Carroll Cave Trip Report

1/3/2004

Trip Leader: Ben Miller

Other Surveyors: Roger Brown, Mike Freeman

Area surveyed UL2/Convention Hall side passage

We entered the cave and everyone was down in the cave by about 12:30 pm.  The trip up to the side passage was pretty normal and we reached “Conference Hall” at 1:30 pm.  After setting up our gear for a later break Bob took me further upstream to figure out where we should start surveying and so he could tie-in to that station later on.

Mike, Roger, and I started surveying at a spot where the main stream flows over a black chert floor.  Our objective was to stay mainly in the stream defining meanders and the lower-level, while Bob and his team were to stay in the upper-level.  This meant that unfortunately we were going to be wet most of the day.  However this did give us a chance to see quite a few of the cave fish in the stream, more than 15 by the end of the day.  After some fairly unpleasant survey we hit a junction where the cave stream bent back on itself 160 degrees.  An upper level here split off heading south about 15 feet above the stream.  We would later intersect where this passage led to.  The stream led around a corner and turned south again.  The dimensions became smaller but as always opened back up to walking sized passage.  Almost immediately after this size change the passage and the stream split going both east and west.  The left/east passage was a smaller tributary coming from unknown territory.  We decided to take the right side which led another hundred feet or so a nice sized room was encountered.  It was here that the upper passage we had seen earlier intersected with our passage once again.  There was also a smaller sized lead heading off of the left side of the passage just on the other side of the stream.  Just past this room the passage continued very large past this room.  But as the day was becoming long we decided to call it quits.

We started out of the cave and arrived at the ladder about an hour later.  Once we reached the top we had a very nice chili dinner waiting for us, courtesy of Pedgie (PEDGIE YOU ROCK!!) The night was quite cold and rainy but we changed in the silo where it was very comfy.   Our total trip lasted just over 13 hours long and led us into another small part of the mystery of UL2.