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Big Mouth Spring Cave Trip Report. By: Brandon Stephens |
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I headed out early Sunday morning. I meet up with Robert Solman at McDonald’s near I-64. He piled his gear into my Explorer and we headed over to Birdseye, IN to meet Brian Welp. Once at Brian’s house we loaded up his Trail Blazer before heading to Corydon to meet Jamie and Carla. After a quick Wal-Mart stop we headed down to the parking area. We arrived to find a local collecting rock along the banks of the Ohio. We packed up our gear and headed down to the cave. We were able to walk along the river due to the recent drought. Once we reached a small stream we followed it up to the cave. The cave was just up hill in the woods. We geared up before entering the cave. Robert had not brought a wetsuit even though he was warned he would need one. “Solman’s don’t wear wetsuits,” he said repeatedly before we arrived at the entrance. Once we arrive I think he changed his mind. I will give him credit because he entered the cave and traveled almost 100ft in low airspace before giving in to the cold and backing out. The rest of us continued through the 300ft of low airspace. In reality there is 100ft of low airspace followed by 100ft of hands and knees crawl which is followed by 100ft of really low airspace. It’s a true ear dunker near the end before squeezing into a waterfall room. A nice 15ft high water fall was in the room on the right. We continued under a large natural bridge before climbing up and traversing over the natural bridge. From here we waited on Jamie and Carla to catch up. |
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From the top of the waterfall we headed through a section of the cave
called Swiss Cheese due to the large number of pot holes in the stream.
We continued up stream and climbed a couple of small waterfalls. We
would walk for a while and then craw for a while. The crawling got worse
towards the back of the cave due to the increasing large cobbles that
occupied the stream. We made it to big room at the back of the cave
before turning around and heading out.
Overall, I think this is a very good cave to visit. This would be a good cave for intermediate cavers. The down side of the cave is that includes a lot of crawling, low airspace and the fact that it floods to the ceiling. This Cave should not be visited during wet weather. |
Jamie exiting the cave By Brandon Stephens |
After Mexican for dinner we headed over to the Harrison Crawford Grotto meeting. Following the meeting
we headed home. We ran so short on Time we missed out on a pit that we had planned to do.
