MCINTOSH PIT TRASH TO TREASURE ROOMS
February 04, 2014
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| Unknown room in McIntosh Pit we are naming the" Diamonds in the Rough Room" |
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.
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| Adam Haydock in McInTosh Pit cave Paoli Indiana |
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.
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| Shady exposed wedge crawl McInTosh Pit |
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.
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| New Discovery Room McInTosh Pit Paoli Indiana |
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| Diamonds in the Rough room McInTosh Pit Paoli Indiana |
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| Drapery in McInTosh Pit Indiana |
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.
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| Kevin in the traverse of McInTosh Pit Indiana |
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!!!
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| McInTosh Pit |
TO SEE MORE PICS OF THE NEW DISCOVERY DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH ROOM GO TO MY FLICKR LINK
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