Woodward Ave................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Joan Miller...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4

Mammoth Cave Addition............................................................................................................................................................................ 5

2005 DUG Dues..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Mike Fitch.......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Laser Lines for Cave Surveying........................................................................................................................................................ 6

Discovery of Estes Cave......................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Steve Miller................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

No Objectives, No Objections............................................................................................................................................................. 8

Conversion of the 1988 FRCS Videotape to DVD.......................................................................................................................... 9

Dan Crowl........................................................................................................................................................................................................ 9

Cover Peter Quick and Pete Dickman at the bottom of the pit lead at the bitter end of the Toilet Bowl septic field. The FQ survey which leads to the caption between these two: “Where in the FQ are we”?

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

31718 W. Chicago Rd. 57027 Coppergate Dr. 686 First Street 6038 Campfire Circle

Livonia, MI 48150 Elkhart, IN 46516 Pontiac, MI 48340 Clarkston, MI 48346

H: 313-522-0599 H: 219-389-3577 H: 248-338-2773 C: 248-709-0587

W: 313-953-1469 Pgr: 248-975-2158 fisher-ridger

beanl@michigan.gov brdavis@iusb.edu stevemiller53@prodigy.net @flash.net

I used to think Woodward Avenue was created by the many people and carts moving up from the bottom of Michigan to the Saginaw Bay. It’s the old Saginaw Trail and the word “trail” adds veracity to this notion. However this pathway was actually made by melting ice sheets and the animals who followed after. My family also moved north from Detroit like these early people to find a home along Woodward’s pleasant green byways. So like all motor city teens of the time, I earned my driver’s license at the age of fourteen, in the spring of 1946. Traffic was not what it is today but it’s still something of a miracle that I lived through those first few years on Woodward Avenue. I don’t need to list the crazy things we did in cars “way back then.” But it’s true, Woodward had quite a reputation. I took Woodward to work for thirty two years and I can’t imagine how many times I’ve walked over and around it. Still, no matter how many times I’ve used this road I needed a little ancient history, some prehistory and basic geology to really appreciate the natural landscape which created it. This divided eight lane highway so grandly landscaped and precisely lighted, is a major geologic footnote to the fading glaciers of the last ice age.

The glaciers in Michigan retreated in a northwesterly direction across the bottom half of the lower peninsula. The mile high wall of ice that gouged its way along for nearly a hundred thousand years, did not just retreat. The process which moved the glacier edge along in seeming retreat was a complex set of temperature changes. What caused such meaningful temperature changes is the topic of conjecture and professional debate right now. Even if we can’t agree on the causes for global cooling or warming, we can still admire its effects. The last great glacier to cover Michigan was a monster. As warming began to affect this ice sheet, the meltwater on its outer edges did what all liquid does. It began to seek its own level. Melting, forming huge rushing currents of water which followed the lay of the land, the water carved valleys and moraine edges across whatever was in its way. The landmark highway called Grand River was a wide expanse of water during this melting period, cutting the lower peninsula into two separate land masses. Some of the effects of the rush of melting water can be seen where Woodward Avenue swoops down and then back up to the intersection of Long Lake Road. That was a river from the top of one side to the other. In my childhood, we mucked around in the bottom. It was swampy and the slow meandering water was spread out over the whole valley floor. The moraine edge seen there is called the Defiance Moraine, named for the city in Ohio where it ends. The lesser Moraine just east of it is named for the city of Birmingham, where it’s most prominent vertical edges can still be seen. Take a hike down Maple to Baldwin Court or down Lincoln from Southfield Road, the moraine can be seen right there in the middle of Birmingham. Walk along this part of the Rouge River. Those embankments were created by the retreat of the last major glaciation of North America. When I was a kid the bottom of the Woodward hill, down where Harmon runs into Woodward, would flood each springtime and after heavy rain. Cars would be stuck. Water covered the entire road for several hundred feet at a depth of three or four feet. The water was just following its old path. Today our technology keeps that waterway tamed and underground.

So the question seems obvious, why would a major animal trail get trod right across these two natural barriers? As the glacial ice melted it left miles of swampy land that was impossible to walk through, in fact the Chippewa word which was written and understood as “mich-ee-gan” means “swamp between two lakes.” Animals moved into this area as the land began to sustain better plant life about eight to ten thousand years ago. They moved northward across the highest and driest parts, along edges of waterways creating a path along the best route possible. Step off this path and you’d be in trouble. The well-preserved half of young female mammoth found in the fifties just east of Woodward by Charring Cross Road testifies to the terrors of this swampy land. You can visit her in the University of Michigan Paleontology Museum in Ann Arbor. She’s a real cutie. Woodward Avenue was truly created thousands of years ago, a well chosen path paced across the highest ridge through miles of impassable land.

