Cavers Bunk Barn and Quick Exit Use Policy.......................................................................................................................... 4

Peter Quick..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4

2004 DUG Dues..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Mike Fitch.......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

High Expectations in Low Passage................................................................................................................................................. 6

Suzanne DeBlois.......................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

4 right gloves and 3 left hands probe Park Ave passage......................................................................................... 7

(Liberating a rock, and searching for more VX)................................................................................................................. 7

Fisher Ridge Summary Sept – Dec 2003........................................................................................................................................... 9

Cover The Caven Haven Nice work to all who participated

DUG SCOOPS, official newsletter of the Detroit Urban Grotto, is published by the Detroit Urban Grotto of the National Speleological Society, 31718 W. Chicago Rd., Livonia Mi. 48150. Exchanges and other correspondence should be sent to the above Grotto address.

All original material is copyrighted by the Detroit Urban Grotto. Permission to reprint any material appearing in the DUG SCOOPS is granted to any internal organization of the NSS if credit is given to the DUG SCOOPS and to the author., and a copy of the publication is supplied to the editor.

The Detroit Urban Grotto holds meetings on the first Thursday of every other month. Meetings usually start around 7:30 PM. and will be held in Waterford, MI. E-mail or call Larry Bean for directions. Email reminders with directions are usually send out a few days before the meeting.

DUG SCOOPS are sent to all current members of DUG. Regular membership is $10.00 per year and due at the first of each year. Memberships after June 30th are $5.00 for the remainder of the year. Dues should be sent to Mike Fitch with checks made payable to Mike Fitch or Cash. Please do not make checks payable to Detroit Urban Grotto or DUG as the Grotto has no bank account and cannot cash a check.

Articles can be submitted to the Editor in a variety of formats. E-mail is the preferred method, but a floppy disk will work so long as it has a standard (text) format. Articles will not be edited for content and therefore the opinions expressed therein may not represent the views of the Detroit Urban Grotto or the NSS.

Past editions of DUG SCOOPS are available online at: http://www.fisher-ridge.net All questions concerning the DUG webpage can be directed to the editor, along with updates, slides, and photographs.

Grotto Officers

Chairman Vice Chairman Secretary Treasurer/Editor

Larry Bean Brian Davis Steve Miller Mike Fitch

I am pleased to announce that after a few years of slow work my barn on Northtown Ridge has been mostly completed for FRCS cavers to use. I had long envisioned converting the shed extension of my collapsing barn into some sort of cavers bunk house.

Anyone on the ridge has undoubtedly seen the slow progression from decrepit rotting barn, the collapsing of most of the barn, the slow removal of the collapsed rubble heap, and the remodeling of the remaining shed extension of the barn. I opted to keep the vertical barn board exterior to keep the “barn look”. Presently the bunkhouse is one large room 12 feet wide by 32 feet long. Bunks at one end and a table and chair area at the other end. If you want privacy or want to sleep later than the first few risers in the morning, a tent outside might be more comfortable. I considered a divider but scrapped the idea for simplicities sake. There is always another great idea or better way to do things but for the sake of actually getting something finished I needed to not loose momentum as the construction was done by folks who’d probably rather be caving or something a bit more fun than voluntary construction work.

The barn now has three sets of bunk beds (sleeps six) and another set is planned. There is electricity for lights and outlets. Additionally there are two electric baseboard heaters and two ceiling fans. There are windows all around to help cool the bunk house in the summer. The building is well insulated which will help in both the summer and winter.

I realize that I have to come up with some basic rules for the use of the Bunk Barn so folks are aware of my expectations. Most should be painfully obvious.

Ask For Permission To Use Bunk Barn

Every trip to use the Bunk Barn must be cleared with me in advance. If you don’t have a key to get in I can let you know who has one or mail you one. A number of folks have been given keys to use. Lock up when trip and use is over for the weekend. It is probably a good idea to lock up the Bunk Barn when on caving trips and no one is on the surface to look after your things in the barn.

Electricity use:

I am paying the electric bills thus would like to keep electricity consumption down as much as possible.

