Climax Cave

I spent my weekend down in Berea visiting friends, and I got a caving trip organized to go to Climax Cave.  If you remember, my first trip to Climax was back in May and we never made it past the breakdown to get through the rest of the cave.  But this time our goal was to make it through!  And strangely enough we got lost trying to find the church to park at, like last time.  Getting lost going to the cave, not inside, mind you, seems to just go along with a trip to Climax Cave.  But all together we had myself, Josh Best, Jacob & Carla Patton, Lydia Patton, Hannah Worcester, and a new girl named Anna Dunlap.

Not far inside we found about 3 cave salamanders around one of the few columns in the cave.  Carla took a couple pictures of them.

Soon we got to the mountain of breakdown and it was time to descend into the canyon on the right and go through the short crawl.  Josh, Anna, and I scouted ahead while everyone else rested.  Soon I came back and talked to Carla and Jacob.  Carla had been doing good but she had some asthma problems and I didn't want her to keep going with what she wasn't comfortable doing.  So after discussing it, Jacob (her husband) stayed with her.  I think they sat around for a while and then made the couple minute trip back out the entrance we had came in.

The rest of us pushed on, into unknown territory.  It was great.  After a hands and knees crawl through some mud and water we found ourselves in walking passage.  We continued on, occasioinally seeing side leads but we tried to follow the main route of traffic.  At one point we came to a tall canyon passage that was perpendicular to us.  So we spent a couple minutes climbing around in it.

                                   (Josh Best up in the top of the canyon)
We continued on, and occasionally we'd explore side leads.  Hannah and Lydia decided to go a hard way and sort of stoop/crouch through mud and water and they looped around back to us.  But finally we wound our way through some windy canyon passage and came to a room with a giant block of rock on the floor.  And the rock was coated with flowstone.  It was quite beautiful.

We relaxed on this slab for a while and then continued on.  We worked our way along seeing some pretty formations, and then Hannah climbed down into a pit only to discover it was a dead end.  So we backed out and made our way out.  We decided it was time to head back and were discouraged we hadn't found our way to the 2nd entrance.  However, on the way back we decided to go in the opposite direction really quick in a canyon and take a peek.  It got sort of small and we began feeling cold air.  We climbed/crawled up through and discovered it was very cold and it opened up.  We hurried ahead and I saw light!

We had made it to the 2nd entrance!  So we all celebrated, and spent a couple minutes being excited, and then taking a few pictures.  Then we hiked back through a cow field, and walked down the road, back around the hill, and came back to our cars.  I'm sure Jacob and Carla were surprised to see us coming from that direction.  But it was a great fun trip!

                                       (Our post caving pose)
For the rest of the photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/116396676277007122980/ClimaxCaveNovember62011