New Discoveries In Lechuguilla Cave The private June exploration/survey expedition to Lechuguilla Cave, New Mexico, got off to a rocky start when leader Garry Petire's flight to El Paso was canceled Friday night, and he and Ed Keudell had to miss the mandatory orientation given by Carlsbad Caverns Cave specialists Dale Pate, Jason Richards, and Stan Allison on Saturday morning. The rest of us prepared for a seven day underground camp in the Western branch anyway, and added some nice color line plots showing potential leads to the pile we had accumulated by the time he finally arrived at 4 p.m. Seven of us made an uneventful trip to the Deep Seas camp that evening, entering the cave just as a colorful sunset graced the gusty winds blowing across the desert landscape, and out of the cave. Our group consisted of Dick Laforge, Paul Fowler, Donald Davis, Dave Jones, John Middendorf, Ron Delano, and myself, while Garry, Kris Green, and Ed went to the SW branch the following day. On the first caving day, June 14, Donald took Paul, Dick, and I to the Widowmaker area, which has only been visited once since it was surveyed in 1988 to 1990 by a group that no longer comes to Lech. We thought they may have left a lot of smaller leads, but in the part we checked out, we found them to have been quite thorough. We did survey a new route to the lower section that avoids the necessity of rigging a drop or being a very bold climber. We never did find the part of this complex that connects to the Adobe room area (a connection I had been on several years ago), where I think there are several leads remaining. Feeling a bit tired, the next day we went to some leads left by Merrilee Proffitt and Lynn Jesaitis from December in a fissure they had called the Grllz Room. It was an easy climb-up from the Western Borehole at EY52 (right near the Potted Plant). We surveyed all the leads (about 300' worth) between EUC 29 and EY59, in passage that would have to be described as small even by California standards. Tempers were getting a bit short by the end of the day. After a good long sleep in camp (like 12 hours!), things seemed a bit cheerier as Dick, Paul, and I set off to the Adobe Room/Chocolate Factory area while the others made the long trip to Flower Wars (farthest reaches of Southern Climes), probably the most remote spot in the Western Branch other than Here Be Dragons. Before heading down to the leads I remembered from several years ago, I decided to check out an intermediate room to the side of the main route. I vaguely remembered surveying the 100' long chamber in two survey shots in a sleepy blur, almost ten years ago to the day, on my first trip to Lech. This had been a 36 hour marathon with Donald, Ann, and myself, in which we had rigged two drops, downclimbed a third, and found the Adobe Room (a 200' diameter low-ceilinged room with nice flowstone and aragonite bush decorations). It looked like there were a few boneyard leads that I had not even noted on the original sketch, but we decided to start surveying anyway at EYW24. Paul and Dick took turns with lead tape, finding quite a maze of 15' to 30' rooms separated by tight squeezes through unstable breakdown, punctuated by occasional displays of aragonite bushes that would be the crowning jewels of most caves, and a plethora of interesting fossils, including a completely detached crinoid about 5" long just lying on a shelf. Dick suggested the name For Crinoid Loud for the complex. Near the end of the day, Dick pushed a short bellycrawl to report "the good news there is a really big room 100' ahead. The bad news is we need a rope to get into it". A study of the lineplot revealed we had headed NW from our starting point into a blank part of the map, and were now were either looking into the I survey, or into something new underneath it. We couldn't tell, since there were no elevations on any of our plots, but we had a fun time debating the odds on the 3 hour trip back to camp. Being an optimist, John joined our group the next day, while the others slogged off to Flower Wars again to abuse their bodies in tight windy fissures, tantalizingly close to connecting to the SW branch of the cave. While we surveyed to the drop, John rigged it and checked out a lead above the drop which went quite a long ways, to another drop into a canyon. Meanwhile, Paul went down the original drop to set a station in the middle of the new room, reporting no sign of previous visitation! As Dick went down, he noticed a 6" stalactite a few feet from the lip that was unusual in being a pale green-yellow mineral, partially coated with calcite or aragonite. Forty feet down, there is a large shelf in the room (which is about 150' long by 60' wide and filled with house-sized boulders) on which Dick and Paul found several more green stalactites. Some were broken off and lying on the ground, which the others were hanging from points at the base of blocks (as the one at the top of the drop had been). The largest of the broken ones was about 7" long and 1" in diameter, and had no white coating: it was all made of the strange green mineral. Picking it up, it felt heavier than calcite or selenite would have been. Further observations by Dick are appended at the end of this article. With some excitement, we surveyed south out of the main room, trying not to look too hard at the huge boulders forming the ceiling about 80' above (presumably they are the floor of the I survey). We passed through several other smaller chambers with nice aragonite displays festooning passages coated with white crusts and some flowstone. We took extreme care passing through the nicest room, which featured several aragonite bushes over 3' tall. Fortunately there were boulders in between that we could tread on without causing significant impact. We left about 8 crawling-type leads in the area, enjoying the now fairly rare chance to spend an entire day surveying in walking-sized passage, and got back to camp around 2 a.m. Having tossed around several ideas on the trek home, we settled on the name "The Frostworks" for the new area. John had taken a nasty fall and hurt his leg, so had to rest on our last survey day. This time I brought my camera, and all six of us headed back to The Frostworks. Dick, Paul and I first photographed the green stalactites, which as far as I know are extremely rare to find in caves. The only ones I have ever seen previously were the dark green stals and soda straws found in a secret cave in France, made from malachite, but the ones we found in Lech are certainly some other mineral. We also photographed the tall aragonite bushes. Finally, we got down to work and started surveying NE from the room in a 30' by 20' passage that soon disintegrated into a complex horizontal maze. At one point we thought we heard the other team, which had started down a lead near the drop into the Frostworks. They had descended into a largish canyon using a rope, and found plenty to survey, but never connected in with our area, as we had expected. Deciding that it would be nice to leave several walking-size leads for the next expedition, we starting heading for camp at the early hour of midnight, taking our time getting back to camp so Dick could finish the rest of the film in his stereo camera. Friday's trip back to the surface was uneventful. As usual, the sky looked so incredibly blue, and the bushes so incredibly green, and the warm desert breezes felt so delicious. Altogether, my team had surveyed 2170' of mostly virgin passage, found a new promising area with about 25 remaining leads, and had many interesting discussions about physics, chemistry, politics, and philosophy along the way. Dave Jones' and Garry Petrie's teams each surveyed something in the vicinity of 1000', so altogether we added about 4715 feet to the 97.2 miles known at the start of the expedition. A hundred mile long cave is not far away now!
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