Weekend of Caving

Saturday afternoon I drove down after work, then I met Jason and Critter, and a new guy named Jordan, at alumni circle.  We took off and drove down to Sinks of the Roundstone.  The area had gotten a bit of rain, so I decided to go in the back entrance by the railroad.  Not too far in was the first area that would be prone to flooding, and the water was very low.  So I deemed it safe to go on.

I did do some exploring of a new section.  I found a place where the ceiling had collapsed during the cave's formation.  I found holes to climb up into and follow the rock layers.  After a while I came back down and our group rejoined up.

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures on this trip.  But we went down on the "foot slide", before getting to the opera room.  It was there that we saw a lake before us.  The opera room floods easily.  When water does get into it, it fills up.  It is like a giant bowl.  But, I scouted around on the left side and found that we could jump, walk, and climb from rock to rock to get to the other side.  So it all worked out.  Critter thought he would be funny and just wade through.  He regretted doing that later.

When we reached the big main entrance I saw that we couldn't get out without getting our feet wet.  So I jumped in and waded across.

I saw what looked like a dead end passage to my left.  I decided to run up ahead and check it out.  However, when I got to the filled in back wall I noticed a small bit of sunlight coming down.  I climbed up and saw there was a small entrance above!  So I climbed out and saw it put me out above the main entrance.  So we had to climb down and cross the stream again.

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Time passed, and I was going to head back up north Sunday evening.  My friend David Intal called me!  By some freak of nature he was in Berea, and so was I.  We loaded up in my car and set off to go on a short caving trip to Mullins Spring Cave!  I hadn't been in there for over a year.

I put back on my dirty damp clothes and David and I went in the dry entrance.  I didn't really want to get wet.  I basically led him on a "loop trip".  Took him through a couple crawls (one of which I learned about when I surveyed in the cave last summer)  We were only in the cave for an hour or so before we headed back out and changed.