When the first settlers came here by boat up the Detroit River, they came ashore where the land was firm skipping over lowlands south of Detroit which flood often even now. Spreading out and farming the land, these early people moved north to access what was here for the taking. The original aboriginal peoples made good use of Michigan’s resources, hunting the animals for furs and food. Beaver made good use of Oakland county’s lakes, the second highest number of lakes of any county in the whole nation. These small sparkling lakes were created by the huge chunks of ice calved off the glacier as it melted. Quarton Lake is a pretty good example of a landscape indented by heavy ice, remaining filled today by both rainwater and natural springs. Follow its little Rouge River creek water north and you’ll cross Woodward Avenue again. If beaver made good use of all these lakes and Indian hunters made great use of the beaver, the early explorers and settlers from across the ocean made incredible fortunes from this bounty.

One of our first territorial governors had trouble talking settlers into going inland, so he went there himself to survey and create plots which he intended to sell for very reasonable sums of money. Plodding north from the small fort at Detroit in 1807, he followed the old Indian road in a diagonal line toward the Saginaw Bay. It wasn’t easy going. Ten square miles of swamp was in his way just south and east of present day Royal Oak. Winter travel was easier and many early adventurous souls went north to stake claims under terrible winter conditions. John Hunter, one of Birmingham’s founding fathers, built his first home along the path which became Woodward Avenue only to find in the spring that he’d built on someone else’s property. Markers were hard to find in the blowing snow. Those first men to settle along the only pathway north, probably rented space to other men forging northward. Some came inland on the Clinton River to stop at its headwaters on Sylvan or Otter Lake. This intersection of river and two major trails became the present city of Pontiac whose governing fathers decided to put that river underground through the city. Woodward Avenue passes over the Clinton river now and you’d never know the river was still there… except for a few strangely named side streets called things like “Rapid” and “Riverview.”

This intersection of the Old Pontiac Trail and the Saginaw Trail became the home of the first non-Indian family in the area, the Voorheis family. Their house is still on Voorheis Road just west of Telegraph Road and nicely connected to Woodward by the winding trail we now call Orchard Lake Road. I visited that house about fifteen years ago and saw a tunnel in the basement dug out of moraine deposited clay. It was a rather scary low tunnel beneath Voorheis Road which originally connected it to a neighboring home across the way. Were those early settlers fashioning a neat little hiding place from the Indians who owned this land for thousands of years before them? Who knows?

There are many great stories of this wonderful highway. Like the story of an unnamed gentleman who walked in the late summer of 1803 from his docked ship in Detroit, north along a barely discernable pathway until he came upon a small hut occupied by one lone Indian in a place we now call Pontiac. It took him more than three weeks to make that trek. Remember his journey as you zip along this highway sometime.

At 5 minutes to midnight on March 19th, 2005, a group of cave explorers from the Cave Research Foundation (CRF) and Central Kentucky Karst Coalition (CKKC) connected the surveys of Hoover Cave to the Mammoth Cave system.

This connection adds 2.6 miles of cave to the Mammoth Cave system, which is approximately 350 miles in total length.

Hoover Cave was discovered in September, 2003. A difficult entrance series led to a walking passage, Katie Jane Way, which appears to be the upstream continuation of Yahoo Avenue in the Roppel Cave, part of the Mammoth Cave system. Katie Jane Way was mapped for over a mile in length, but ended in breakdown without connecting to Mammoth. A side passage called Three Bears Canyon led over the course of several trips to a pit, an aid climb up the far side of the pit, and then a complex of passages at several levels.

One of those passages led to a window into Wildcat Dome in the Roppel part of the Mammoth Cave system, 60 feet above the floor. The crew (John Feil, Dick Market, Alan Canon, and James Wells) rappelled into Wildcat Dome and exited via Roppel Cave.

Although Hoover Cave now connects to the Mammoth Cave system, the entrance is a very long underground travel distance from Mammoth Cave National Park, and the entrance cannot reasonably be used to gain access to any parts of the cave system that are within the park.

To date, the Hoover Cave project participants have been: Gary Berdeaux, Jim Borden, Shanna Borden, Tom Brucker, Alan Canon, Jim Currens, Seamus Decker, John Feil, Bill Koerschner, Dick Market, Ryan Moran, Tony Pugh, Bill Stephens, Bill Walter, and James Wells.

