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Seashell Cave/South Fork Cave
My friends and I had Tuesday off and I just got some information about this cave on Sunday, so what choice did we have?
It was an hr drive from home up to the canyon, and once we hit a very rock section in the road we had to park the car. We walked about a mile and half to reach the entrance of the cave, and it was all uphill, but thankfully, the path was wide, the terrain and fall colors were great, and the air temperatures were on the cool side.
@uintahiker, told us that it was bolted so we brought out gear and brought 400 feet of rope (8mm). The first room is quite large and is probably 20feet+ tall, and maybe 15 feet wide or so. There is only one way to climb down and it's a simple downclimb. But some might prefer a handline.
I thought for sure that the cave would be full of debris and graffiti with its proximity to the river, but that wasn't the case at all. It was clean, and the no graffiti, or logjams anywhere. The cave was pretty cold on the inside, so jackets are needed, especially gloves.
About 10feet to the North of the big room there, it slots up and forms a pour-off into a 50-60ft rappel into a much larger room. There were 3 bolts placed in strange positions, but we used the one right up above your head, which makes jugging at the end easier (free-rappel vs. wall-rappel).
This bigger room was 60feet+ tall and maybe 40feet in width. On opposite sides of the room there are big passageways. Probably from the river of water that is present in the spring months. To the north, that passageway goes maybe 30+ feet until you hit a large logjam. We didn't procede through it since it was really muddy in that isolated section. We could feel a breeze so it evidently continued pass the logjam.
On the opposite side, the passageway looks like a large mining tunnel. It proceeds another 20+ feet and gets quite tight and the only way through it belly-style. It was too muddy and decided not to go. But you can shine your lights and see that it continues for a ways.
Then we jugged ourselves back up and that was it. Pretty short adventure, but still, it was very nice to escape and do some caving this year.
This cave is more than likely a sump cave, which means that the water just percolates through the soil and disappears. We thought that the stream in the cave would lead to a smaller hole somewhere along the mountainside, but that doesn't seem to be the case (although....we didn't explore all of it so it might...)
After exiting, and with our caving eyes, we found an additional 3 caves in the area. These were a bit more exciting that the main cave, as they twist and curve more (which we love), but some where short, and others we ran out of time to continue investigating.
But there is a LOT of potential up there for more caves. A LOT of limestone.
One last thing, we called it seashell cave due to the large quantities of ancient seashells embedded in the granite and limestone rocks in this cave. And the weird thing was, the other caves we explored, did not have ANY seashells in them. Even on the hike in and out we noticed like one or two shells along away, but this cave hordes copious amounts. Interesting.
The pics are small, yes I know, but it's better than waiting for the big pics to upload. Maybe, I should use my picasa slideshow instead...
