ADAM HAYDOCK

Soon after Chris came back, I got back on rope and climbed back up to the top so I could attempt to get a couple pictures of everyone coming up form the bottom.  Unfortunately those pics didn't work out but I was able to get a shot from the top.

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We all got up a little later as the trip the night before went north of 15 hours of solid caving. We woke up sore and in need of breakfast so we fired up our stoves and got ready for a classical place, one of my favorite places, Stephens gap! We make it to the trailhead and there were people getting ready to drop the gap even before we got there. We all shared our ropes so everyone was able to get on rope to drop down to the bottom of the waterfall and onto the platform with three options to choose from. People can also walk out of this cave so if you don't feel like ascending (which I do not recommend), it is an option.

Kevin was the first to drop down into the falls.  After about 10 minutes, he ran up and said to me the waterfall is raging at the bottom and gave me this look as if I was sure I wanted to go down there. "ON ROPE!" I said as I have been waiting to get down to the bottom of this hurricane waterfall key line cove madness room for a long time!!

I get over the edge and look at the waterfalls raging away below me. As I descended down, I could start to feel the water vapor turn into water drops than into rain which quickly turned into solid rain.  I was about 20ft. from the ground and the water was hammering down on me like a firehouse at times! The pressure of the water and the direction the wind that was created from the water in this circular collection pit was like a hurricane. It was awesome!!!

I came back down and checked on everyone else so see what they wanted to do.  We decided to de rig the ropes and make our heading towards our last cave, Moses Tomb.  Kevin and Justin had to leave for Indiana so we exchanged our goodbyes and we went our separate directions.  After about an hours worth of driving, we arrive at the property that had a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains.  We parked the car and started our journey to Moses Tomb.  We got to the bus and I checked my cords, It appeared the cave wasn't that far and if we were to make a B line to the cave we should be there shortly.  This decision turned out to be a pretty bad one as the terrain drastically changed to thick dead branches, thorny vines that grabbed at your clothing with each step you made, and a dis orienting feeling of wondering which direction to go.  Thankfully it was still light out and we were going up, yet we had to choose which dead bush we should dodge around first to get to the next foot step.  Something must have come through this mountain wiping out everything in its path.  It appears that a tornado came through since there was man made debris laying around the mountain that we would encounter.  After inching our way closer to what appeared to be the longest 1/4 mile hike in Alabama, we get to a small ridge and line that to the way point.  Here we are, well not really.  Now we can not find the cave.  The cords did not bring us to the entrance...shit!! We continued to look around and turned up nothing so I made the decision to go down the rocky wash as it was a bit easier to traverse and hopefully we will find a trail that would either lead us to the cave or back out. Once we got down to a confluence we found another wash that led us right to the cave entrance. 

Man that was one hell of find!!! The next challenge was to rig and trust a pair of dead trees that would hold us in place so we could drop this 230 ft. pit. We rig a tension less anchor to a fallen tree and backed it up to another tree.  feeling moderately comfortable with the rigging, we made the decision to drop and pad our way down to the bottom of the pit.  There was no cave passage down here so we quickly ascended and got out in reasonable time.

We get about Half way whacking through the bush and following yellow tape along the rock wash only to realize that I do not have my GPS unit!!! AAGGHHH!! I was not happy about that at all and I made the decision to continue on without it as I didn't want to keep everyone waiting.  I am hoping the next group that visits the cave will return it to me. I hope!!!!  We start to question our route but river (wet or dry) always lead to people and leads into the valley where we want to be but we couldn't see anything ahead of us except for more dead trees.  We turned our lights off to identify the terrain and the ridge around us which was a bit of help so we continued to follow the wash.  Eventually we came up on the old bus that we passed when we made our hike up the mountain so we knew we were on the home stretch into the valley and back to the car!!! it was a great feeling to get back to the car and reflect on what an amazing TAG trip we had let alone what an adventure it was just to get to the final drop at Moses Tomb.

 great memories, and one hell of a trip we had together!! It was a blast and one I will never forget. The next morning we went to the Liberty Café to sign the cave log and start our journey back to Chicago.

 Saturday morning we woke up early so we could get an early start to the mountain top for a 15hr. trip into 5 caves.  We cooked up breakfast in the motel and took off to the mountain where the caves were located and I followed the road to the point where the pavement ends and the dirt road begins.  I took the Honda really slow and steady down this road so I can make sure nothing would get damaged mechanically, we need to get back to Chicago in this thing.   The road wasn’t too bad; I was able to get down to the trailhead road where the 4x4 road begins.   This 4x4 road was a different story, there were times where the muddy "road" would be on a 30-40 degree slope going straight up the mountain!  The ground was slippery, and the mud was deep.    We loaded up Kevin’s car and proceeded to blast uphill avoiding troublesome depressions and quickly make it to a bench with everyone either inside or holding to the side of the car outside.  Kevin attempted to go up another long stretch of road but the car kept spinning its wheels so he just slowly brought the truck down to the bench. 

