Area Visited: Downstream Thunder
Trip Leader Name: Dan Lamping

Trip date: 2025-06-28

Trip purpose: Camp gear retrieval from Jerry’s Cairn

Trip participants: Dan Lamping
Bob Lerch
Ben Miller
Joe Sikorski

Entry Time: 10:00 AM Exit Time: 4:00 PM

Biology: 32 cave fish observed on the way in from T Junction to Jerry’s Cairn. It was observed that many were in deep pools, with several noticeably located near the bottom.

The trip report: Shortly after the contemporary survey Carroll Cave began, surveyors with the Carroll Cave Conservancy began mapping down Lower Thunder River, which was originally called Hell’s Canyon. It didn’t take too long before the decision was made to begin camping in Lower Thunder River in order to facilitate multi-day survey trips. Nearly all of the survey trips into Lower Thunder River occurred out of Jerry’s Cairn, which is approximately two hours travel downstream from the T Junction. Because of the frequency of camp trips down there, particularly from around 2005 through 2012, it became common for communal and some personal gear to be stashed at camp. This included tarps, pots, foam sleeping pads, water containers, shovels, and various sundry items. At times flood waters would move gear into high nooks and no doubt, some unfortunately got washed downstream. Between 2012 and 2020 a few sporadic camp trips occurred, but they were infrequent. Annual trips began picking back up again in 2020 with a new generation of Carroll cavers getting involved. But as of January 2025 few leads remain in Lower Thunder River and it’s been well past time that the gear left at Jerry’s Cairn be removed.

In January 2025 a trip occurred to remove the remains of a failed climbing pole that had been taken down to Lower Thunder River, which was a big step towards bringing closure to this chapter of exploration in Carroll Cave. Also on that trip a camp pack was found down at the Lake Room and carried back upstream to Jerry’s Cairn. The pack was a remnant of a flood which occurred in 2010 and a vestige of one of the most miserable trips I ever experienced underground. In early 2010 a network of virgin side passages had been found at the far upstream end of DL7. This led to the decision to establish Push Camp, so that we could attack it during multi-day mapping trips without having to do the long haul from Jerry’s Cairn to the end of DL7 multiple days in a row. Because the trip up DL7 is such a challenge, moving up and down the infamous, muddy Hills of Hell we decided to lighten the load by stashing some gear up at Push Camp before actually using it to camp out of. Naively, we did not think that the passage at the upstream end of DL7 flooded to the degree which it does. This is of course before we had discovered the drainage divide into Confusion Creek and before we realized that DL7 is really an overflow for New River. It turns out that DL7 completely floods all of the way to the ceiling.

On the evening of July 3, 2010 Bob Lerch, Ben Miller, Roger Webb and I entered the cave and made our way back to Push Camp, which from T Junction is about a 5-6 hour trip. Bob, Ben, Joe Sikorski, and I had all stashed various gear at Push Camp in dry bags, so on the July 3 trip three of us were packed lightly, expecting to use sleeping bags, pads, food, clothing, etc. that we had stashed at camp. Fortunately for Roger, he did not have anything stashed and was carrying all of his gear. As we made our way pretty far into DL7, probably somewhere downstream of the Bottle Opener, I came around a corner and found Joe Sikorski’s stashed camp pack lying in the stream. It was at that moment that I realized Bob, Ben, and I were screwed. By this time it was well past midnight and turning around to exit the cave wasn’t much of an option. So we continued our way upstream to Push Camp and found that all of our stuff had been washed away. The four of us did what we could in terms of pooling resources together in order to get some sleep (Bob, Ben and I shared two sleeping pads and I used a trash bag as a sleeping bag). It was the most miserable night I had ever spent underground. The next morning, Ben collected a charcoal packet to support his dye tracing efforts, and we left the cave. Eventually all of our stuff was found and removed from the cave. One dry bag was found at the downstream end of DL7, near a side passage high on the right wall near the ceiling. The pack had floated well over a mile downstream and yet everything was recoverable. The only pack we never found was Ben’s, until January of 2025, when a crew mopping up leads found it and carried it back up to Jerry’s Cairn.

So on this recent trip our goal was to remove all of the old camp gear and get Ben’s waterlogged pack out of the cave, which wasn’t trivial given that it was an 80 L SealLine filled with saturated gear. All four of us carried large camp packs down to Jerry’s Cairn, filled them up and made the slow grind out of the cave. I had my 115 L pack, which was completely filled with old tarps, sleeping pads, and other remains of exploration from the past 20 years. It was certainly amongst the heaviest of packs that I’ve carried out of the cave.

Fortunately, between the four of us, we were able to remove all of the gear, leaving only two rescue caches left at Jerry’s Cairn.

Dan Lamping