Goin Down...

Alright I'm back for another round of story telling...
I think I'll start by informing you all of our plans to give some perspective on this next part of the story.
There is a very large cave which is in the area called "feels like I'm fixin' to die"(I'll just label it as FTD). There is also about 9 other caves in the area. We planned to check out honkey as it was described as well decorated and roybals as it's only 300' long and is our land mark to find FTD. This plan would allow us maximum time to explore FTD. There is also an un-identified cave right near honkey so we figured we would check it out also. At the time we were assuming the curtain room cave was honkey and the ice box cave was the un-identified cave. We took off from there expecting to find roybals next then FTD. Here is where we realized our assumptions were quite off. We came to the next cave and went in:

Disappointed to find a register labeled honkey. CRAP!
It was around noon then and we figured we were doing alright on time prior to this. We didn't know how big honkey was so we weren't so sure anymore. Since it was supposed to be well decorated we checked it out anyway. It sure didn't meet my expectations but it was still pretty cool.
Moon milk stalagtites:

some other formations:



Mr Wiggles in action again on another crawl:

The entrance had some cool moss growth:

We came back out and took off walking again, we passes the un-identified cave on the way to roybals. We were short on time now and really wanted to see FTD. We came up to roybals and decided to pass on it aswell. On the way to the next visible hole we came across a waterfall and deep steep drainage that had to be crossed. It looked possible but not worth the risk as we had no rock pro and a slip up could be deadly. We decided we could probably rap in from above and that would be safer so we headed back toward a spot where we could climb back up to the rim.

We decided to check out roybals on the way back as it was supposed to be short, I'm glad we did as it was cooler then honkey IMO.
The goods:





Nate shining his light through a thin curtain:


more formations:



There was even some good squeezes, I had to twist my way through one of them:


Also the entrance was pretty sweet as it had a really cool skylight:



We climbed back up and walked over to the top of this:

We figured we were on the right path as we saw a rope tied up between a couple of trees, but it didn't go anywhere. I thought it was some sort of marker, we had to be on the right path.
We walk a bit closer to the lip of the rim and rig up my 60M climbing rope.
We aren't sure how far down it is so I go first with the ascenders and second rope in my pack just incase.

I'll admit I was a bit nervous as the nature of the rap had the end of the rope out of sight till the last 30 or so feet. I got down however with no problems and a mere 15' to spare!
Nate came down next (Steve's knee hurt so it was just the 2 of us now):



We go to the mouth of the cave and find a large pile of stacked rocks in the alcove. We figure it's got to be the right place. It looks like the entrance might be a crawlway so I go and check it out only to find it pinch out very quickly. We look around for any other options and all that turns up is we are supposed to stand on the pile of rocks and go up the hole in the ceiling. So up we go...

I should mention that considering FTD is 266' deep we have another 60m and another 60-100' stretch of rope for raps or hand lines. This plus a bunch of water,2 spot lights and extra headlamps and batteries, an extra fleece top a camera and 50+' of webbing and vertical ascent and descent gear. The hole going up got a bit tight as you chimneyed up, making getting the packs up a real pain in the ass. Eventually we came to a split after much agony and it trended horizontally luckily so we could catch a break.
Turns out one of the splits dead ends shortly(I see light coming through a small hole (10"), and the other goes out to another opening a was up the cliff face. Frustrated as hell we go back down the chimney hole, this time much easier as gravity did all the work with the packs. it's about 5 pm at this point in time and the desperation is setting in. We have to atleast find the entrance of FTD. So before climbing back up the rope we search around a bit. I find this just around the corner:


I needed to verify so we went in and Nate explored a 15' pit that dead ended. I noticed a possible way up through the ceiling, but it was very exposed and looked un-traveled. I had to verify so up I went, carefully. I was about 30' above the pit at this time so it would have been very ugly had I slipped (45' drop into a hole).

When I got inside I hade a grim realization. I had just came in the hole Nate explored in the last cave and I was indeed in the same small stupid cave. Back out and down I went the way I came for practice. CRAP.

