Climax Cave

Saturday was my last caving trip of the semester.  My friend Josh Best had asked me earlier in the week if I would take him, his sister and her friend caving.  Sinks of the Roundstone was a good beginner cave, but with all the rain previously in the week, and the fact that it floods meant it would be extremely muddy and miserable.  So I decided to get directions to Climax Cave.  I've known about it and known it is a pretty easy cave but I had never made the journey to it.

So around 2:00 Saturday afternoon we began meeting at alumni circle.  Josh Best, and his sister Lydia (and her friend which I cannot remember how to spell her name), Jason, and Sean all trickled in.  We waited around for Hannah because she was supposed to join us, but she still wasn't back from something that had come up with her parents the day before.  So unfortunately we left without her.

It was a rather interesting trip trying to interpret James Miller's directions.  We were only given the names of one road.  But we ended up going in from the opposite direction so we had to think backwards.  I am amazed we found the parking spot for the cave.  But we finally got to the entrance, geared up, prayed for safety, and then went in.

                                        (The southern entrance to Climax Cave)
We were only in the cave for a minute when we ran into a large section of formation.  And it was very much active and growing.  Definitely surprising to see.

We continued on past this point, following my map.  Soon we came to the breakdown.  The map showed a passage on the right hand side that would get us hooked up with a mazy section of passages that ultimately led to the North Entrance.  We could not find it.  Even with the description of what to look for we could not find it.  The guide said to look for a small canyon which we found.  We poked around breakdown for a good hour and a half trying to find a way.

                                   (Lydia Best, and her friend)

At one point Sean and I scambled up into a lead and Sean found a crack about 10 feet deep.  I lowered myself down into it and followed.  I ended up lowering myself down two more times before I reached a "loopy" section.  It opened up some, and led to crawls.  But it was on the left hand side of the breakdown and obviously not our route.  But it was fun to explore.

I found my way out and we rejoined the others, waiting near the top of the breakdown.  The key to getting to the rest of the cave system rested on finding the lead.  After some more searching I found a crawl that looked well traveled.  It looked promising because the guide mentioned crawling is involved.  So I led the way and it looked promising for a while.  It opened up and we began exploring the "maze".  It's really hard to pick your way through the breakdown and passages.  Until you have spent a couple hours doing this you aren't going to find your way. 

We thought all was going well until I popped my head out of a hole and found myself back in the main chamber we started in, facing the breakdown.  We were disappointed.  But we also startled another group that had come in.  I asked them if they knew how to get to the North Entrance.  They said yes, and they pointed in a direction saying they had come.  We followed it.  We were definitely in new territory and were following a pretty good sized trunk passage.  When we reached a junction we ran into some pretty cool rim-stone formations.

Then, I thought I saw light in the distance.  We all turned out our lights and studied the blackness.  Sure enough, we could barely see sunlight.  We got excited, thinking we had found our way through the breakdown and had reached the North Entrance (never mind that the passage we had taken was wrong, according to the map).  We pressed forward only to discover we were facing that same active formation right near the South Entrance.  I consulted the map and discovered the passage the other people had directed us to was the secondary route.  We had made a giant loop.  No North Entrance!

We exited, disappointed we didn't find the North Entrance, but we are definitely eager to push more leads next time.  It was a great caving trip.  Fun and easy, but also we had the sense of adventure being in a new cave.  It was awesome!

                                          (Josh Best, Jason, (friend), Lydia Best)
For the rest of my pictures: https://picasaweb.google.com/jholcomb8/ClimaxCave#