** Turn off lights and fans whenever no one is in the building. Turn all the way off the electric heaters when going on caving trips and when leaving the ridge at the end of your trip.

** Take meter reading at the beginning and end of every use of the Bunk Barn (when you arrive for the weekend and when you leave). This responsibility should lie with the person who asked me for permission to use the barn for that weekend (or whenever). Email these readings to me at pquick@pssc.com

Leaving Things In The Bunk Barn

Don’t! From time to time I’ll toss out anything that I don’t think should have been left in the Bunk Barn. Don’t leave behind your favorite pillow, blanket, cave coat, poncho, old boots, uneaten food, and so on. Don’t bring extra furniture unless you’ve talked it over with me. Anything left behind may well end up in a bonfire if it burns or in some local dumpster. It is hard to keep a place clean if it is too cluttered with junk.

Cleaning Up

At the end of every trip take the time to sweep the floor of the building and make sure no food is left behind to rot or attract rodents.

Quick Exit Use Policy

Although in the past I haven’t stated a policy for use of the Quick Exit I might as well spell out my minimum expectations for its use. All trips into the Quick Exit must be cleared with me in advance of the trip. In other words ask for permission to use the Quick Exit. There is no blanket permission given to anyone to come and go as they please. I need to know when folks are using the property for caving trips of bunk house use. If you just want to tromp around you don’t need to ask for permission. If there is a big caving weekend planned and a number of folks are going into the cave I don’t need to know exactly who is going in, just that such a weekend is being planned. First timers into the Quick Exit must sign a liability release form. The organizer of the weekend is responsible to get me the signed release forms at some point.

Lastly the Quick Exit is not a novice caver training ground. Those who don’t have vertical equipment or aren’t proficient in its use do not have permission to enter the Quick Exit. Leaders who unwisely let unskilled or incompetent cavers use the Quick Exit may have their permission to enter the Quick Exit denied. This is a situation I certainly don’t want to happen. It is easy to make errors in judgments about certain cavers abilities. Most of us have our horror stories about hauling some exhausted person out of a cave or pit entrance. What I’m talking about is knowingly letting incompetents into the cave. Don’t do it!

After a caving trip into the Quick Exit let me know about your trip. Drop me a note, email or give me a phone call. This rule applies mainly to the person who initiated the request to use the Quick Exit, although I’m happy to hear from anyone.

Happy Caving!

21 February 2004

When you’re surveying along the edge of blank ridge and the ceiling drops too low to easily see forward, other senses feed your imagination about what’s ahead. With my wet feet turning numb in a stream of cold air spilling from the 9” high slot that the passage had turned into, I wondered if we’d crawled into a treasure trove with miles of passage ahead. Jon Smith was certain we were following a drain to a windy blind dome.

Jon and I had headed into the Quick Exit with some modest goals of reconnoitering a few climbs in Park Ave., and doing a little survey in damp crawls or a watery canyon. Traveling light, we’d passed through the familiar route without pausing until we stopped to cool off at the entrance to Not Too Bad. It was great to be underground again, even in NTB, which took its usual toll of abraded knees, miscellaneous bruises, and gravel deposits in my socks.

Approaching the water in Park Ave, we climbed down sand banks that were completely smoothed by recent floods, but everything else looked normal as we progressed through the stream. Our first stop was to check the condition of gear left at an unfinished dome climb 4.5 yrs ago. We climbed up the mud bank and entered a ceiling-level slot to corkscrew our way up to the CF survey. The true ceiling of this canyon isn’t always visible through the narrow crack that rises a long way up. The dome climb was started where a waterfall had widened the crack and continued to within about 10’ of an upper level passage. The rope was still tied off away from the dome wall, and everything looked sound for the next assault on that upper level.

