Tower Domes & Fossil Canyon

Well this morning I was up bright and early to go caving.  I was taking Daniel, Jacob M, and Joe caving.  Joe had never went before.  I also wanted to plan out the best route to maneuver in between the tower domes and the canyon when I lead a group there in 2 weeks.

We made pretty good time, and we ended up passing a group of 3 people that were making their way along.  We turned and went up the right fork, and went to the tower domes.  We spent a considerable amount of time in the two tower domes studying the fossils.  In both of them, there is a band in the sediment layers that contain thousands of fossils.  A few shells, but mostly tube like creatures.  My best guess is small versions of those tube worms that live on the bottom of the ocean on geothermal vents (However, I got back to school and did some research.  They are coral fossils).  There were some scattered ones, but there were also large clumps where they fanned out.  It was so obvious that they were buried very suddenly (aka Noah's Flood).  You could tell they must have all been on what used to be the ocean floor and then sediment rapidly buried the whole lot of them.

                                        (Daniel hunting for fossils in the wall)

After we were done in the tower domes we went to the canyon, and then to the small room at the end of the canyon that has some formations.  We took a break in there, and ate some snacks.  Then we made our way back to the main fork.  We decided to go find the Fossil Canyon.  I never knew the fossil canyon existed, but I got a guidebook in the last week that has the most amazing map of Pine Hill Cave, ever.  It lists a lot more things.  So we backtracked almost all the way to the main entrance to the cave.  The split to go to the Fossil Canyon was in the Register Room.

We followed the water for a couple minutes, and then turned left.  Pretty quickly it began to get narrow and soon we were crawling.  After you crawled for a little ways it would open up and you would get excited.  However, it soon closed up again.  It teased us.  We crawled for about 45 minutes and were almost ready to give up.

However, soon I looked up when I saw an opening on my left.  I shouted, and heard an echo.  I hurriedly climbed up through the hole and found myself in the Fossil Canyon!  The rest of the guys were a little bit behind me.  I told them of my discovery and then went down the left side of the canyon.  It went a ways, and I slipped and clawed my way up the muddy and slippery floor.  You could see some scattered fossils in the canyon walls.

I came back and joined Daniel, Jacob, and Joe.  We went down the right side of the canyon.  We walked a little while, and then it rapidly shrunk.  But that wasn't the worst part.  What was worse was the fact we could hear water moving fast in a large passage.  Whether it is a waterfall, or a completely new cave passage, or an underground river is a mystery.  The real pain is the fact that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get through the narrow canyon slot and see where this water was.  Maybe super skinny anorexic person could get through after a lot of wedging themselves up the canyon.  But either way, it was really disappointing to not know what lay beyond.  The map showed that nothing else went beyond.  So, whatever lies back there is most definitely cave passage never before touched by humans!  If I had an Infrared cable camera I would push it back in there to see what I could find.

We rested up, and then made the painfully slow, and annoying crawl back out.  When we finally made it out, we were extremely muddy!  Normally coming out of Pine Hill you aren't that bad.  Bud the crawling passage to the Fossil Canyon was really muddy.  It was such a relief to reach the stream passage again.  I had always read that to the right of the main entrance is just a sump.  For you non caving folks, that basically means a water filled passage.  However, with this new map, it shows there is a bypass route and about 4 more domes.  Also, there is what they call Pine Hill Lake.  This is at the very end of the passage, before the water completely leaves Pine Hill Cave to flow through a sump into Blue Hole Cave.

I was also at dinner tonight and a girl that I had taken caving this past summer (and she's coming on the trip in a couple weeks) came up and talked to me.  Her name is Hannah.  She started telling me she had taken some people to Pine Hill Cave last night.  So, Brandon and I are no longer the only students here who do trips to Pine Hill.  And before we knew it, we were both sucked into a conversation about caving.  She is as obsessed as I am.  Back home, she told me, she was paid by some guy to explore all the caves on his property.  Talk about an awesome job!  Later, I ended up emailing her the detailed map I got in my guidebook.  I don't mind sharing my information I labored so long to find, with her. 

Anyway, here is a link to all of my photos from the trip.  Definitely check them out! https://picasaweb.google.com/jholcomb8/20110212TowerDomesFossilCanyon#