Carroll Cave Survey Trip Report

Date: Feb. 28, 2004

Area Mapped: UL2 – outer reaches

Team: Joe Sikorski, Tony Schmitt, Rita Worden

Team Leader: Joe Sikorski

Time In: 12:30am       Time Out: 2:30a       Duration: 14 hours

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purpose:
Continued survey of UL2 lead on the outer reaches. This lead is beyond the Conference Hall and where Ben Miller and Bob Lerch left off during their January trip.

details:
Tony Schmitt, Rita Worden, and I continued the walking size lead that Ben Millers survey ended at during the January trip (See Ben’s January report). On our second shot we noticed a cave fish in a 1.5ft deep pool. Throughout our survey it was hard to notice any major signs of past visitation. All I saw was an occassional boot tread scrape in the mud. This passage had a 1′ to 2′ wide by .5′ to 1.5′ deep stream that meandered back and forth in a squeezed “S” type shape. As usual with this cave, the meandering stream made the left wall and right wall estimates a bit of a chore to figure out due to the wide but low undercuts that it made. The width of the passage could exceed 40′ at times from these undercuts. While traversing along this passage, you would find yourself in stream, then up a 5’to 8′ high mud hill, then back in stream again. This went on for all 450′ to 500′ that we surveyed. Not much as far as formations. Some small breakdown intermixed with mud. The farther we got toward the end of our survey, the overall proportion of the passage lessened. The passage was still relatively walking size and going where we left it.