Jon and I looked around for a lead Steve Miller had described in this area. There was a 3 x 3 tube with multiple mud mounds that seemed to fit the description so we broke out the survey gear and I crawled in to check out the lead. It yielded one 32’ shot before the terminal mud plug. We moved on, returning to Park Ave. and continued downstream to have a look at another high lead where a survey had stopped when the passage crossed Park Ave and lost its floor. The continuation on the other side of the trunk was a little obscured beyond an overhang, but it looked small. It was only 8-10’ above the mud slope, so access should be possible with team work and climbing aids. From below, Jon thought that someone could chimney across the canyon from the surveyed side.

The next stop on our tour of high leads would bring us closer to some of the crawling leads I had in mind for the day’s survey. We backtracked to the entrance of the AN canyon and sloshed through its newly replenished puddles to the fork where the UA survey took off. Fortunately, despite the recent floodstage in the Green River, backflooding had not inundated this far back in the passage and there were no more puddles to slime through while traveling to our survey. We paused in the dome at UA26 and I climbed 10’ up the waterfall crack to a point where I needed to whack a rock out of the way to achieve a ledge. Because it was wet and I didn’t have a hammer, I backed down from the climb without getting a look at how close that route up the wall got to the alluring lead.

We continued to the lead at UA 51. This infeeder clearly formed the UA ceiling channel and we began a VX survey in to see where it originated. On a previous scoop, I remembered the airflow gently pulling into the passage, but today the wind was blowing in our faces. The passage became one of those 6’w x 2’h tubes that seems like it’ll go on forever, but after only 160’ and 8 stations to the south, I had to warn Jon that he wouldn’t like the next shot. This was where the ceiling dropped, and where I inserted my feet into the 9” high slot to optimistically set up a station that would be able to shoot into the continuation.

It was time to scout ahead. With helmet pushed ahead of me, I scraped between the smooth ceiling and the calcite and popcorn-encrusted cobble floor. After a body length it opened up enough to replace my helmet and I belly whomped along for nearly 100’. I thought about turning around to report that it continued as a whomp, but then decided to press on and have a look at that dome that was blowing all the air in my face. Abruptly, the ceiling rose and a hands and knees crawl took off to the left. I crawled, then thought I must be close to the dome when I could walk, but then had to crawl again. I’d traveled about 100’ on the far side of the whomp when the floor changed from mud to bone dry dirt. The passage split and I followed the left side for 50’ before turning around as its size diminished. The right side of the split went for 50’ too but I followed it until it rejoined the left split because it was too small to turn around in and I didn’t feel like backing out. After rejoining, the passage continued as a hands and knees crawl, but I turned around because my flame was low and failing and I’d left my pack behind. I re-emerged from the squeeze to find Jon, who hadn’t been able to escape the breeze, turning blue from cold inside his space blanket.

Though the crawls are smallish beyond the constriction, it’s an interesting area to return to; being near the edge of a drainage basin, with airflow, plus it was drying out suggesting ridge overhead. Or it could end in a blind dome just around the corner.

We returned to the UA passage and backtracked 11 stations to check out a water crawl at the bottom of a mud funnel in the middle of a room. Previously I’d scooped the upstream section for 50’ to a short constriction. Continuation would have meant scraping along with your chest in the water. We began the VY survey downstream in a 4.5’h x 2.5’w clean rock canyon. The stream began cutting down quickly, eroding through a chert layer, revealing chert worms wriggling out of the lower component. After 140’ trending a little north of east the upper component mudded up and we opted not to push the survey into the 4’h x 1’w continuation.

That wrapped up the day’s survey since the other lead I knew of was further into the cave, rather than on the way out. We packed up, left the area, hiked up Park Avenue, wended our way through the NJ turnpike, waded and crawled through Not Too Bad, and on to Northtown Ave. We’d scouted the high leads I wanted to check, surveyed 350’ in 20 stations, and failed to resolve whether we were skirting the scrap heap of some ancient dome disaster that had ruined that edge of the cave on Park Ave.’s southwestern border, or were on the verge of breaking into a lode of passage in a new lobe of ridge.

The climbs at the Quick Exit were drying out which meant that emerging into the freezing air in the sink wasn’t as miserable as it could have been. We trudged back through the woods and across the fields and on to the bunk barn on the hill, wondering what the next trip would reveal.

