Carroll Cave Survey Trip Report

Submitted by Shawn Williams and Bob Lerch

Dates: July 7, 2007 – Lucky 7’s Day

Area Mapped: Re-survey of Upper Thunder from the Backdoor Entrance

Book: Ben Miller, Dan Lamping, Bob Lerch

Instruments and Tape: Shawn Williams and Tony Schmitt

Time In: 11:30a Time Out: 11:30p Duration: 12 hours

With only five people, we were in a quandary about the optimal approach for starting the re-survey of Upper Thunder. Well, even Ben has an occasional good idea, and today he came up with a particularly good one. He proposed that we have three bookman (Ben, Dan, and I), spread through the passage as per our usual leap-frog approach, and have Shawn and Tony rotate between each bookman and read instruments. This actually worked quite well, but it did require six measuring tapes (2 per bookman) and a lot more caving for the instrument boys. Each bookman was set-up with two long shots, since its all huge passage, and about the time you would be done sketching, Shawn and Tony would be back again to reel off two more shots. The need for the resurvey of Upper Thunder stemmed from the fact that several of the original sketches were missing in what was received from Tom Lounsbury. In addition, several of the main passage sketches were inconsistent with the level of detail and style of the existing sketchers. Footage Totals: Bob-502.9 ft; Dan-792.9 ft; Ben-720.1 ft; Total, 2,015.9 ft. (0.38 miles) – not bad for 5 people!!!