I kept walking S SW and found this:


Again we needed to verify so in we went. unfortunately this one dead ended aswell. It was about 5:45 now and we had to go, so back up the rope we went. As I waited for Nate to come back up I spotted a large stack of rocks our on the prow to my S SW and thought it was a little odd. There were some holes at the base however so I found it more interesting then odd. We spaced some gear at the drop point and I didn't realize till I got back to camp so once I got my stuff packed up to leave I walked back over and retrieved it. I had a hunch I should walk over and look to see what the cairn is all about.
So as is often a good idea I let my intuition lead my path. Once at the cairn I see a crack going into the ground deeply but it's only like 4" so that can't be it. Slightly puzzled I walk out along the edge of the cliff investigating possibilities. Sure enough I find 2 bolts spaced 2-3' apart with no hangers but nuts still attatched. I find it odd that there could be a single climbing route alone up here (not that it would be crappy climbing but rather there would be alot of routes to accompany it more then likely due to the quantity and quality of rock around)and that the bolts could be spaced so widely and with out hangers. I hadn't seen any other climbing routes/bolts in the 1/2-3/4 of a mile I walked along the base and the same distance on top. I figure that's got to be it, but I have no way to know for sure untill I go back and rap off the extremely sheer/overhanging prow. I was getting slightly spooked thinking about it as I stood there alone looking at the bolts.

I've been in contact with Dan at caves are for all and he sent me some more clues. That's how I have an idea what caves we were actually in besides the ones with the registers(just honkey and roybal). Turns out the short cave with dual entrances is called the buttress cave and the other one we explored at the end is called the cosmic bananna. Neither were really that worthy of pictures especially since we were short on time.

All in all it was a great trip even though we didn't find FTD. Nate and I went into 7 caves total this trip which is pretty damn good. I wasn't really that impressed by what I saw mostly (the powerline cave is still my favorite so far), though obviously some stuff was cool enough to shoot pics of.

What adventurous souls you are! I love your TRs and pictures, Jason. Thanks again for taking me there! : )

Teaser for Fixin to Die:

Please bump the thread to page 3 for me so the new TR will load faster.

bump

bumpidity

bumper

bumpetted

bumpotted

orange

Orange you glad I didn't say "bumpalicious" again??

(that should do it Jay)

One more!!!!

Thanks a ton guys! I will reward thee with jewels! TR in progress! (Holy crap, I got logged off when I was over 1/2 way through! F***! 3 hours down the drain...)Sorry guys might be midnight by the time I finish, I guess I will shorten the dialog up a bit to try to get more sleep tonight.

TR: Fixin'-To-Die! (Part 1)
Went up Saturday afternoon and got to camp just before dark to find people already in the camp spot. 4 of the 6 of us camped out with the others cavers, and Nathan and I went over and rapped right next to Wednesday Afternoon and found that the entrance was flat enough to sleep in. Nate rolled out his bed and we grabbed our caving gear. Next thing we are cruising through tight passages which were mostly crawling between pods, until we encounter some water in one of the crawls. We got back around midnight after exploring around 6-800ft of passage(no pics sorry).

I had a snack and we went to bed(I brought my wrapper back in the cave with me so I didn't have to worry about it blowing off or some critter dragging it into the woods. I was woken up by Nate at some point as I heard some rustling. Turns out it wasn't Nate rustling, but rather 2 field mice after my wrapper! they were only a few feet from my head, so I was slightly startled but eventually we scared them off. I noticed it was raining pretty hard at certain times through the night, and on several occasions saw lightening and heard thunder. I wondered how the others were doing as we were practically in a house! It was cool as when it wasn't raining the night sky actually lit up the entrance of the cave!

We woke up and shortly after the other members of our group had joined up with us. We dropped into fixin to die shortly there after. The other cavers said they did not recommend doing Wednesday and then Fixin as you will be too wet. They also said they didn't think we would find our goal (the hanging lake), but if we did it would probably take all day. Apparently if we knew the way it would only take an hour or 2.
It started going down almost immediately:

I distinctly remember a passageway that was like a mae west slot canyon passing over the occasional pit.
We saw some cool things on the way to the 100' pit:








This was at the bottom of the pit:

After the pit we went up a hand line and came to an intersection at a large hallway. The right hand variation looked like it crossed 2-3 deep and wide pits, not crossable with out ropes in our opinion. We decided to go left (in hindsight I think we were supposed to go right somewhere between the 100' pit and here) We were trying to get to the hanging lake but made a wrong turn somewhere about this point in time.
I think these photo's were before that intersection, however I'm not sure as this cave was large and confusing:

Looks freakin sweet man. Thanks for the TR!!!!

