Sunday afternoon was a return trip to Climax Cave. Josh Best, Sean, Jacob, Jason, Jon, Anna, Rachael, and a new girl, Grace, came along on our trip. We went in the entrance above the church. Some of us went on a side passage and the rest waited at the large breakdown room. There was a lot of flowstone as we went down lower. On top of a mound there were some pretty cool rimstone dams.
These dams are formed as water carrying the dissolved limestone redeposits it. The slowly trickling water continually does this and the dams are built up.
Jon found a route that led deeper and I followed. It involved some thick mud, and then a squeeze through a hole. Then I found myself on a muddy slope that led to a stream passage. I had always heard there was stream in Climax Cave, but I had never seen it. This was the water that emerges as a spring next to the church. The cave entrance is high atop the hill.
(Formations hanging down over the water)
Jon and Rachael had followed, but neither one of them wanted to get into the water. But I did. It was a chance to see more cave. So I slid down and crawled through the water. I went down a ways and saw it kept going. I decided to turn around and save it for another day.
We made our way back and rejoined the group next to the breakdown. It was then time for the fun crawl! This led us to the rest of the cave. From this point on it is a giant maze of upper and lower level passage. Going through all this will eventually take you to the second entrance on the other side of the hill. The last time I was in Climax we had taken a while and wound our way through passages and eventually found the second entrance. Our plan was to follow that same route. But we got distracted by a really tall flowstone formation.
It was very impressive and we decided to climb up to the top. There were hundreds of cave crickets up there.
I mulled around taking some pictures but then we just followed a passage we found at the top. Only a minute later we felt cold air and the second. We ended up deciding to name the flowstone "Dead Bat Falls" because I found a decomposing bat on the floor
We followed an upper level passage and soon felt cold air. Not a minute later the second entrance appeared in view. After the long trek we had last time, it took hardly any time climbing up the flowstone to get to an upper level passage that led right to the entrance.
I thew some ice-sicles against the wall, and then went back into the cave. It was decided we would do some exploring and eventually try to find another way back to the first entrance by the church. I ended up climbing up the side of one of the walls and found a passage that led me right back to the second entrance. I was understanding more and more how it was a maze.
Probably for the next hour or so some of us split into a couple groups and we crawled and walked down passages. I saw so much beautiful flowstone that I'd never had the opportunity to view before. When people speak of Climax Cave nobody mentions all these active formations, for good reason, to protect them.
Rachael, Anna, and I ended up exploring a passage that looped back around and we found yet another way to get to the 2nd entrance. After a while we all admitted we were getting mixed up. We were wanting to find our old route back to the church entrance. It always seems like you can't find something when you are trying so hard. If worse came to worse, though, we would go back to "Dead Bat Falls" and climb down.
I did hear from Josh Best that there was a small waterfall dome so our whole group went and saw that. It was really neat, and some of us even got a drink at the bottom of it :)
Sean eventually got us back on track and he found the passage we needed to exit our original route. He "was the man". And Josh even showed us a way to avoid the crawl on the way back out. It seems that each time I visit Climax more things are revealed and I love that cave more and more.
