Spring Cave TR (my first caving post on bogley)
Well I found bogley through canyoneering. My last slot canyon was one of monsterous proportions (sandthrax) and I posted a TR on my favorite climbing web site. Iceaxe and Ratagonia found this website and joined and posted comments out of the blue, and I wanted to post it up in other places so I found bogley where the TR was already cross linked.
I just recently got into caving and after my first trip to fulford cave not long ago I started checking the caving forum at bogley which gave me more motivation to go caving when the weather is not ideal for climbing or snowboarding or canyoneering.
BTW where the hell are all the colorado cavers hiding? I know there are alot of caves but I haven't seen many write ups. Super secret BS. I'm not joining a club to pay my dues and do things on their accord for years, just to be denied when I request information like I've read about at caves are for all. I'm way too motivated to let people like that hold me back. Luckily I have GPS coords to virtually every publicly open cave in the state now so I just have to track them down and explore and map them out for myself I guess unless I meet some cavers who are more friendly and more open to share information. Luckily I have 1 person who offered to scan maps for me if he has one of where I'm going.
The weather was crap so we decided to bag the idea of doing 2 slot canyons and instead go caving. I've learned over time that you can't fight mother nature so you might as well learn to work with her.
We met up at 2 am in Evergreen and took off. The drive over the passes was a little hairy with a bunch of rude semi-drivers and crappy road conditions. We stopped in rifle to get some food. We also went to walmart and picked up a compass and some dry bags.
Off we went, the drive was pretty enjoyable. Although we had a spook as we saw a sign saying the road to Buford was closed and that's where were headed! We decide to ignore the sign and keep going.
The drive is really senic up the valley near the trail head:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ingcave053.jpg
You can see some elk on the right side of this shot:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ingcave051.jpg
More of the drive toward the entrance:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ingcave050.jpg
We eventually made it to the trail head with no closed road. We were the only people there at about 7:30/8 am. The hike up to the entrance went fast as it was dry.
We were all buzzing from the excitment once we got to the entrance, so we geared up and took off.
The entrance:
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This formation was nearly the first cool thing we saw:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ingcave004.jpg
We made our way to the Pirates Den after that.
The entrance to the Den:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ingcave006.jpg
We walked through some cool hallways and saw 1 cool formation on the way to the first fixed rope:
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The other members of our team used the rope:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ingcave018.jpg
I decided it was easily down climbable. Thunder road was roaring and it looked high as hell. I didn't want to go near it so we walked down and checked out the lake. The lake was super full and had a raging current. I decided to climb out above it for a picture reguardless. I was sure a fall would mean death as the lake was probly 6'+ deep so I made sure every move was 100%.
I think the shot was worth the extra caution and possible doom:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ingcave020.jpg
We made our way back to the fixed rope up into the butterscotch room and again I decided I don't need a stinking rope. I climbed up into the butterscotch room with out the aid of the rope getting extremely soaked in the process. Everyone followed also getting soaked, so once we got in the butterscotch room we emptied our packs and let things dry out a little. Grabbing a little snack while we waited was a bonus. Everything was steaming while it dried out. Once everything got as dry as possible we packed our extra dry clothes with all our extra battery's and light sources into my 3 new dry bags for safe keeping.
A cool formation in the butterscotch room:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ingcave022.jpg
We then made our way to the bridge room passing a ton of cool stuff:
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Once in the bridge room we decided to try to keep going as far as possible so we found the rope hole. I again decided the rope was an unnecessary eye sore and climbed down with out it. We crossed a number of flooded hallways on the way to the dogleg via bridging and traversing and steming above the water.
My friend at the other end of one:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ingcave043.jpg
At one of these crossings there was a rope going up out the other side and we climbed up with out it again. I'm not sure but it seemed the rope may have kept going under the water like there was another passage under there.
We made our way back a ways and explored alot of passages around the bowl room.
We never could find the crack attic or the rooms beyond that area. Maybe the passage was flooded as it seems we explored everything we could with out scuba gear. Hell we even climbed up 30 feet in 2 different spots looking for the passage to the next area but both spots seemed to squeeze out way to much or entirely all together.
Some pics from beyond the dog leg I believe:
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ingcave044.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ingcave045.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ingcave046.jpg
We got kinda turned around back beyond the dog leg around the bowl room and main street(not sure if we found mainstreet or not) In the process of trying to find the crack attic so we decided it was best to head back. We got out of the cave around 3 and enjoyed having pleanty of time to drive home.
Enjoy!
