Lost Soldier's Cave Trip Report Cavers : Shane Fryer, Abby Snow, Jay Snow, Roger Mortimer, Amanda Mortimer, Mark Scott, and Kelley Prebil There were actually two teams on this trip. The first trip, and main purpose of going to Soldier’s at all, was the Dave Bunnell photo trip down into the Aragon Room accompanied by Joel Despain and George Prest. A group of six other cavers decided that we’d opt for something a lot more fun and exciting than sitting around while Dave took a bunch of test shots to figure out lighting issues. Despite rumors that Kate Despain was going to come and lead the rest of us through Soldier’s, Shane Fryer came to our rescue and led us on a fun relaxing trip through the cave. We started off our trip by meeting in the parking lot just inside Sequoia National Park. Unfortunately it was raining while we were changing into our caving gear. Joel and Company were already up at the cave entrance making their way down into the cave. Abby and Jay went off ahead since they were ready first. Shane was kind enough to hang out with the rest of us while we were getting our acts together. When we were all ready, we started making our way towards the cave through all the lovely mud that had started to produce along the trail. It didn’t take long for Amanda’s white shoes (she left her boots down at Lilburn) to start turning brown. We met up with Abby and Jay at the cave entrance and started making our own way down into the cave. During the first pitch, we could see Dave’s flashes going off during our descents. With my double stop having a max of 13mm, the wet 13mm rope was proving to be rather difficult to descend down with. On Shane’s advice, I swapped descenders with someone, and of course chose my victim to be Mark. Mark agreed on the second drop that the double stop was difficult to work with on the wet rope. At the bottom of the second drop, we all signed in with the log book and checked out different parts of the room. Joel poked his head out from where he was to say “hi” and then was followed by Mark and Amanda who wished to see a bit of the waterfall that we could hear from that room. Then we were off to the third drop and making our way to the Helectite Room. Joel and Company needed the third rope for one of their descends and told us that if we returned to the bottom of the drop and no rope was present, then they were still in the cave. We finally got to take all our vertical gear off after this drop! =) Our way to the Helectite Room involved passing by beautiful white flowstone that Shane kept reminding us not to get too friendly with. The Helectite Room was only one person at a time with helmets off to protect the fragile formations on the ceiling. Abby took what the rest of us hope to be many wonderful pictures of the helectites. Next we made our way to the (ex) Fallen Soda Straw Room and the second sign-in book. Mark and Shane found bat feces in the (ex) Fallen Soda Straw Room, but no sign of any present bats. We set up camp in the sign-in room for a quick bite to eat. A genuine prize was waiting for us in a corner of the room though…a complete fuzzy moldy bat that was still clinging to a low-rise ceiling! Abby took a ton of pictures hoping to get one that turned out good of the bat. None of us had ever seen anything quite like this. Just above it also was another fuzzy moldy bat that was still clinging to the cave wall! We definitely felt lucky to see two rare specimens. Next was a journey to the Lake Room. We got another rare find when Shane saw that there was calcite ice on top of the water. Luckily none of us fell into the freezing water. We thought about making a trip to the Aragon room when Shane noticed that it was getting a bit late and suggested that we start heading out. Amanda got Abby to take a picture of Amanda and Roger in a not-quite-for-two passage so Rogers mother would stop complaining that she doesn’t have a picture of the happy couple. We started making our way back to the entrance of the cave. Just below where the bottom drop was, Shane and I both noticed a blue Petzl ascender with some oval locking carabiners lying in the cave. How someone could have lost this and still managed to get out of the cave was mind-boggling. It turned out to not belong to any of us since when we all got our vertical gear back on, we had all of our gear. Luckily for us, the rope was back in place, which meant that Joel and his team were at least on their way out of the cave. We slowly took our turns making our way out of the cave. At the bottom of the middle pitch, Mark and I could hear the other team getting on/off rope for the top pitch. Unfortunately, Mark couldn’t figure out how to get to the first pitch and needed some help from Roger on which way to go. We eventually caught up with Joel as he was starting to ascend the top pitch, which took some extra time since Dave was halfway up taking photos of Joel was he was ascending. Outside of the cave it was no longer raining…it was hailing! Mark decided to shove some hail down my PVC suit and then ran into the cave to start throwing hail down to Roger who was busy ascending up the top pitch. The hail stopped shortly after Roger came back into the natural light. When Shane came out of the cave, Mark asked Shane if he had any of the other two ropes. Shane replied that Abby and Amanda insisted on carrying up the other two ropes with them. Roger gave the advice that if Amanda was determined to do something, then stay out of her way! The two other women triumphantly came out of the cave with the ropes. We all made our ways back to the parking lot to change into less muddy clothing and (minus Shane) ran off to meet Joel and his team for dinner. All in all, a great trip to Lost Soldier’s Cave!
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