Here are just a few pictures from a very nice caving trip that I went on in Indiana last week:
Eric's River Cave: http://groups.msn.com/DavesCaves/nssconvention2007.msnw?Page=3 In the group photo ( # 61 ), I am the in the black shirt with blue stripes. I am pretty sure this was before we went in the cave. The strecth-polyester suit worked o.k. In the entrance crawling passage, this suit allowed me to squeeze thru tighter stuff, but it snagged on sharp rocks. If I had to do it again, I would just wear my nylon overalls with some stretch shorts underneath. That is me in # 71. I think the photographer took this shot after I came out of the entrance crawlway which is about 50 feet long. Rubber gloves were not necessary for the passages that we went thru. I used them in the entrance crawlway only and changed gloves for the rest of the trip. My other gloves were part neoprene part nylon, and they worked pretty good in that cave, to protect your hands from the cold wet rock and mud. For the entrance crawl, good leather gloves would have been the best thing. Photo # 62 shows Chris Schlotter who opened up the cave with dynamite. [ His friend Eric showed him the crack in the sinkhole were a stream emerged and lots of airflow. ] Chris' grandparents live down the road and have about 40 acres near Wyandotte Cave. Chris is a very good photographer and a nice guy to cave with. The girl in photo # 62 is Heather and works at the ticket booth in Marengo Cave. Photo # 77 shows what about 90 percent of the trip looks like ( however, there is probably quite a bit of cave beyond where we stopped ) The stuff on the right is not brown limestone but a peanut-butter like mud. There are tons and tons of it in the cave. Your feet are cold and wet for hours depending how long you were to stay in the cave. However, there was only one spot where you stepped down into a pool that was waist deep. So the only time your upper body got wet was when you slipped in fell on the muddy rocks. I would like to thank Dave Becker for these photos. Chris took a few shots on the trip with multiple flashes, so maybe he got a good shot. I will probably never go back to Eric's River Cave, but I highly recommend it for anybody that wants to see a cave that is mostly walking passage. Where does that water come from? I bet there is more cave there waiting to be discovered. The huge Wyandotte Cave is about a mile away as the bird flies. I do have one thing I would like to add. Upon my arrival to Indiana, the 1st road that I went down when I began my travels here, was ironically, the gravel road to Eric' River Cave. I got within about 200 feet of the trail leading to the cave, not knowing a single thing about the geology or caves of the area. I could not find any sign of karst or caves. It looked like hundreds of roads in East Texas, so I turned around and drove to more promising areas. I was quite surprised when they showed me on the topo map where Eric's River Cave was. I did see an area in the streambed down stream from Eric's River Cave, that looked like some kind of sinkhole, but I couldn't see down into it because of all the poison ivy, and I really didn't believe at that time, that there could be a real cave in such an area. I mentioned the hole to Chris and he said it had just opened up, and a friend of his had checked it out, but hadn't found cave passage yet. David Locklear --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
