Trip report Carroll Cave 2025-03-15
Service rescue caches in downstream Thunder River

Date of trip = 15 March 2025

Participants = Bill Gee (Trip leader)
Jerel Waters
Shane McCurdy
Ashley Mitchell

Time in = 9:20 am Time out = 4:45 pm

Trip report by Bill Gee

In January 2025 there was a survey trip to DL7. In their trip report they mentioned a piece of flagging tape at the entrance to DL7 which says “Cache”, but they did not see any rescue cache anywhere nearby. I realized that it had been ten years or more since the last time anyone took a look at the rescue cache at Jerry’s Cairn, and that I had no idea there was a cache at DL7 entrance. I decided a trip was needed to go take a look at those caches.

Since I had no good idea of what was in either cache, I decided to build two completely new caches to take with us. We would evaluate each cache, and probably do a straight-up swap. The rescue caches contain keep-warm stuff such as closed-cell foam pads, heat tents, candles, lighters, space blankets and notepads. There is no medicine or food – nothing with an expiration date. I bought some of the stuff for the new caches at Walmart and some at Amazon.

Downstream Thunder River is a difficult stretch of cave due to the thick mud and water. The mud is often a soupy knee-deep sloppy mess, and there is little opportunity to get out of the water. In order to move fairly fast I decided to limit the team to four people.

I drove to the campground Friday arriving about 1:00 pm. The wind was howling and only got stronger as the day progressed. I did not want to be towing my camper in the strongest wind. When I arrived the temperature was near 80F and the wind blowing 30 to 40 mph with higher gusts.

No one else camped Friday night. There was a brief rain storm about 7:00pm which dropped 4/10 of an inch. Cave trips to downstream Thunder River are very sensitive to rainfall, but this was not enough to have any noticible effect. The overnight low temperature was about 55F.

People started arriving about 8:15am. Besides my team, there was also a trip heading to DL4 to do some digging and survey. I talked over the rope situation with Kohl Mitchell. We decided to use his rope since his team would come out after mine. All of my team was present by 9:00am. We geared up and started down the shaft.

The two rescue caches we carried were not heavy, less than 5 pounds each. They are a bit bulky. We traded them off as we traveled. This was Ashley’s very first Carroll Cave trip, so we stopped for a few minutes at Thunder Falls. Although not a biology trip, we kept a running count of the fish as we saw them. We turned over a couple of rocks at Black Rock Riffles and found only a few isopods.

As predicted, we were not able to travel very fast going downstream. We took a short break at the Canopy for some photos, then continued on. We arrived at Jerry’s Cairn about noon. We all had lunch. Jerel grabbed the rescue cache from the alcove.

Opening the rescue cache, we found it was a Darren Drum inside a dry bag. The dry bag had about a cup of water in it. The Darren Drum had a few drops of water. The contents were pretty much the same as the rescue caches we were carrying. The cigarette lighters were double-bagged in ziplocks inside the Darren Drum. We opened them up and found all three of them were inoperable. The striker would not rotate. They were not empty and the gas valves worked, but there was no spark to ignite the flame.

The cache also included a small container of waterproof matches. As a test, we tried to light a candle using one of the matches. It did not work. Several of the matches broke. The two that did light did not give off a flame. They just glowed for about 20 seconds. The glow was not enough to light a candle.

I had packaged new cigarette lighters using vacuum-sealed bags. We replaced the bad lighters with new. Everything else in the cache was good, so we closed it back up inside the Darren Drum and dry bag. I brought a length of 550 reflective paracord which we used to tie the cache to the rock in the alcove. It will not float away even in a high flood.

Our next stop was Horseshoe Falls for more photos. From there we continued on to the DL7 entrance. After Horseshoe Falls the traveling gets a bit easier. There is less mud and most of the trail is out of the water. It is very rocky with lots of up and down. These are super-sized spanky banks. It took most of an hour to get to DL7 where we found the flagging tape marked “cache”.

We looked around and could not find a rescue cache anywhere. Most likely it was not tied down and so got carried away in a flood. It might turn up someday near the Lake Room. We tied down the replacement rescue cache with reflective paracord, then started back. As we approached Jerry’s Cairn, the smell of the two matches we had lit was very noticeable. We smelled them for ten minutes before arriving, and for another ten minutes or so after leaving.

After a quick break at Jerry’s Cairn for a snack and to pick up the partial rescue cache, we started the long slog back. We left Jerry’s Cairn about 2:00 pm. It was hard work dealing with all the mud in the Forevers. Several of us tried swimming, with mixed success. My pack did not have enough air in it to provide good flotation. Shane did a bit better.

The survey crew left a bit of gear on a mud bank at the entrance to DL4, so we knew they were in the cave. We were running out of steam fighting the mud. We arrived back at the ladder about 4:20, geared up and climbed out. The last person was out of the cave at 4:45 pm.

The weather outside was about 55F and cloudy. We left the rope in the hole for the survey crew to use. I took a shower, had dinner and went to bed. Shane and Jerel camped overnight so they could attend the trip leader training session planned for March 16.

About 10:30 pm Jack Rufener knocked on the door of my camper to let me know the survey crew was all out of the cave. He said they found about 300 feet of new passage and were pretty well wiped out. Taliing with Kohl by email the next day, it seems they found some significant new passages and did not reach the end.

It is obvious that we need to find some way to reliably light candles. I am reasonably sure the cigarette lighters in vacuum sealed bags will not last any longer than they did in two ziplock bags. The waterproof matches did not fair any better.

Biology count:

36 fish
4 salamanders – Three at the ladder and one in the stream
A few isopods at Black Rock Riffles