Chocolate drop is a mine feature where miners hit a weakness in the rock creating this collapse and the geologic feature we see today.
The void has a rusty sulfur type smell and seems to have a lot of corrosion on the walls which appears to have created this weakness.
There were multiple passages that continued but without proper equipment and gas meters we did not continue the exploration.
We used rope to access the void and found this to be more of a mining feature with some geologic significance than anything cave related.
If you are interested in this kind of exploration, make sure you reach out to qualified organizations or local caving grottos for more information.
Barbed wire cave is a horizontal cave located within the state of Arizona.
The Length is around 1000 feet and sees a decent amount of traffic from local Arizona Grottos.
The entrance has piles of old rusty barbed wiring, hence the name of the cave.
Ain't Barbed Wire cave is a different cave that has extensive passage that is over a mile and a half with some crawling and stoop walking. Bring knee pads for Aint Barbed wire cave. Arizona cavers in particular like to keep the caves in pristine condition and withhold any information from the general public.
If you are interested in learning more about this cave or other Arizona caves, please attend a local grotto meeting.
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| South Dakota Badlands |
The badlands is an interesting place as it is deposited material from millions of years of build up from the original baseline bottom of an inland sea almost 80 million years ago.
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| South Dakota Badlands |
The sand, volcanic, and mud have spread out into this area so the action of wind and water eroded this geologic beauty as to what we see today.
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| South Dakota Badlands |
I got to bad pretty late and ended up getting blown around a bit inside the tent from a charge of wind that came out of nowhere and sustained itself for hours into the middle of the night.
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| South Dakota Badlands |
This forced me to sleep on the bench of the park and I woke up early to get some sunrise photos of the park itself.
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| South Dakota Badlands |
I did not have that much time to hang around so I ended up taking some photos from some popular trails and hiked in about a half mile on another trail to catch a glimpse of the sunrise over these cream colored formations.
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| South Dakota Badlands |
Afterwards I took a drive up the scenic trail which was rather interesting and nice to follow which took me to some beautiful vista overlooks.
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| South Dakota Badlands |
I was quite impressed with these overlooks and it was quite the view into the grasslands and into the buffalo national grassland. This is a place I want to come back to and spend more time hiking through the grasslands a bit and the trails.
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| South Dakota Badlands |
The Badlands does not appear to be too big but the grasslands and the vista overviews make this badland environment unique to other badland locations like the Bisti, Cathedral, and Death Valley
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| South Dakota Badlands |
Poachers Pit is another Arizona cave that has a couple hundred feet of passage and some downclimbing involved. If you know where this cave is located and youa re in the area, it is worth a visit. If you are interested in learning more about caving, please reach out to me or your local grotto.
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| Walter dropping into the third drop in Norsemans well, Alabama |
Last day of my weeklong trip in tag and we headed to Norsemans well for some high water waterfall rap fun in this remote system. It has ben raining all day and night and all day when we arrived at the parking spot for norsemans, so we headed out to seek the cave. We got a bit mis oriented and after some decisions we made a b line for the cave which took us a bit longer than we expected but we eventually made it.
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| Justin at the Top of Norsemans well |
The waterfalls were flowing pretty good so we knew that all of this water was going to be draining into the cave which was going to make for one hell of a route in high water.
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| Walter dropping into the third drop in Norsemans well, Alabama |
We get to the drop and it is a sink hole entrance with a large waterfall pouring into the cave along with a section where we could rig dry and rap into the sink hole. We set up two lines and a rebelay for both lines to make the second drop which is dry at the bottom. I wish I got a shot from the inside looking out as the green walls were very interesting to see.
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| Josh Schultz at the third drop in Norsemans well, Alabama |
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| torrents of water in Norsemans well |
We get to the top of this drop and I look down and all the water is just pounding the ground below. It was amazing and questioned if we should continue, hell yea we should continue!
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| Walter at the forth drop in Norsemans well, Alabama |
I rigged natural and walter dropped down the 25ft drop to the bottom, I got on rope and dropped down as I felt the water pressure just hammering my body to the point where it was giving a bit of a bruise, awesome!!
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| Norsemans well |
I wait for the others to get down and we continued on to the next drop which looked like we could have climbed around but the climb down itself was too much water to be climbing down and back out of. Furthermore we were starting to run out of time and we decided to leave the cave which was an event in itself climbing out of that waterfall drop.
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| Walter and Ah at the third drop in Norsemans well, Alabama |
Justin went up first as I attempted to get some pics of him with the water blasting every which way it could. Gravity and power were at work and it was quite the fantastic climb out. prob my favorite 25ft climb ever actually.
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| Justin climbing in the wicked waterfall in Norsemans well |
Everyone else got out of the cave and we had no incidents, it was night fall and a hike uphill took us to a road leading back to our cars.
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| Josh Climbing the third drop in Norsemans well, Alabama |
We celebrated with Ah's first trip and gave some stories while lifting our spirits in caver praise for another successful tag trip. I ended up driving straight from the cave back to Chicago which took longer than I expected but all in all it was a great week with amazing friends and wonderful places to experience them with.
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| Josh Climbing the third drop in Norsemans well, Alabama |
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| Bone room in Iron Hoop, Alabama |
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.
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| Bone room in Iron Hoop, Alabama |
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.
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| Bone room in Iron Hoop, Alabama |
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.
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| Bone room in Iron Hoop, Alabama |
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!!!
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| Melissa, Justin, and Derek in the borehole passage in Iron Hoop, Alabama |
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.
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| Melissa, Justin, and Derek in the borehole passage in Iron Hoop, Alabama |
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.
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| Melissa, Justin, and Derek in the borehole passage in Iron Hoop, Alabama |
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.
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| Justin, Melissa, & Derek at the Flowstone mountain room in Iron Hoop Cave |
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!!
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| Bone Room Iron Hoop |
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| Martin Spring Resurgence, Tennessee |
After the day before I was quite tired and looking forward to a day of diving orcestwell spring
and Maritn Spring. After Orcestwell Spring I made it over to Martin Spring for a dive into the cave resurgence of Martin Spring High Hole.
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| Martin Spring Resurgence, Tennessee |
The viz was great and at around 15-20ft of it I was really happy to be finally making a dive in here. I kit up and follow the canyon passage that soon ended with a large beaver starring at me wondering what the heck I am doing here. He moved a bit closer to me and I noticed he had a nest in the back so I backed up and went back underwater and found the entrance to the cave.
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| Martin Spring Resurgence, Tennessee |
It is on the lower right facing into the cave and I went down about 15ft. where I tied off my primary reel and started the dive. There were a three different lines going in different directions so I made sure I set line arrows to prove my path on the way out for myself. The cave continued on and eventually I came up to air passage that was quite fascinating, I made it over to the breakdown sump and had to turn my dive due to not having enough gas to pursue an attempt to push into the High hole. I left the cave without incident. I highly recommend this dive for any certified cave diver as you get a chance to see air passage and a great tag cave dive experience.
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| Martin Spring Resurgence, Tennessee |