TR:Lime Creek Area Pt.3

[forum8fox]

Well this is supposed to be my last caving trip for a little while, I'm hoping the weather will cooperate with my climbing life.

We were thinking about going back out to deep creek to check out premonition or buffalo. I had talked to another caver and he swayed my plans a bit. He said he knew of a cave that's supposed to be really good, and he had a really good idea where it was. Once I got the name of the cave I started to do my research. My main source was excited as he said it's got a reputation for being nice and he wanted to see it. He mentioned that he had mentioned it while talking amongst some groups of cavers and the room fell silent.

After more research I found out the cave was discovered July 4th 1986 by Tom Sherrill and Ron Ryan (this trip is 23 years and 1 day exactly after). Apparently they had to turn back before long on their first trip due to worries of hypothermia because of a wet rap. They went back properly equipped and found world class formations apparently.

It was a well cherished secret to a small group amongst the caving community for a while. However the origional team went back some time later to find the cave damaged and had a talk with the forest service. They got the cave closed, it was gated for a while into the 90's apparently. Then the gate was removed and a sign was placed stating anyone who enters is subject to a $5000 fine by the forest service. However not long ago some one sparked a discussion about the status of the closure, and it turns out the closure has expired and not been renewed since in ended in the late 90's (based on a post made by Richard Rhinehart who is a big member of the caving community and should be trusted to use credible information).

We decided to go camp out around lime creek again as it was in a similar area to the other cave, with hopes of getting to see the inside of herbies deli. Last time we didn't get inside because of ice. When we arrived we found there was already alot of other people camped out in the area around herbies so we decided to keep driving to the powerline cave. Lucky for us it was still empty so we packed up and headed towards the cave. We set up camp at dusk and dropped into the cave. Nathan and I had already seen the cave but our other member Eric had not seen it yet. Also we thought there was a possibility of another passage we hadn't explored from the entrance pit. Eric rapped into this new hole and found it didn't seem to go so he came back up.

Nate and I were ok with that as we thought that the powerline was our favorite cave so far (although after fixin we weren't 100% sure about that anymore). We went down and I remembered there was another lead I wanted to check out also. We encountered a bat flying around in a tall room above us and we kept moving to my possible lead. Soon we were there and it looked promising. Up I went as cafefully as possible as I was working up some clean stone.



I made it through the squeeze hole above and noticed 2 possibilities. I carefully slighered into the first and found it dead ended. I worked over to the other option and found it kept going a bit so I kept going. I found it opened into a cool room with a bunch of dam's and a hidden pool!







It looks like this fills up quite a bit sometimes, I'd imagine it over flows into the dam's and passages below.



After shooting pics of this cool stuff we noticed a furry little guy hanging out in the ceiling:



We showed Eric the rest of the cave and went back up and out of the cave back to the tent.

We woke up pretty early to meet the other guy who knew where the cave was at around 8. Next thing we are off on an old log road hiking and eventually the road turns into a walking path mixed with overgrowth through sections and then eventually all out bush whacking. Eventually we climb us a ways into this higher alpine meadow. You would think the water flowing from the meadow would feed the gully system we had come up. However the drainage remained free of running water and mostly water in general. Well a little further up the meadow we find out why.

The creek disappears into an enormous pit!


This is a known cave and the drop is atleast 160' and upto 210'. Supposedly there is not much if any passage at the bottom despite the decent sized stream flowing into it. It's a really large pit and when you think of the spring run off you must think there has to be passage. When you get near the edge you can find 2 bolts which really makes you wonder. I mean there is natural anchors around for one to use to check it out once, it's alot of effort to hand drill 3/8 bolts. I would check it out first before placing bolts, if it was nothing then I wouldn't wast my time and effort hand drilling 2 3/8" by over 1.5" bolts. HMMM.


I took a photo to remember how nicely green and lush everything around us was:


Anyway this isn't what we were looking for so we kept going up the valley and eventually connected with a real maintained trail. After a while hiking up hill again through the tree's, we eventually came to another high alpine meadow and we were really close. It was time to spread out and start looking. We wandered for a good while finding some hopeful leads but they all turned out to be nothing. We re-grouped and decided to give it another good effort before going to check out a different cave in the area. This time we ended spreading out as 2 groups of 2 in close but different areas. Eric saved the day by finding the pit that dropped into the cave. I ran over to find the other group and let them know while Eric held down the location. Next thing we were rigging rope and having lunch as it was noon already and we had hiked close to 3 miles.

The pit consisted of 3 or 4 drops, which weren't in a strait line but meandering rather. Once at the bottom we crawled through a little hole and found passage heading 2 directions. We also found 2 old ropes left behind nicely coiled. after taking a quick look and a few pictures we decided to head the direction the ropes were in.





We rigged one of their ropes to save ours for lower and we dropped into another more canyon like section 20-30' below. From there we continued on down the cave which was often more like a slot canyon.
We saw some cool curtiains on the way down to the next challange:





Eventually we came to another drop that was about 20-40'. I looked to see if we could down climb around it but we decided it was better to be safe. Not to mention the down climb I had scoped was right where the cave began to get wet! I shot a nice photo of Nathan rapping from this point however:


I also saw a cool rock that was glistening like a large hematite pearl looking rock plastered to the wall, I don't think the pic does it justice but I think it's cool as I caught multiple free floating drops of water:



I'm pretty sure almost all these pictures are from below this section but I could be wrong (they might be below the next rap) the thin crazy random hair looking features area call helectites :















A huge TITE!




More features, one is a cool straw collum with a helectite growing off the side in the middle:











There was another rap that was about 50' that could soak you if you didn't rig it in the right spot, we found a way to rig it out of the main flow so you only got some splash instead of the whole stream:







A bit beyond all this we ran out of time before the cave died so we had to turn around and head back. We will have to come back and see the rest as we didn't really think we saw anything that unusual or world class or even extremely fragile for that matter. We must not have gone far enough I guess. I managed to hand line all the ropes except the big one near the waterfall coming back out (plus I figured out we couuld up-climbed the down climb I had scoped before taking the photo of Nathan). It wasn't exactly easy but it was quick and not too bad. This was mostly like a river cave so almost all of it was tight slot with sections you had to crawl below to avoid features like helectites or it just pinched out too tight above to walk.

Alot of fun and pretty damn deep!

On the walk out we discovered another pit in a pretty random area, it looked promising, maybe even virgin! We'll be back.
Enjoy!

[jumar]

[Deathcricket]

Love the pics man! I've never seen white crystals growing right on top of the brown ones like that. Friggin awesome.

[accadacca]

Way cool.

[vader]

Great trip report!

I read it last night, but there was so much info they