We parked our cars on the side of the road and hiked up to the entrance of Dog Collar pit. This was another 105 ft. drop with a beautiful active flowstone waterfall at the last 50 ft. We all really enjoyed dropping this too but it was time for some horizontal large borehole passage, Bluff River Cave.

We were all really impressed with this cave as it was not only a nice walking passage cave but it was nice to take a stroll through a warm cave system without ropes and extra gear.  I was not able to get the best pictures inside Bluff River Cave but I was able to get a couple decent shots of the passage.  I highly recommend this cave if you are looking for a nice walking large borehole cave with large rooms.

 This reminded me of a smaller typical Puerto Rico cave in terms of the humidity and the size with fewer formations.  BUT this cave had a lot of formations in sections, large breakdown mountains over 100 ft. high, and ceilings 30-40 ft. with a width of 20-30ft at times.  We get to the end of the cave system and decide to turn back and head back out and to the car so we could get back to the motel.  It was a nice addition to be able to stay in the motel and it made a lot of sense for us, especially since we were wet and cold!!

 This boulder was a couple stories high and its weight must have been in the TONS…the SHIT TONS!!!..HUGE so huge it took us 20 minutes to squeeze through a lower river passage via “breathing in to fit through the squeeze” passage to get back into walking passage.  We get to the other side and the domes seem to get bigger above our heads.  Some of these domes reached almost 120 ft. up.  It was pretty amazing to see the design above us that has been eroded away by water and other effects.   We continue on and come to a down climb where we had to chimney down and go through a series of rain dome rooms with chert levels, stratified rock, and mineral joints which are always amazing to see.  We got to another dome room and the passage started to turn into a hands and knees crawl.  We continued down through a small hands and knees borehole passage and passed by formation and flowstone rooms until we eventually came up to the 40-50 ft. drop.

After we made our way over to Paoli from corydon, we pull into the landowners property and removed the massive 300 lb concrete top covering the entrance to the pit. At the bottom of this pit is 30 years of debris from air tanks, to refrigerators, stoves, glass, oil cans...etc there was a lot of trash at the bottom but most of it did not seem to be to toxic which is a positive. Not much though. We rig onto the two trees beside the pit and tie the main line in with a butterfly and proceed to drop down into this large indiana pit entrance room. The walls were smooth slab risk and there were other domes right next to the passage of equal size. This is a very nice 75 ft. pit for Indiana and a very unique looking place that reminded me of Natural Well in Alabama.

Kevin takes me to the room with the 30 ft climb and the shady rope attachment. This rope appeared to be pretty old and appears to be nylon rope used for sailboats, not climbing rope by any means. There was a side climb over a barrel into a thin walkway with a 15 foot fall that lead to a shelf with an old wooden ladder. Kevin and I made it to the ladder, climbed the ladder,  and tied a rope to it so I Attached my QAS to this rope and climbed the ladder. We got to the upper shelf and the next challenge. This one was worth a sit down talk as a fall wouldn't kill us but would be a bone breaker. It wasn't to far to the topmud ledge but you had to squeeze through on the side through a sloping wedge that would send you sliding down 30-45 ft if you weren't careful.

I meat anchored myself into the rock and backed up on the rope Kevin tied to get up the ladder.  I pulled out my ATC and belayed Kevin with his dynamic rope he brought for this portion of the climb. Kevin tied in and squeezed his way through the sloping wedge to the top. Kevin made his way down a 15 ft pit and tied a static line in the wall that he had to climb up to tie off so the other members of the group can get to the top. Kevin belayed me and I squeeze around the wedge than and muntered my way down Into the pit. Now we had to climb up 15-20 ft using both walls and work our way around this small exposed ledge to a window. Kevin climbed up and tied in a piece of webbing. He popped his head into the window and found this.

At the end of this room was a white frozen fall of calcite surrounded by tints of orange and reddish brown flowstone. What an amazing find and to know that we might be the very first to have found this room and document this discovery, made this trip one I will never forget. 

  Even if we were number 2-3-4 in this room would be pretty freaking sweet too.  Regardless it was a beautiful place and worth all the challenges we encountered.  Usually this is just a pit to bounce but we spent over 5 hours in this system and that was one hell of a cave!!!

TO SEE MORE PICS OF THE NEW DISCOVERY DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH ROOM GO TO MY FLICKR LINK

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