TR: Fixin'-to-Die! Pt.2

[forum8fox]

Well Nathan, Steve, and I were aching to get back to FTD this weekend. Turns out Steven can't make it because he has to move, but his brother David is on board since he just got back from New Zealand. He tried to find the fault caves the other day and we were telling him "man what a waste of time". He had heard about what he had missed since our first caving experience at fulford last winter, and he was really psyched to get out and check it out. My friend Darwin was also joining us, he came along for my second fulford trip and has been through all the clear creek canyon fault caves with me.

We (Nate and I) wanted to get back and check a passage where we thought we missed our turn off the trip prior to get to hanging lake.

I had been thinking about this passage almost all week, it seemed almost mystic. the start was a large pit and the passage went back long enough we couldn't see the end. I figured there were a few pits behind the first but I wasn't sure as I couldn't see much past the first pit. I hoped that canyoneering and climbing techniques and cleaver rigging could get the job done but I had so much anticipation. I really wanted to see if we could get through this passage and hopefully on to hanging lake.

We took off Saturday afternoon and got to the campsite suprised to see no one was there, as the group from the weekend prior said they would be.

It didn't matter, we weren't planning on using the campsite anyway. David really wanted to sleep in a cave so we went back to WA like the weekend prior.

This time we took the downclimb which was a bit fun because it was dark. Nate and I knew the how big the looming monster below us was so we were super cautious getting the other 2 down since they had never Seen or been up it. None of us had acutally ever been down it anyway.



Going this way required a bit of a dicey slick traverse before getting to where we were going.



Eventually we all arrived safely and passed out at the entrance of WA.
The next morning we woke up pretty early, mostly because of me. I couldn't sleep anymore, and I could see sunlight at the entrance of the cave. I was in the back so everyone needed to wake up for me to get out.

We dropped into the cave at about 7:30am, and promptly raced to the 100' pit without stopping for anything.



We crossed and proceeded in the same manner untill reaching the passage with the monster pits. We stopped quickly!

I rigged up an anchor off the largest rock possible near the pit, and tied a 100' rope to it (to tie my pack to). Back further we set up another anchor on a larger rock to belay off of with my 60m climbing rope.

This was freaking crazy, I have never done anything like this before in my entire life. I have however read about it because of being into canyoneering. To cross pot holes canyoneers sometimes will do a pack toss. I've never been in a slot canyon which was mostly of the pot hole variety, but I wanted to be ready for them so I read up on escaping these monsters. Turns out you can use the techniques in caves too!

I worked my way out on the points sticking out the sides of the pit. Standing on the most solid points on them and trying to stand as high above them as possible. I managed to swing my pack below me and between my legs. I got enough force and let the sucker fly. I didn't get it high enough the first time so I had to climb up higher. Mind you I'm on belay but there is a good enough drop to the angleing pit below me that I could be injured. To get more distance I had the belay keep tension and I was leaning out at an angle above the yawning pit! On the second try I gave it more juice and I got it up and stuck enough to feel assured enough to proceede. It was WILD!








I made it safely and I was relieved to find out that there was not another giant pit waiting just on the other side of the lip. Instead I had passage for maybe 40' then another pit. While I started to look for something to anchor off to bring someone over to me, 2 other members of our group used the 100'rope to descend the pit I had just crossed. The pit continued 20' deeper then the rope. We waited to see where it went. There was some cool stuff we saw between crossing the 2 pits.









It took a little bit but eventually they found their way into the pit on the other side, but I couldn't see them. I took more of my climbing rope and had David tie it off and I threw it down to them as they couldn't climb up safely without it. Darwin came up the hand line and comfirmed a connection. David went down as I rapped down to join them aswell after having scoped our options to get through this next pit. We searched for passage below but didn't find anything that actually lead further. We all came back up the climbing rope.



Nate figured a way to climb up the opposite side of the pit. We grabbed the extra slack from the climbing rope that was trailed down the previous pit and trailed it with us to the next pit...

That's right there is another pit! We get my rope to just before the lip of the pit. There is also a passage below us that dead ends in the pit. It looks like it keeps going strait ahead of us but we actually want to be headed to our left and it just so happens that there is a tunnel leading that way. It doesn't looke easy to get to however. If it were outside in the light and you had no height restrictions it would be a possible leap. Not here though.



More trickery ensued success. I didn't want to do it but I was the only one that knew how so I had to. Another doubious pack toss, this time with 2 packs since the toss was shorter and there was no lip to snag on the other passage and I wanted more weight. Instead the lip gently rolled into the pit so I needed more weight to counter balance my weight. I'm not sure how deep the pit was but I wasn't going to find out. Nate brought another 40'stretch of rope we used to cross this next section. It was one of the scariest things I've ever done. The packs would not hold full body weight, they would only be used for quick assistance. I had to do a super scary tension traverse with my feet at the lip of the pit on our side. Below me was the opening to the dead end passage that lead into the pit looming like a black overhang below. I had to lean out and try to work my feet and hands for balance on what seemed like nothing to and the belay held tension and very slowly inched out till I told them to stop. I ran out of holds so I had to hold my possition while they fed me 3 feet of slack and I made the leap for the passage pulling on the packs for assistance!



I rigged up an anchor which mainly consisted of me wedged between the walls past a constriction and brought the rest of the group over.



From there things got really cool. Although we never found the passage we were looking for that goes to the hanging lake spur we checked out all of the leads over there. We never did drop strait into the last pit but Darwin actually managed to get across it and found out it dead ended beyond that.

Here is the rest of the shots from beyond the pit:





































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This was one of the tightest squeezes to avoid the features





As you can tell we had alot of fun playing with the lighting! We raced back out at around 4:30 and got back out by 6:45! What a trip.
We got back up the up climb back to camp and were greeted with an awesome view of the canyon with a nice rainbow and storm clouds in the distance! Near I-70 again we had a great sunset and we went home.

[jumar]

Wow, that looks like an awesome cave!

[vader]

I feel like I just went to Fixin. Thanks for the Awesome trip report. I loved the pictures of the Down climb and the pack tosses. Can't wait for your next one. Which cave are we going to next?