Misty Cave

My Saturday actually started with working my 10 hour shift.  But I managed to come home and get about 1 hour sleep before I arose and got together my cave gear.  My friend Chris from the Cincinnati grotto was picking me up.  We'd met and we now do caving together.  So we headed south, had our all you can eat $5 breakfast, then arrived at the Great Saltpeter Cave Preserve.  We visited for a couple minutes and then decided to make the drive to Misty Cave.  It's in Jackson County.

We finally arrived at the spot to parked, and then hiked through the woods and down a gully near a creek where the cave waited along the cliff.

                         (Entrance to Misty Cave)
We went straight in and did the worst crawl through the cave.  Then came a nice chimneying section where we stayed in the upper portion and went along avoiding the water below.

                            (Pausing for a photo above the water)
We worked our way along, crawling, stooping, and we found a couple domes here and there with some small waterfalls coming from the top of them.  Chris was trying to remember the way to do the loop through the cave system.  It is a rare thing to be able to do.  But near the main entrance is a split and you go all the way around and come back the other side.

                                 (Fossilized shell)
We crawled through a lot of mud and sand.  It was fairly obvious that just days before with all the rain the cave had a lot of water flooding through it.  Most of the cave seems to be an avenue for water.  And the possibilities it could take as an avenue seemed endless.  I even squeezed myself through a small hole at one point to investigate while Chris rested.

However we finally found the right passage.  So after opting to slog through water and check things out we continued on.  And Chris recognized pretty much the only formation in the whole cave.

We made pretty good time coming around the other half of the loop.  Near the end of it, ahead appeared to be a dead end.  However, there was a small hole against the wall you lowered yourself into, twisted around, and came out feet first.  It was fun.  So we finally stumbled out, battered, and ripped up.  But it was a fun cave.  Not much glamorous to look at, but there was a balance of different obstacles to just keep your skills sharp and keep up practice.  It's definitely worth another trip at some point to even push leads that have not been surveyed.

Chris stayed at the cave entrance and I walked downstream and found another cave entrance high up near the cliff. I climbed up to it and went inside.  It was a pretty tall canyon passage.  After a little bit it got really narrow and I couldn't fit through but i could hear a lot of water flowing behind.  With it being so close to Misty Cave I would bet they are connected.

                                      (Looking down, and out the second cave entrance at the creek, below)
After I came back Chris and I waded through the creek and looked around the other side for possible caves, then went back to the car, changed, and headed back up north.  It was a really good trip. :)