A simple cave exploration turns into an unknown door to door

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A simple cave exploration turns into an unknown door to door

Postby Chads93GT » Dec 31, 2009 8:00 pm

Since yall like anything caving related. figured some of you would enjoy this. This was earlier this morning.

I met up with Kris Hartman, Chris “Cowboy” Goodson and Chris Gidley at Gidley’s farm near Bater Springs at 6:30 a.m. We drove over to Gidley’s great uncle’s house to check out Viox Sink cave. I was already dressed except for pads when I showed up, including my wetsuit. Cowboy also had a wetsuit top; however Hartman and Gidley didn’t wear one. Hartman led us to the cave entrance by 7:00 a.m. and we got started into the cave. I had a note pad and my hiking compass to shoot bearings in the cave to get a rough idea of where the cave was heading.
After 20 to 30 minutes of crawling much to Hartman and Gidley’s dismay, the water got deep and the ceiling got to around 8-9” high. I was in the lead, cowboy was just behind me, and the other 2 were lagging back. After a few moments I was standing in a passage with a 15 to 20 foot tall column and a hanging rimstone dam. I yelled back to cowboy to tell the others to come on up and there was big dry passage. Minutes later all of us were in the room. I noticed a ceiling channel high on the right and Cowboy decided to climb it. Once he was up there he said we had to come up. I noted the paleo ceiling channel on the right was running to the southwest towards Bater Springs, and the main stream was heading southeast towards Gillium Spring.
I was able to make it up with ease, but I soaked the path making it hard for the other two to make it up. We were in a high dry paleo passage with lots of dead formations and several white stalactite clusters. Since Hartman and Gidley were having trouble getting up the mud slope, we decided to save this for another day. We then shot several photos of the giant column from on top of the mud slope. We then slid down into main stream and went downstream past the column. On the right, just past the paleo segment was an in feeder stream, which had a rimstone terrace and 4’ high passage past it. It’s probably the piracy route from the paleo area. Just downstream we were into passage which was approximately 100’ long, and 20 to 25’ high. It was also approximately 20-25’ wide.
We shot several double flash shots in this big room as well then we had to climb up into another paleo segment on the right. We shot more photos of more columns, and found another high paleo window. Hartman climbed up and noted a room with a steep entrance slide. We decided not to continue down this passage for now as well. We returned to the stream, shot a couple more photos then hopped down into the water crawl.
Gidley and Hartman hung back while Cowboy and I ventured ahead into the crawlway leading downstream to the southeast. The crawlway continued but I didn’t want to turn around, but I also knew that the other 2 couldn’t come through without wetsuits. They were going to have enough fun going back the way we came in as it was. Cowboy turned around, told them we were going to go ahead, then we agreed to be out by 12:00 p.m. Cowboy returned to me and we continued on through the low water crawl, to a bifurcation in the stream. It was high and flowing on the right and low on the right, elevation wise. We decided on the lower left channel, which was low and miserable.
We continued to crawl and soon after a few small elevation drops, the passage became stoop walking and triangle shaped. The walls and floors were clean of all mud, white and black in color and heavily riddled with scallops and hidden ledges under the water. The triangular shaped passage continued to a 4 to 5’ high rimstone dam. We slid over the dam and continued downstream, heading southeast the entire time. Soon we were met by a 2nd 4-5” high rimstone dam. At this point I told Cowboy, this was sort of like the Candle Canyon passage in the Rimstone River cave.
Moments later the ceiling got extremely low and to my dismay it was nearly sumped out. As I got closer I noticed a space above the water, flowstone on the right, bedrock on the left, but big enough to fit your face through. We had to remove our helmets, lay on our backs, and float under the near siphon, as the water was 2’ deep under the plug hole. There was also a small bypass hole to the right, but it was too small for human navigation. The wind was blowing extremely hard through this hole, and it was cold air.
Once through the keyhole, we were immediately on top of another 4-5’ rimstone waterfall terrace, which resembled a water chute. The passage continued, heavily scalloped, triangular shaped, hidden ledges to trip you, and then the ceiling got low. We had to crawl a couple more times before we were on top of a 4th rimstone dam which was 4-5’ high. A dry tunnel led off to the right, and I decided that this would be a good spot to stop and warm up. I drank some coffee, then we were on our way. Goodson immediately dropped into the water at the end of the dry bypass tunnel and yelled “DAYLIGHT”.
We were extremely elated at our amazing discovery! We just did a door to door trip, but where were we? We knew that the water was running southeast towards Gillium Spring, but was that where we were? As soon as I got to the cave entrance I knew that’s where we were. A massive “natural bridge” was up on the cliff to the right from the entrance. I was hoping throughout the entire water crawl that we were going to come back around on the back side of the paleo offshoot back in the large room where we left Hartman and Gidley.
My theory is, this natural bridge area is the paleo segment of the cave; however, the valley has cut down into it, cutting it off completely from the rest of the cave. After all, the paleo disappeared to the right, and the natural bridge tunnel came in from the right. We now were both at a spring we had never been to with no clue where to go from here. Luckily I had been taking notes of southeast bearings the entire time, so we naturally started hiking to the northwest. After 12 minutes we were back at the Viox Sink cave entrance and we decided to go back in to make sure that the other’s were safely coming out. We knew they were still inside as Hartman’s coat was still in the tree next to mine.
After several minutes we met up with them in the cave, and much to their dismay, they couldn’t figure out how we got to where we were. We then explained the door to door, which took only 25 minutes from the time we left them, till we emerged from the spring. Cowboy and I also decided that we were going to go back to the paleo passage leading southwest towards Bater springs and see where it goes. After we had our conversation with Gidley and Hartman we continued on through the crawl, again, and into the column room, again. This time we noticed a passage to the right, chest high, about 30 feet before the paleo entrance, leading to the southwest as well. We left this for later.
We climbed back into the paleo area, ate lunch then started taking photographs. We found a forest of white soda straws, stalactites, columns, chert nodules and nothing but shell fossils in the walls all over the place. There was no indication of flooding in this area at all we were in a passage that was high and dry.
We shot many photos, came to an area where the clay came towards the ceiling, but there was a lower bypass route to the left. We negotiated the passage into a water hole, then back out and around to the backside of the flowstone and clay fill. After several minutes of climbing and crawling we found the end of the paleo section. The clay came up to 5-6” of the ceiling and I could see nothing but formation plugs ahead. A higher passage came in from the left, where obvious heavy water flow during rain comes in. The clay bank was cut down to the bedrock and very clean. We climbed up the 5’ high breakdown “water fall” which was dry, and immediately found the passage to continue out of view 1’ wide and approximately 3’ wide. At this time we heard a raccoon chattering several times.
By this time we had seen enough so we turned around, shot a few more photos, I found and chased a pac rat through the cave then we grabbed our packs, and left through the same downstream water passage and out of Gillium Springs.
Two door to door trips in one day, how cool is that. It is my estimation from the 12 minute hike through the field in a straight line, basically, to the sink, that there is approximately 1 to 1.25 miles of passage, door to door. Throw in the paleo sections, the in feeder streams, and the water coming from upstream of the T junction near the entrance to Viox, there is easily 2 miles of cave here, maybe more. Upstream from the T junction will probably sump out or simply get too tight for human travel.
When Cowboy first saw the formations in the upper paleo he said “It’s a wonderland up here.” He was right, I guess that’s why we did 2 door to door trips in 6 hours. We spoke with the land owner at our trucks, and told him that we went in Viox and came out Gillium. He was amazed and he said that no one had ever done that before.
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Photos:

1. Cowboy climbing up into the paleo tunnel and into the wonderland

2. water infeeding crawl to the left of this photo, massive column. downstream continues into the background to the right of the photo.

3. formations in the paleo wonderland.

4. Formation in the paleo wonderland.

5. Standing behind the column in picture #2, looking downstream.

6. Same as the previous.

7. 2nd paleo segment, up to the right from photo #6

8. Formations in the 2nd paleo segment.

9. Climb up into the paleo segment. Looking upstream back towards the column room.

10. Waterfall just inside the Gillium Spring entrance.

11. Formation in the paleo wonderland.

12. Formations in the paleo wonderland.

13. Soda straws in the paleo.

14. More soda straws.

15. and more.

16. And even more.

17. same as 16 with different lighting.

18. More paleo

19. Crescent moon shaped soda straw drapery zig zagging through the paleo.

20. paleo terminus in the back of the photo.

21. 5' dry waterfall where the passage continues around the terminus.

22. Heading out of the paleo.

23. formations above picture #22

24. Tons of straws in the paleo canyon.

25. Cowboy coming through the keyhole wind tunnel.

26. Waterfall below the keyhole wind tunnel.
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Re: A simple cave exploration turns into an unknown door to door

Postby wyandottecaver » Jan 1, 2010 8:03 am

Friggin Awesome!
I'm not scared of the dark, it's the things IN the dark that make me nervous. :)
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Re: A simple cave exploration turns into an unknown door to door

Postby MUD » Jan 1, 2010 11:37 am

:kewl: Great report Chad! Keep em comin! :clap:
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Re: A simple cave exploration turns into an unknown door to door

Postby Mudduck » Jan 1, 2010 2:34 pm

That is intensely cool.!!!!!!!!!! :cavingrocks:
I think I can...I think I can...I think I can
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Re: A simple cave exploration turns into an unknown door to door

Postby pub » Jan 11, 2010 2:41 am

Chads93GT wrote:Image
10. Waterfall just inside the Gillium Spring entrance.

Great trip Chad, with some pleasant surprises! Also great series of photos, I especially like #10 with the deflected waterfall spray!
Balincaguin comes from the Zambal phrase, "Bali lan caguing" meaning "house of bats."
This was the former name of the Municipality of Mabini, Pangasinan, when it was part of the Province of Zambales (of Mt. Pinatubo Volcano fame).
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Re: A simple cave exploration turns into an unknown door to door

Postby Kevenater » Jan 12, 2010 4:13 pm

this is the kind of post I love to read!!! Make you feel like you're in the cave. Great stuff!!!! more more more :kewl:
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Re: A simple cave exploration turns into an unknown door to door

Postby batrotter » Jan 12, 2010 7:53 pm

Great post!
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Re: A simple cave exploration turns into an unknown door to door

Postby Chads93GT » Jan 12, 2010 11:45 pm

Thanks. Always wondered if I get too long winded or not ;)

Im going to tag for the first time this weekend. Even though everyone has been there , but me, a million times, I will still write a report for that too. I mainly do it for my own personal journal, but most of them i don't post. glad you enjoyed this one.
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Re: A simple cave exploration turns into an unknown door to door

Postby JR-Orion » Jan 13, 2010 11:53 am

Great pics! Pulling off an unexpected door to door must have been a thrill.
Letting the days go by / water flowing underground
Into the blue again / in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones / there is water underground.
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