About a year or so ago I tested a Checkpoint digital laser level. For replacing a traditional clino it worked excellent, but it was pricey and a bit to sensitive to moisture.....plus the company went through a major restructure and may be producing them again in early 2005. Picture of Checkpoint at http://www.cavediggers.com/checkpoint.jpg .

Anyway we replaced the Checkpoint with a Disto/Clino setup. This setup piggybacks on the Distos laser pointer i.e. picture here http://www.cavediggers.com/digiclo.JPG . In our first run out with the unit David Berman who had never used the setup ran the unit. On that particular day we checked each shot with a traditional unit and each was satisfactory. I know Martin Sluka just got one of the Smart Tool digital levels to use as well and has had great success with other digitals piggybacked with this method. Smart Tool level can be ordered at http://www.speedpartz.com/smarttool.htm

One of Martins Units can be seen here: http://www.cavediggers.com/LeicaMartin.jpg

Martin also uses a target which is actually crucial for getting your Disto line dead on to the survey point ! i.e. place disto on first station and target the little green LED on the target perfectly then tap the Smart Tool Digital level for a damn near perfect clino reading and a tap for the distance! A good article on this topic is at: http://tinyurl.com/43cty

At any rate one of my main goals with the Checkpoint was to piggyback a compass and use the laser "line" as the guide for the compass shot. With this method the compass can be put dead on the station.....then leveled with the laser line serving as the guide to locking on to the exact path between the two stations! High angle shots are of course a snap. The issue then became one of finding an inexpensive laser line level. While searching our local Walmart a few days ago I found these beauties($7 each) http://www.cavediggers.com/Levels.jpg they are 6" long and operate on 3 LR44 batteries($5). They shoot a powerful line i.e. http://www.cavediggers.com/Laserline.jpg and have an illuminated bubble level which since the compass will be mounted on the or near the back on the wide side I intend on drilling out a mount to place a level bullseye! i.e. http://www.cavediggers.com/levelbulleye.jpg that can piggyback on the internal light for added ease in pinpointing when the unit is level.

One of Martins Units i.e. laser line/compass can be seen here: http://www.cavediggers.com/compasslaserMartin.jpg

Note: these Walmart line levels have two powerful magnets glued inside.....simply pop the back plug out and take a sharp screwdriver to pop them out leaving only an aluminum case with 3 tiny batteries and a small laser unit at the front.

Our next mission will be to use both the Disto/Clino and Compass/Laser Line to do some in-cave loops and check the error....I will have more then.

Mark Passerby, Caves.com

Recently a new cave was discovered on the Eastern side of Fisher Ridge. Ricky Estes bought one of the parcels from the Fisher farm. After hearing about the Fisher Ridge Cave System and being interested in caves, Ricky contacted Kendall Mathews then secretary for the Hart of Kentucky Grotto to find information about caves that might be under his property. Kendall referred Ricky to me as someone who would know if there were any know caves under his property. I spent an evening at Ricky’s house shortly thereafter with maps of the area. Later we walked his property to view the topography. We determined that his property might be a likely place to find a cave but no know cave existed under his property. He had plenty of ridge top and some good looking sink holes and contact areas between the Big Cliffy and the Girkin limestone layer. The property was bought to be hunting property so I mentioned the likelihood of steam columns rising up from caves when the weather conditions are just right in the still of the winter mornings. One cold morning after sleeping in later than planed, Ricky happened to notice one of these columns on his way to his blind. Later investigation revealed a sandstone breakdown jumble easily opened to a void below.

Not being an experienced caver, Ricky told me about his discovery and invited me to come by some weekend while he was on Fisher Ridge so we could check it out together and see if there was going cave. He described the airflow at the entrance as fairly good. A few months later we got together to have a look. Indeed there was good airflow. Blowing a gale in DUG parlance. The outside temperature was 52 degrees with steady barometric pressure that day and the airflow was still impressive! We carefully made our way into what looked to be one of those famous Kentucky sandstone death traps. A jumble of sandstone blocks stacked in a “sure to fall and crush you” manner. Especially when one needs to do some digging and moving of rocks to find where the air is coming from. After poking around and carefully moving rocks for awhile, a way downward was found through a tight squeeze. Ricky didn’t think he could fit through so stayed behind while I continued to go downward 60-70 feet through a series of climbs to discover a 30 by 20 trunk passage. Having made my back hurt by this time and wanting to share the discovery with Ricky, I made my way back up and out.