PART 2:
I'm going to let you all know now, that I sat in the back seat most of the time this trip letting Adam and Nathan do most of the leading and navigating. I found it kind of nice to just sit back and take pictures while someone else had the pressure of trying to find the right passage (which I'm pretty sure wasn't possible at this point in time).

We went back really far, into what we are assuming is the octopus room maze. Lot's of splits to check out! We used 1,200' of string in the cave to make sure we didn't forget which splits to take back out.

It's interesting that I've heard that the walls of fixin to die are quite barren compared to groaning, I saw a lot of cool things on the wall that I had never seen in any other cave I've been into. you really might want to click on some of these to check out the larger version.

The inside of the cave was often like what you see in a geode around the octopus room (I'm assuming). In some places there really were pockets filled with crystal growth. In one place there was a band of crystal growth about 2 feet wide by about 5 feet long as part of the wall. I believe they were a black locality of calcite crystals. I didn't get a picture of them however I did get a lot of the clear locality as well as the purple locality and even some, yellowish possibly mini sulfur crystals? The black ones formed much larger then the others from what I remember.

Well Nathan, Steve, and I were aching to get back to FTD this weekend. Turns out Steven can't make it because he has to move, but his brother David is on board since he just got back from New Zealand. He tried to find the fault caves the other day and we were telling him "man what a waste of time". He had heard about what he had missed since our first caving experience at fulford last winter, and he was really psyched to get out and check it out. My friend Darwin was also joining us, he came along for my second fulford trip and has been through all the clear creek canyon fault caves with me.

We (Nate and I) wanted to get back and check a passage where we thought we missed our turn off the trip prior to get to hanging lake.

I had been thinking about this passage almost all week, it seemed almost mystic. the start was a large pit and the passage went back long enough we couldn't see the end. I figured there were a few pits behind the first but I wasn't sure as I couldn't see much past the first pit. I hoped that canyoneering and climbing techniques and cleaver rigging could get the job done but I had so much anticipation. I really wanted to see if we could get through this passage and hopefully on to hanging lake.

We took off Saturday afternoon and got to the campsite suprised to see no one was there, as the group from the weekend prior said they would be.

It didn't matter, we weren't planning on using the campsite anyway. David really wanted to sleep in a cave so we went back to WA like the weekend prior.

This time we took the downclimb which was a bit fun because it was dark. Nate and I knew the how big the looming monster below us was so we were super cautious getting the other 2 down since they had never Seen or been up it. None of us had acutally ever been down it anyway.

Going this way required a bit of a dicey slick traverse before getting to where we were going.



Eventually we all arrived safely and passed out at the entrance of WA.
The next morning we woke up pretty early, mostly because of me. I couldn't sleep anymore, and I could see sunlight at the entrance of the cave. I was in the back so everyone needed to wake up for me to get out.

We dropped into the cave at about 7:30am, and promptly raced to the 100' pit without stopping for anything.



We crossed and proceeded in the same manner untill reaching the passage with the monster pits. We stopped quickly!

I rigged up an anchor off the largest rock possible near the pit, and tied a 100' rope to it (to tie my pack to). Back further we set up another anchor on a larger rock to belay off of with my 60m climbing rope.

This was freaking crazy, I have never done anything like this before in my entire life. I have however read about it because of being into canyoneering. To cross pot holes canyoneers sometimes will do a pack toss. I've never been in a slot canyon which was mostly of the pot hole variety, but I wanted to be ready for them so I read up on escaping these monsters. Turns out you can use the techniques in caves too!

