Carroll Cave Trip Report For 5/3/2003

Trip Leader: Ben Miller

Other Surveyors: Roger Brown, Shawn Williams

Area surveyed: UL2/Convention Hall side passage

We entered the cave around noon and made our way upstream to UL2 without incident and with the help of Roger found our tie-in station and our starting point for the day.

Almost immediately into the survey the passage became unbelievably hard from a sketching stand point. Ledges swept out from both sides of the passage at six different levels, there was also an upper level including a fairly decorated room with some large old re-dissolving draperies. We split the survey up first shooting up into the upper level. We had to watch our feet in the room as there was a velvety grayish flowstone on the floor that blended in with the rest of the breakdown. We left ourselves a station that we could later tie-in with the lower survey. After finishing the upper level we headed back down to the stream, which was no easy feat since mud ledges would slide off leaving someone with no footholds to use. We surveyed around several contorted meanders until we could finally shoot back up the upper level creating a vertical loop. Pretty soon after closing the loop the passage became very wide and very confusing. My brain was already hurting from the crazy sketching so we called it a day and started out of the cave.

We all made it out and back to the ladder just fine, headed up the ladder and greeted the early morning. One long wet and cold day in UL2 but all in all a good trip.