A couple of weeks later Dave Matteson, Ricky and myself began a survey of Estes Cave as it was now called. Ricky’s Grandfather owned a farm in what is now Mammoth Cave National Park near Dennison Ferry. It had been the family farm for generations. Finding a nice cave on Ricky’s property and in honor of his family the name was chosen. The first survey trip into Estes Cave yielded 778 feet of passage. The trunk passage continues for some distance to a 200’ section of 40 by 60 foot with several deep holes in the floor. Some guesstimated to be nearly 100’ deep. The trunk passage continues beyond this section and on into a formation area of wild splendor. The passage narrows and becomes lined with columns and smooth calcite floor. At one point we had to proceed on hands and knees to go through the formations. After a short crawl we could stand up and were on the edge of a spectacular display of rare formations. A 60 foot long pool 10-12 feet deep of crystal clear water extends from wall to wall. The sides are lined with exceptional stalagmites and white columns. The pool is edged with rimstone. Several large lily pad formations appear to float on the lagoon. Rimstone rafts up to 12 feet long are at several places on the water. Dwarfing the Krakatoa formation in Fisher Ridge. It may well be one of the finest formation sections in the region.

The trunk passage seems to be in the Beaver Bend member of the Girkin formation. BB3 member. Making this passage one of the ancient upper level trunk passages. At the level of “The Big One”. The survey places it at about 90’ below the bottom of Big Cliffy sandstone formation. The formation area eventually chokes off and to continue would damage the formations. We decided to plot out the location of the cave relative to the surface to see if there is a likely possibility the trunk passage continues into solid ridge beyond the formation area. This before we risk near certain damage to the formations by pushing onward. There was still some airflow in this area but greatly diminished. The airflow is brisk at the area of the trunk passage where the big holes in the floor are located. We had been surveying for 9 hours at this point and needed a long rope and vertical gear to continue to push the cave.

At this point Ricky was convinced that the cave needed to be secured. It is a difficult cave. There are a number of climbs and fair level of exposure. Not a novice cave. Additionally, the formations area is spectacular to say the least and very fragile. The lure of the cave continuing through the giant holes in the floor is very strong. Considering the depth of the giant holes they could easily lead to the next level of trunk passage and really take off. So to both protect the cave and to keep unauthorized cavers out, the location of the cave is to be kept confidential until a gate can be installed. Also no further trips into the cave are going to be made until the entrance is gated. Plans are in the works to have the cave secured within the next few weeks or so. One of the nicest new finds on Fisher Ridge for some time.

Apr 9 – 11, 2005

Cave trip in Jan – cancelled, cave trip in Feb – cancelled, cave trip in Mar – cancelled, cave trip in Apr? Unfortunately for Peter, gas prices hiked plane tickets to pretty astronomic prices, but Eric Daugherty, Suzanne DeBlois and myself were determined not to cancel Apr.

I got in Friday night and worked on lady bug cleanup detail for 90 minutes before just giving up, although I got most of em, and that was a lot. Eric got in about midnight and Suzanne rolled in late at 3:00 am. Despite this, we got up early and had breakfast and bought last minute items. The 3 of moved easily to basecamp where me and Eric briefly setup (Suzanne was not camping) camp.

So now it came down to the same discussion as earlier during breakfast, or even earlier during email exchanges: what are we doing? Where is the survey? What is the objective(s)? I suggested to finish off the 3 remaining leads in the Toilet Bowl area – especially as they were requiring thin people, and we had 3, and finishing that area off would be some nice closure. What to do later, or even tomorrow, would have to be dealt with at that time.

So we began to move in that direction, into NT13 going toward Eclipse Canyon, but not in a hurried or focused pace. So it was that side leads and unknown areas were poked into. The first being a lower passage to the much traveled NTW survey. Wow, this thing is long, big, and most importantly unsurveyed! 15 stations and a few hundred feet were had in TBW (Toilet Bowl Warm-up), but we lost a compass in the process, and no backup.

Another nice lead at PDA89 was mapped for 14 stations (OCS – One Compass Survey) and then it was decided to abort going to TB, if we went there, I wanted to finish it off, and that might not be possible with only one compass. So we turned off and went ‘the Other Way’, a direction I have not been in many years (1996). It was familiar and we were pleasantly surprised to find many more loops to map. It was finally decided to head back and maybe pick off the H&K crawl Suzanne and Peter had found back in March, but after we got there (with our vertical gear), I suggested another ‘skinny’ lead Suzanne had mentioned that just happened to be right near basecamp.