I worked my way out on the points sticking out the sides of the pit. Standing on the most solid points on them and trying to stand as high above them as possible. I managed to swing my pack below me and between my legs. I got enough force and let the sucker fly. I didn't get it high enough the first time so I had to climb up higher. Mind you I'm on belay but there is a good enough drop to the angleing pit below me that I could be injured. To get more distance I had the belay keep tension and I was leaning out at an angle above the yawning pit! On the second try I gave it more juice and I got it up and stuck enough to feel assured enough to proceede. It was WILD!







I made it safely and I was relieved to find out that there was not another giant pit waiting just on the other side of the lip. Instead I had passage for maybe 40' then another pit. While I started to look for something to anchor off to bring someone over to me, 2 other members of our group used the 100'rope to descend the pit I had just crossed. The pit continued 20' deeper then the rope. We waited to see where it went. There was some cool stuff we saw between crossing the 2 pits.









It took a little bit but eventually they found their way into the pit on the other side, but I couldn't see them. I took more of my climbing rope and had David tie it off and I threw it down to them as they couldn't climb up safely without it. Darwin came up the hand line and comfirmed a connection. David went down as I rapped down to join them aswell after having scoped our options to get through this next pit. We searched for passage below but didn't find anything that actually lead further. We all came back up the climbing rope.



Nate figured a way to climb up the opposite side of the pit. We grabbed the extra slack from the climbing rope that was trailed down the previous pit and trailed it with us to the next pit...

That's right there is another pit! We get my rope to just before the lip of the pit. There is also a passage below us that dead ends in the pit. It looks like it keeps going strait ahead of us but we actually want to be headed to our left and it just so happens that there is a tunnel leading that way. It doesn't looke easy to get to however. If it were outside in the light and you had no height restrictions it would be a possible leap. Not here though.



More trickery ensued success. I didn't want to do it but I was the only one that knew how so I had to. Another doubious pack toss, this time with 2 packs since the toss was shorter and there was no lip to snag on the other passage and I wanted more weight. Instead the lip gently rolled into the pit so I needed more weight to counter balance my weight. I'm not sure how deep the pit was but I wasn't going to find out. Nate brought another 40'stretch of rope we used to cross this next section. It was one of the scariest things I've ever done. The packs would not hold full body weight, they would only be used for quick assistance. I had to do a super scary tension traverse with my feet at the lip of the pit on our side. Below me was the opening to the dead end passage that lead into the pit looming like a black overhang below. I had to lean out and try to work my feet and hands for balance on what seemed like nothing to and the belay held tension and very slowly inched out till I told them to stop. I ran out of holds so I had to hold my possition while they fed me 3 feet of slack and I made the leap for the passage pulling on the packs for assistance!



I rigged up an anchor which mainly consisted of me wedged between the walls past a constriction and brought the rest of the group over.



From there things got really cool. Although we never found the passage we were looking for that goes to the hanging lake spur we checked out all of the leads over there. We never did drop strait into the last pit but Darwin actually managed to get across it and found out it dead ended beyond that.

Here is the rest of the shots from beyond the pit:









































This was one of the tightest squeezes to avoid the features




As you can tell we had alot of fun playing with the lighting! We raced back out at around 4:30 and got back out by 6:45! What a trip.
We got back up the up climb back to camp and were greeted with an awesome view of the canyon with a nice rainbow and storm clouds in the distance! Near I-70 again we had a great sunset and we went home.

Damn! Looks like a nice hole to explore. Again thanks for the awesome TR. I cave vicariously through you... ;)

I could look at your caving photos all day long! It'll be interesting to see what you guys are up to, or down to 10 years from now. As bottle diggers say, "You got the fever!" Be safe.

Hey Matt why don't you go check out some of those wicked lava tubes over there? Sounds like there are some huge ones! I'll send you a link of some lists of longest and deepest caves in the US.

GiGi, I'm glad you like the photos. We enjoy shooting them alot too. Hopefully I will still be climbing in 10 years! Maybe I will just change my venue like Brian Becker did. Climb new routes to get to new cave passages for the USGS. That would sure be pretty wicked!
I think next weekend is my last untill the weather goes to shit again, I need to keep my climbing skillz up.

You weren't kidding about the photography. It's fun to see your exploits.