Permit: 048-2
Leader: Dan Lamping
date: 08-06-04 thru 08-08-04
manager: Bob Lerch
Assessment: Upstream-Round Room or beyond
participant1: Kim Chiles
participant2: Dan Lamping
participant3: Tony Schmitt
participant4: Joe Sikorski
TimeIn: Friday night around 11:00
TimeOut: Sunday afternoon around 2:30 p.m.
Date: Thursday August 26, 2004
Time: 04:56 PM
purpose:
Find more cave…..survey
details:
This was our first camp trip into Carroll. Kim, Tony, Joe, and I camped in front of the 3rd UL3 entrance while the other teams camped in the Round Room (wasn’t enough room for us all, so they sent St. Louis city folk to be by themselves…he he) It wasn’t nearly as difficult as anticipated to maneuver through the cave with nearly 50 lbs. of gear on us each (we all weighed our packs at Tony’s before leaving). We all brought too much. We moved much slower than usual through the cave, which was really nice, we got a chance to appreciate things that normally go unnoticed. We all definitely brought more than enough food (Tony had enough for us all to spend a month in Carroll…just kiddin’). Each of us went in wearing very little clothing and brought a complete set of dry clothes and a cave suit to survey in and a dry set of clothes for camp. All four of us surveyed in the UL4 canyon which isn’t too far upstream from UL3. Since it was pretty late when we got to camp on Friday night, we all slept in on Saturday morning ’til about 10 a.m. After breakfast, we went down to the Round Room, got some notes from Bob, and headed to the end of survey in UL4. Joe and Kim went to finish some small people leads while Tony and I continued with the main upper level canyon survey. In places we could see the bottom of the canyon nearly 30′ below us with water flowing. After tying together what looked to be two separate leads, we found that the canyon terminated at a waterfall after several small breakdown rooms, but the passage continued. We jumped ahead of the survey a bit after seeing the waterfall and ended up in stoop walking passage with a flowing stream (same stream as the canyon) and then found that the passage gets low and nasty. UL4 may end here…we’ll see next month. We saw one set of footprints ahead of us throughout the survey. We weren’t scooped, we were McClained (new verb for those who know what I’m talking about). The survey ended in walking passage after Joe and Kim tied into one of our station.
In closing, I think that camp trips are a good way to map the upstream side passages. As of right now, we aren’t too far from the entrance, but we’re only gonna get farther away. With good planning we could easily get some survey done on Sunday morning before leaving. The biggest advantage to camping in cave is that it cuts out the leisure time of Saturday morning, and we don’t have a bottle neck of cold, tired, cavers waiting to climb the ladder at 3 a.m. While we didn’t get much more survey done than usual this trip, we also we didn’t go home beaten up as usual and we learned a bit about camping in a big ‘ol cold, wet, muddy cave.
RestoNeeded:
Broken or mud stained formations – none: Few formations
Graffitti – none
(FOD) Foreign Object debris – none
High traffic area – none: UL4 has had minimal traffic and no abuse.