So we dropped off vertical gear and other non-essentials and traveled the 200 feet or so to the lead (how many years of base camping had overlooked this lead?). Right before the base camp waterfall a 24” hole near the floor leads to a stream canyon. It’s very tall and very thin, so much so that travel is only possible at the bottom – where the water is. We traveled being stuck down very close to the water, and with much difficulty managed to stay mostly dry. Fortunately, only 10 stations had been previously placed so even though the next shot required a crawl under a formation only inches above the water, we were able to get surveying quickly. Unfortunately, we only got another 10 stations before further travel would have required immersion into the water, and nobody was up to that at the end of the day. The passage was about 3 feet tall, 1 ½ feet wide, and had 2 or 3 inches of water covering the floor.

We made the long trudge (2 minutes?) back to base camp and Suzanne immediately took off for the surface while me and Eric settled into the familiar coziness of base camping. We leisurely broke camp with the same issue – what to do? We had our entrance lead from many trips ago, but I didn’t want to go there as our only objective just yet. So we knew of one crummy lead from a few trips ago right off of a lead that was right off NT in the long breakdown room around station 35, so we headed there.

When we got there I began to enter the lead that Brian Steber had squeezed himself into (amidst much obscenities), but then after comparing the passage to body ratio, I said forget it. Looking around I realized that there was another passage that ran across the top of this 4x4 lead – somehow we missed this on the original survey last year. After setting this up and heading into it (2h x 4w), I saw that this actually tied into that small lead, but we decided to leave the 10’ or so of it for later. In the long breakdown room some searching turned up a series of 3 decent loops all tied together, so that was done.

We then picked up our basecamp packs and moved through Lost Carbide Complex. Despite this route being looked over, and over, we found several dead ends that hadn’t been mapped and we weren’t choosy, and 20 or 30 feet is just that. And so we made our way to the room with the huge, house sized boulder in the middle of it, when my Mop Up Sensor went off. We climbed up and then went down the big slide, and I saw the main passage pinched down to a hole that continued to what appeared to be the back side of the Big Rock room, which it did. A long 70’ room which is almost completed isolated from the Big Rock room except for one lone window. A hole in the middle near the far wall lead to a canyon which appeared to be filled with breakdown in both directions, but also had another hole leading down to another parallel, deeper canyon. This too, was very dry, gypsumy, and full of breakdown. But in actually surveying it, the first level canyon didn’t end, so neither did our survey. We managed to put in 23 stations and 150’ into this dry, tight, twisty canyon with a few spots of questionable breakdown (to either crush you or block the passage) before calling it quits.

Our first day yielded 97 stations and over 1200 feet. Day 2 was 46 stations and over 600 feet. Something like 1880’ for the weekend.

After much effort, the original 1988 Fisher Ridge video has been put into DVD format. Peter Quick is in charge of producing copies which should be available sometime in the future.

As you may recall, the original video was produced by Steve Miller. It took him many weekends in the cave to record the cave footage. Larry Bean, Peter Quick and Will Wilson played the actors and many other cavers provided logistics to haul equipment and lighting. Many hours were then required to edit the video into a master copy, and to add narration by Peter Quick. This was done on a video editing system at Wayne State University using ¾-inch U-matic video tapes.

This video does not have much of a story. It simply relates a caving trip from Historic Entrance to the base level Grand Junction via Chris Cross and Raisin Route. The total running time is about 18 minutes.

My project to produce the DVD began last Fall and appeared initially to be a short effort. However, things turned out a lot different and a lot of time was eventually required.

The project all started when I saw a review of an HP device that not only digitized the video, but also burned the DVD. It also came with the software to do the video capture and editing. I dished out the $225 and waited for my unit to arrive. Upon arrival of the hardware, I soon found that I had problems. The unit kept hanging up in the middle of things. I returned the unit and received a replacement that worked a lot better.

At this time my objectives for this project became clear. I wanted to produce a DVD containing the original video. I wanted to maintain the histo

Volume 23 Number 1 A Regular Newsletter of the Detroit Urban Grotto Jan – Apr 2005

CONTENTS

Woodward Ave

Joan Miller

Mammoth Cave Addition

2005 DUG Dues

Mike Fitch

Laser Lines for Cave Surveying

Discovery of Estes Cave

Steve Miller

No Objectives, No Objections

Mike Fitch

Conversion of the 1988 FRCS Videotape to DVD

Dan Crowl