27 March 2004

It was welcome warm weather in Horse Cave after the cold winter months. I met Liz Turpin and Spencer Hoover at Peter’s barn in preparation for a trip to Park Ave. on Saturday. They’d arrived from Madison, WI a little earlier on Friday night, while I’d waited for Atlanta traffic to abate before beginning my journey, and so arrived in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

We found the interior of the Cavin’ Haven comfortable. So did the hundreds and hundreds of Lady-like beetles that speckled Ron and crew’s painted walls, the ceiling, the light strings, the mattresses, the floors. We swept, trampled, and expelled enough of them to be able to turn our backs and get absorbed in a brief map-gazing session. During this short interlude, more Lady-like (aka, Asian potato beetles, according to Spencer) had replaced those we’d removed, and were recycled along with their crushed brethren (or sistern?) into the cow pasture before we turned in for some sleep.

On Saturday morning we went to Horse Cave for breakfast, and though Spencer was new to FRCS, we spared him the ritual of stopping to look at the entrance to Hidden River Cave since he was born and raised in the area and was well aware of its splendor, as well as the details of its polluted past and recovery. Back at the barn, we suited and packed up for a long trek to push some blowing crawls off of Park Ave. Liz was best-dressed in her shiny new mud-colored cave suit. We packed light, carrying only a wad of webbing and Maya, my Estwing rock hammer in addition to food, light, and survey essentials.

On arrival at the Quick Exit I was dismayed to find that Spencer eschewed gloves, in favor of having better contact with the cave. Liz and I convinced him that Not Too Bad would damage his hands and multiply his miseries, but he didn’t have gloves with him, so in we went. Fortunately, at the bottom of the Quick Exit, there was a stack of sturdy gloves piled up, as though waiting for someone to put them on. Oddly, they were all right-hands, but Spencer grabbed 2 of them and we headed deeper into the cave.

Exactly where did we think we were going? It would have been fun to hear what everyone thought they’d find at the end of the trek through the Lost Carbide Complex, Northtown Ave, the Not Too Bad passage, the New Jersey Turnpike, Park Ave, and the un-mentionable approach passage to our lead. Instead I think we filled the space yakking about lab work, discussing the advantages of living in warm climates, and establishing what can happen on a Mammoth Cave tour trip.

Once into the aquatic phase of NTB, Liz noted that the water seemed to be a little higher than in the past, and unless my legs were shorter than they used to be, I had to agree with her observation since the water reached new heights on me. Not Too Soon, we reached Park Ave, and were rewarded with passage through its lofty dry upstream section. It’s best not to linger on travel through the stream, mud bank, and annoying slick pond stretches, and the unmentionable approach passage shouldn’t even be mentioned.

We arrived at the constriction that had excluded Jon Smith a month earlier when he and I surveyed a crawl that took off of to the south of UA51. We were on the edge of a narrow valley, and there was potential for lots of cave on the other side of that valley. I set Maya to work doing her job of transforming obstacles into illusions of obstacles. The ceiling had dropped in an already low passage, and the floor was stacked nearly to the ceiling with cemented cobbles. There was barely enough room to swing, but Maya made some sparks, and before long we’d liberated a rock. Initially, progress was slow, but we made a small spoils pile, liberating rock after rock. Spencer took over for a while, and though they added a lot to the spoils pile, the slot still wasn’t as spacious as it needed to be. When Liz took a turn with Maya, the constriction surrendered, and we were able to freely push the underlying gravel aside. We began surveying the continuation of the VX passage.

Rather than cutting south through the narrow center of the valley, as I’d hoped, the belly whomp wended west along the valley edge for 100’ before we emerged in 3’h x 4’w passage that angled south toward a wider section of the valley. The direction wasn’t encouraging, but the passage compensated the disappointment by opening to comfortable 8’h x 2’w dimensions. As the survey continued south, the passage split and got smaller. When we’d surveyed as much as I’d scooped last time, I decided to check ahead to gauge the nature of further survey. There was more tolerable h&k crawl, another stretch of low, wide, snaggley-floored belly whomp similar to what we’d dug into earlier, followed by some serpentine h&k crawls leading to a mazy area with some narrow floor channels and the sound of water. I’d covered about 300’, generally bearing southeast, and could have been near the far edge of the narrow part of the valley. Was this up and down passage no more than a drain from a dome on the edge of an unexplored ridge?

