When we arrived we spent some time talking with other people that had come down, but then got down to business. A group of us went down and parked at Mullins Spring Cave. I was going to learn how to survey with a lady named Lacie, and Howard's wife Pam. We were going to survey a route that I never knew existed. We started at the "dry entrance" and on the left hand side there is a small passage (that ends up being mostly crawling) that you can follow. It allows you to bypass that first big pool.
So, the basics of surveying. You have stations that you set up. A good station has a good forward and backwards distance. This allows you to see for a certain range and thus set up the next consecutive station. You use a compass and an inclinometer. You align the compass with one station, and then line it up with the other, and record your reading. The same thing goes with your inclinometer. Then, you backshoot. Which means you do it from the opposite direction. Your compass and inclinometer readings should be opposites if you did it correctly. Then you also measure the distance between stations with a simple measuring tape. And, at each station you use a laser range finder to get the distances to the top, left, right, and bottom of the passages. This allows you to create cross section sketches. When you have all this done you are able to plot your data using a scale and you create your map.
I caught on pretty quick with taking measurements and by the end of our surveying in Mullins Spring Cave I was getting pretty good with measuring. And we even did some difficult steep shots. However, surveying is very cold. I didn't prepare for that. You move very slowly. And towards the end of our surveying we were scrunched up on a cold wet flowstone with a strong breeze blowing on us. It chilled us to the bone. So we exited the cave and got warmed up.
We went back to GSP and when Howard finished up a work project he and I took off. We were going to go survey Two Layer Cave. Howard had never been in it. It was just a cave that was discovered and needed to be mapped. It is near Mullins Spring Cave; just right up on the same hillside.
We set up our first survey station and because working our way down. The first shot was difficult because of the steep angle. But we worked it so Howard did the front shoots, and I did the back shoots. I was hitting the numbers really good.
After our fourth station we reached a lot of break down. There was a very strong breeze flowing through. Howard sent me up to investigate while he finished sketching. It was about this time that a few others joined us. They had been surveying Violation Cave which connects to Mullins Spring Cave. I discovered a small room that dead ended. But the breeze was blowing really strongly through a small area.
The last shot was very difficult to do because of the angle. But, I got the numbers and then proceeded out of the tiny crawl. On the other side, one of the guys that had joined us, Shane, was digging.
He had found another location where the breeze was really strong. As he dug farther he could see it opened up and the breeze just continued. It was really exciting to see somebody discovering new cave passage. He pushed on a ways and could see yawning darkness ahead. The chances are very high that Two Layer Cave connects with Mullins Spring Cave. With that large volume of air rushing through it's almost a guarantee. However, we finally called it quits and headed back to GSP to have dinner and camp. I'm excited to hear what happens as today (Sunday) Shane and his wife were going to go back and continue digging.
But in all, I had a really enjoyable (yet cold) weekend. Its really fun learning to survey. And even more neat to now have my name on the sheets for helping with Mullins Spring Cave, and helping to survey Two Layer Cave. I'm definitely going to get in on it more in the future.
