We head out from Raccoon mountain and make our way to the walmart in Scottsboro to meet up with Derek Reneer for a trip into Iron hoop cave for a nice casual trip through the cave.  It has been raining for some time now so Derek allowed us to jump in his Durango which took us to the bottom and to the entrance of the cave itself. which was super awesome, man does he know how to whip that stick and handle the dirt roads.

We suit up in a wetsuit and make our way into the cave entrance which was a breakdown pile and a series of breakdown crawls into breakdown rooms that went from stooping to hands and knees.

We got to a final section which was hands and knees crawling on stones until we popped out into borehole passage which was quite large and decorated. I have been getting quite tired of the crawling from the week of caving due to my knees starting to get crackly but the crawl was not too bad.

We worked our way through the borehole and stopped at some very interesting and fascinating totem formations which was very unique to see and quite awesome!!!

We continued on to a large flowstone room that had a large 20x30 flowstone feature and slid down into a walking river passage that took us to the main attraction which is called the bone room.

On the way there we passed a few formation rooms but the bone room was really interesting as it reminded me cueva zumbo a little with the talon cut mosaic of rock in the passage itself.

the others went down into the sewer passages to try to push their way over to jess Elliot cave and I stayed back to photo this room which turned out to be quite challenging and I spent a lot of time in this room trying to get a decent shot. Eventually I started to back track and wait for the others at the formation room and soon after I got there, the others arrived.

 

We headed out of the cave after taking a few more photos and Derek took us through a side passage that was fantastic!!! a blue swimming water passage which was decorated in flowstone formations and just one hell of a fun swim.  The passage continued once we got out but that was fantastic to be going through that and coming out on the other side. I want to thank Derek for taking us through this beautiful system and I hope we can hang out again soon!!