This week I started digging on my primary target. It is an old dry spring bed that falls out at mid-elevation of a large ridge on my property. From my ridge walk last year, I knew there was air coming from a few holes in the ground there, but last week I went up there when it was 101 degrees and I took a laser thermometer. The air was 59 degrees blowing out of the holes. So yesterday I started digging the hole that had the most volume of air. I removed about 6 feet of rock to get down to the source, which was a small opening below a limestone outcropping. Then I removed enough dirt from the entrance to allow space to crawl in. Now you can stand back several feet away from the opening and feel the cool air blowing out. After clearing the entrance, I squeezed in and crawled back only about 20 feet since I didn't have the needed safety gear to go further. But today I got some gear together, and went back in and measured a distance of 150 feet with rope. It is a crawl all the way to this point, and has a wet floor. Thus far, it's about 3 feet high and varies between 3 to 6 feet wide. It looks like it opens up a little larger around the 170 foot mark before making another turn, but my bare forearms had about enough rocks and water by this point, so I turned around at 150 feet.
Now my questions is, what are the steps in documenting a new cave and giving real cavers access to explore and/or survey? I feel great having discovered a new cave, but now I believe I need to turn it over to the experts. Any advice or opinions would be appreciated. Thanks.
Congratulations on your discovery! That is so cool! So your first wild cave is a virgin cave- how neat is that?!
(Who does that anymore?) 
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