Middle Cave

Saturday morning I woke up at GSP.  I had camped there with my friend Jon Carman.  He was doing some caving with the Bluegrass Grotto, but I was going to be joining the Cincinnati Grotto on a trip.  So after waiting around and getting some breakfast I joined everyone at our meeting place.  We piled into a couple trucks and headed off.  After a short walk down a gravel road, and down a slope, we saw the entrance to Middle Cave.  Bob Dobbs led us in.

At first I thought it was going to be a miserable cave.  It was just crawling through a bunch of gravel, rock, and junk.  It's a giant sinkhole, and when it floods trash is washed in.  But soon we hit walking caving passage.  It wasn't too long and we began to hit a couple domes, with some waterfalls in them.

Then there was a really nice waterfall that went down in two stages, and up on a ledge above were some small formations.  It was really quite a beautiful small room.

Bob led us on.  We got to a point where it was really tall canyon passage.  People like Gil climbed along the top, and at one point I went up to.  I was far above the group, on my own.  I finally realized I could go no farther, though.  So I had to backtrack to where I climbed up.  And as I was climbing down I suddenly heard a very demontic hissing right on my head.  I hit my helmet and discovered a bat.  It then clung to my hand and kissed in my face.  I yelled and flung the hand around until the bat lost its grip and fluttered to the bottom of the canyon.  I never saw it, unfortunately and it decided to stay on my helmet.  One less bat, but I'm not that sad because they are creepy little animals.

But I finally rejoined everyone else and found that they were in the "Room of the gods".  I talked to Bob and then realized that we were in the back end of Blue Hole Cave.  There is an old map that shows the section of cave on it.  But I guess it's mostly forgotten about, but at one time during a drought the cave had been connected.  Mostly it's sumped, though.

There was a sidepassage that was very neat.  A small canyon off-shoot led to a dome.  At the top a stream came out of a hole and a very nice waterfall flowed down.

We dropped down to the main stream passage, finally.  Everyone stopped.  Scott and I waded downstream, and yodeled when the cold water got deep.  But after a while we turned around and came back.  Some of the group poked around.  But we finally turned around.  It was the end of the line.  We had some new people on the trip so it did take quite a while to actually get out.  But it was nice to add another cave to my list!

For all of my photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/116396676277007122980/20120226MiddleCaveFebruary252012

Donahue Cave

Very early Sunday morning I arose and drove over to Cincinnati to pick up my caving friend Chris.  Then we spent the next couple hours driving over to Bedford, Indiana.  We were going to go to Donahue Cave, and go through the connection to get to Doghill Cave.  It was the same trip I did back before Thanksgiving with Gil and Scott.

Chris and I went in through the drainpipe that was shoved into the entrance when the highway was built.  At first it's just a relatively "boring" (as boring as caves can be) windy stream passage.  Narrow at the bottom and wide at the top.  But soon we got to a really large mound of flowstone coming down.  Lots of rimstone dams and pools ringed it and water trickled down.

We climbed up over this, and then had to climb back down the other side.  The otherside was very beautiful as well.  I climbed down and stooped in the water to get some pictures of water trickling down, and the different patterns.

Then we continued on and walked in the stream.  We soon got to the parts that had numerous natural bridges.  Some of them are high up in the air, some are so low you can climb over them, and others you crawl under them because they are at an inconvenient height to climb them.  But I tried my hardest to climb over every one of them.  I was in no mood to crawl.

                                      (Sprawled out on one of the bridges, about 20 feet above the water)
We finally made it to the giant mound of flowstone that choked off the entire canyon.  The only way through was under it.  On the left hand side is a crawl through the stream.  Part of it you can do on your hands and knees, but near the end you must get onto your belly.  And depending on how deep the water is you get your head in the water too.  I led the way, and Chris followed me.

We made it through and I led him up onto the flowstone mound.  On the backside you could climb up and there are two rooms.  Both have really beautiful pools with very active formations still flowing down.

                                        (Chris, taking a "bath")
After that we dove back under the flowstone and backtracked to to a point where I was almost positive was the connection passage to gain access to Doghill Cave.  So I led Chris in there.  We passed a few cool formations but after a while I began to get skeptical.  It was turning into a very miserable crawl in mud, water, and over rough gravel and flowstone.  But I kept going until I saw the passage jutting upward ahead.  I knew I had missed the connection.  So, I wiggled my way around until I could turn around.  I painfully crawled back out and eventually Chris and I regrouped in the main passage.  What I thought I remembered the connection passage being, indeed wasn't.  I looked for a couple minutes but then decided to cut the trip short.  I still had a drive back and wanted to meet a friend at the airport.  If we did happen to successfully find the connection it would be a good 2-3 hours to get through it.  So we turned around.

It was a good trip, but I'm going to figure out where that connection passage is so I can go back and really work on getting to know Doghill Cave and get some good pictures and videos.  Until next time, the caver says adios!

Link to all photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/116396676277007122980/DonahueCave

Video: http://youtu.be/TGjZfrLo5VI

Roaring Waterfalls

Saturday morning I took a friend to see a little bit of Pine Hill Cave.  Got some good pictures and I wanted to share some of them.  In the Register Room there were some large clusters of bats.

We went to the Tower Domes & Canyon first.

Fossilized Coral

Then we backtracked and went up the left side of the main fork, stopping to look at a side passage that had some nice rimstone... And a white crawfish.

The ultimate stop were the waterfalls.  And those were very, very, VERY cold... On the way back out of the cave all the warmth had been sapped from my body.