Dave Everton invited me over to his place and allowed me to stay at his house for the night which was super awesome of him.  He was very welcoming and just one of those world class guys that are hard to find.  Super awesome!!! 

 

 

Guy Strover Pit Dave Everton

We leave for corydon and meet up with a bunch of other cavers including Gary, Tim McClain, Tim Pride, Tray, Shane, and Rand for a trip down through guy strover and into the Binkley system where a new discovery has uncovered some of the most amazing Ice Age Bones ever discovered. 

 

Guy Strover Pit Binkley Cave

 We get to the Landowners property and descend Guy Strover Pit which is a small 20ft pit that use to be filled with garbage. All of this garbage was removed and the entrance was re opened. Each of us descend into the cave and continue our crawl through back breaking breakdown crawls filled halfway with water and nasty mud crawls that took a few hours for us to get through until we finally made it into the borehold passage of Binkley cave.

 

Connection to Binkley Pit Photo by Dave Everton

 We continued to proceed down the passage as this actually cut out miles of cave.  This passage that we went through is a short cut and now we are just a few hours away from big bone mountain discovery.  we meandered around the stream passage in the river and continued to follow the cave up to a series of small waterfalls and a few breakdown rooms.  

 

 We snapped a few photos along the way and into this room. 

Soon after we came to another junction that took us to a crossroad where another connection was made from another part of the cave.   The Binkley System is over 37 miles and continues to grow by the mile!!  It is one of the most amazing systems in america.

 

Shane in Binkey Cave

 

We continue on and pass by some passages and eventually we get to a side passage that a couple of the cavers are working on to connect Blowing Hole Cave to the Binkley System. The rest of us go into the mountain room by climbing up into this large room.

 

Gary in Binkley Cave

  We are about 6 hours into our trip.  Tray takes me to the bottom corner of the room and there is where the bones are located.  

WOW!!! there are so many artifacts that must have been either washed into the cave or have found themselves in for reasons that are still not known.  

 

Ice Age Black Bear in Big Bone Mountain Room Binkley Cave

The bones were found to be the Peccary Pig and Bison bones when these mammals use to roam the region 15,000 years ago. some of these bone are some of the best specimins that have ever been found!  It was a huge discovery so it am glad I am here to take photos of this discovery.   

Bear, Snake, and Owl Bones Big Bone Mountain room Binkley Cave

 MORE INFO ON THE DISCOVERY HERE: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/30/ice-age-bones-indiana-cave/2125323/

 

 After spending a couple hours taking photos and measurements of some of these bones we started to head out of the cave.

 

 We left at swift pace but before leaving I went to see how rand and Tim McLain were doing in the side passage by giving them a helping hand with influencing the rock to connect the passage to Blowing Hole Cave.

 

Ice Age Bones Big Bone Mountain Binkley Cave

 We all left the cave and swiftly made our way back to the connection and crawled through the water and back to the entrance of Guy Strover cave.

Ice Age Bones Big Bone Mountain Room Binkley Cave

 We all got out of the cave t around 12 hours after entering the cave system which was decent time for what we had done. I am so grateful we had the opportunity to go back to the big bone mountain room to view these bones and create new friends in the caving community thanks to Dave Everton.  You guys seriously Rock!!!!1