TR: Fixin'-to-Die!

Went up Saturday afternoon and got to camp just before dark to find people already in the camp spot. 4 of the 6 of us camped out with the others cavers, and Nathan and I went over and rapped right next to Wednesday Afternoon and found that the entrance was flat enough to sleep in. Nate rolled out his bed and we grabbed our caving gear. Next thing we are cruising through tight passages which were mostly crawling between pods, until we encounter some water in one of the crawls. We got back around midnight after exploring around 6-800ft of passage(no pics sorry).

I had a snack and we went to bed(I brought my wrapper back in the cave with me so I didn't have to worry about it blowing off or some critter dragging it into the woods. I was woken up by Nate at some point as I heard some rustling. Turns out it wasn't Nate rustling, but rather 2 field mice after my wrapper! they were only a few feet from my head, so I was slightly startled but eventually we scared them off. I noticed it was raining pretty hard at certain times through the night, and on several occasions saw lightening and heard thunder. I wondered how the others were doing as we were practically in a house! It was cool as when it wasn't raining the night sky actually lit up the entrance of the cave!

We woke up and shortly after the other members of our group had joined up with us. We dropped into fixin to die shortly there after. The other cavers said they did not recommend doing Wednesday and then Fixin as you will be too wet. They also said they didn't think we would find our goal (the hanging lake), but if we did it would probably take all day. Apparently if we knew the way it would only take an hour or 2.
It started going down almost immediately:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE002.jpg
I distinctly remember a passageway that was like a mae west slot canyon passing over the occasional pit.
We saw some cool things on the way to the 100' pit:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE004.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE005.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE008.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE006.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE011.jpg
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http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE013.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE018.jpg
This was at the bottom of the pit:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE021.jpg
After the pit we went up a hand line and came to an intersection at a large hallway. The right hand variation looked like it crossed 2-3 deep and wide pits, not crossable with out ropes in our opinion. We decided to go left (in hindsight I think we were supposed to go right somewhere between the 100' pit and here) We were trying to get to the hanging lake but made a wrong turn somewhere about this point in time.
I think these photo's were before that intersection, however I'm not sure as this cave was large and confusing:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE029.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE030.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE032.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE034.jpg

I'm going to let you all know now, I sat in the back seat most of the time this trip letting Adam and Nathan do most of the leading and navigating. I found it kind of nice to just sit back and take pictures while someone else had the pressure of trying to find the right passage (which I'm pretty sure wasn't possible at this point in time).

We went back really far, into what we are assuming is the octopus room maze. Lot's of splits to check out! We used 1,200' of string in the cave to make sure we didn't forget which splits to take back out.

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE040.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE042.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE045.jpg
It's interesting that I've heard that the walls of fixin to die are quite barren compared to groaning, I saw a lot of cool things on the wall that I had never seen in any other cave I've been into. you really might want to click on some of these to check out the larger version.

The inside of the cave was often like what you see in a geode around the octopus room (I'm assuming). In some places there really were pockets filled with crystal growth. In one place there was a band of crystal growth about 2 feet wide by about 5 feet long as part of the wall. I believe they were a black locality of calcite crystals. I didn't get a picture of them however I did get a lot of the clear locality as well as the purple locality and even some, yellowish possibly mini sulfur crystals? The black ones formed much larger then the others from what I remember.
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE046.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE049.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE051.jpg
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http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE067.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE069.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE074.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE075.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE077.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...intoDIE078.jpg

Nice report. :2thumbs: Those textures are pretty cool, and the purple and yellow/orange colors are amazing! Looks like a pretty cool place to spend the night too. :nod:

well done. you found it. :2thumbs:

Sweet cave to go explore.. now I am going to have to find it and go in :)

Very nice trip report. Love all the pictures. Sounds like you just scratched the surface.