We’ll have to tune in to a future report to find out, because the consensus was against tackling another snaggly-floored belly-whomp and more wandering crawls. We packed up and began the return voyage after netting around 300’ of survey. On the way out through the unmentionable passage, I decided that the big lead we keep walking past on our way to the UA area should be the next survey target in that part of the cave. Survey of that walking passage, visible from a dome at UA26, only needs the ability to scale about 25’ of irregular dome wall to get into it.

The trip out was very long, but when we climbed out of the Quick Exit into the sink, the weather was agreeable, and the Cavin’ Haven was still comfortable. After sweeping out the third shift of Asian potato beetles, we retired for several hours of sleep. At some point on Sunday morning, Steve Miller drove up on his Harley to chat while we packed and closed up. We caravanned to the Dairy Queen in Cave City for our post-cave meal and ice cream treats before splitting up to return to our other lives for varying lengths of time before the inevitable return for more subterranean challenges.

There wasn’t much caving activity in the Fisher Ridge Cave System during the first few months of 2004. There are only four trips to report on.

Although not a caving trip a number of people got together on Northtown Ridge on January 10^th and 11^th to try to finish off Peter Quick’s bunk barn project. Peter Quick, Mike Dowden, Charles Pflanze, Suzanne DeBlois, Steve Miller, Liz Turpin, Mark Sparks and Jammie Fee managed to finish off nearly all remaining carpentry work (except boxing in the front door) and set up three sets of bunk beds (sleeps six). The barn now has heat, lights, is locked and secure and is ready to use by FRCS cavers. There is room enough for another set of bunks to be set up.

On the weekend of January 24^thRon Adams, Bart Nott and Steve Miller got together at the Bunk Barn on Northtown Ridge to paint the interior of the bunk house, for both a more finished look and to reduce outgasing fumes that come off of unsealed chip board. On Saturday they took a trip into the Quick Exit and headed to a known lead heading south off the Dolls Head Trunk. They picked up survey in a crawling sized tube and mapped 160 feet to a dirt dig. After some effort they enlarged the dig enough to get into another 50 feet of passage before another dig to continue was encountered. They then left the cave.

On the weekend of February 21^st Suzanne DeBlois and Jon Smith went to Park Ave. They spent some time scouting for leads and mapped about 300 feet of crawls in a couple places. They turned up a lead that Suzanne checked (on her belly). She reported at least 300 feet of going crawling passage but they didn’t map it.

On March 27^th Suzanne DeBlois, Liz Turpin, and Spencer ??? headed back out to Park Ave. to map the scooped lead mentioned above. The trip wasn’t as sucessful as hoped for. They managed to map the previously scooped passage although it didn’t go in the direction Suzanne had hoped for. After the survey effort was terminated because of fatigue Suzanne scooped another 250 feet of the passage to the southeast.

There are plans for a Memorial weekend get together, May 28^th to May 31^st on Northtown Ridge. This is a good weekend for those not dedicated to hours of survey misery to go on shorter trips into the Fisher Ridge Cave System. Of course there is bound to be at least one multi-day trip into the cave for those interested. Trips may go into both the Historic Entrance and the Quick Exit.

Volume 22 Number 1 A Regular Newsletter of the Detroit Urban Grotto Jan – Apr 2004

CONTENTS

Cavers Bunk Barn and Quick Exit Use Policy

Peter Quick

2004 DUG Dues

Mike Fitch

High Expectations in Low Passage

Suzanne DeBlois

4 right gloves and 3 left hands probe Park Ave passage

(Liberating a rock, and searching for more VX)

Suzanne DeBlois

Fisher Ridge Summary Sept – Dec 2003

Peter Quick