40 degrees into a big passage happen? Well that answer lies further up the valley to the North where Culverson Creek flows now and sinks. It is redirected out of the valley underground into a massive cave system(21 miles)...this stream before being pirated away from Raders Valley used to flow down the valley and cut the cave we are in and all the passages we will hopefully find as we continue our quest to the North in Zic......I could go on and on but suffice it to say it isn't the 3.6 miles of mostly hell that impresses us to come back but the promise of what may lie ahead in that ridge as we move North.....i.e. an old cave system formed by a stream that is now long gone. That is just what may be in the hill.......if we cross into the valley it could add many more miles with stark differences in the type of caving in each section.

Mark Passerby, Cavediggers.com

[cavescom]

Well the Zic Cellulitis has got me.....I'm a diabetic and Zic has a high incidence of cellulitis(Keith's case got him hospitalized). So my Dr. gave me a script for Keflex which I take just before a trip and after.

This past trip I got a very small scrape on my leg, but all looked well so I discontinued the Keflex and low and behold the "whatever" the hell it is bacteria took hold. So off to the Dr. yesterday and now on 2 antibiotics and a hefty priced cream.

I also talked to Bob this evening and he said he got his cut that developed into cellulitis that needed treatment in an area of gypsum between Camp 1 and 2. This is the same area I skinned my leg.

Mark

[Scott McCrea]

Well the Zic Cellulitis has got me...

Hi Mark,

Hope you get better soon. I remember you mentioning this previously. Is there a reference for this stuff? Something we could link to so cavers can easily find more info about it? An article on Caves.com, maybe?

Nice forensic cave geology analysis, too!

[cavescom]

Well after 1 more Dr. visit and another dose of antibiotics it looks like I may be in the clear :) .
Next trip is Sept. 28,29, & 30th
Scott I don't currently have anything written but I have it in mind to do at some point.

Mark Passerby, Cavediggers.com