TAG Caving Part 5

January 3-7 2007 - Ralph Powers

Location: Camp's Gulf & Howard's Waterfall Caves Trip Leader: Ginger & John On Trip: Camp's Gulf = John, David, Natalie, Ralph Howard's Waterfall = Ginger, David, Ralph Eventually I'll get around to remembering the last names of these fine TAG cavers but for now until I get them written down I'll have to settle with being on a first name basis. Photos to these two caves pending ----------- Camp's Gulf Cave. This particular cave held the U.S. record for the largest rooms in the country. That is, until Rumbling Falls Cave a few miles away was discovered to have a room larger than the ones found here. I'm learning that often TAG caves are very easy to get to. This one though a 90 minute drive from my (parent's) house the walk was only 5 minutes from where we parked. The entrance is impressive though BBCC and LBCC blow it away by comparison. What those two aforementioned caves don't compare to is the sheer size of the rooms within. Once past the drip-line, the "entrance room" or "first room" as they call it was very large indeed. My best estimate puts it around 75 feet across by 40 feet high. We explored a side passage first, finding many small clusters of bats in various stages of hibernation. Some were active hanging on the wall, grooming or just checking out the humans, others were fussing to get back to sleep and still a few more were deep in their hibernation. I'm sure that there were more than one species of bat as the sizes and colors of coats and the faces (where visable) were different. I was constantly amazed to find these bats roosting sometimes right at (caver) eye-level and near the floor in some places. One had to traverse carefully in low ceiling places to be careful not to accidently knock off or squish with your helmet, a bat roosting in the passage. At one point I reached out to grab a hand hold and when I pulled myself up I saw that my fingers were just an inch away from one sleeping. After visiting the side passage we continued back and headed deeper in. This passage was large and had the oddest scalloped shaped ceilings I've seen. Even the colors of the rock were strange (to me). From a pale whitish color to a deep black. Even some of the formations were black. I could've mistaken myself being in a lava tube in some places. We reached the second room via a twisty narrow up-climb over what was essentially cemented breakdown. By looking up the climb I could see blackness beyond the highest point and knew that I would be seeing a large room. I still was inadequately prepared for the scale. Cresting the last piece of break down I looked up into blackness, looking straight across... all I could see was blackness. a downward glance showed large pieces of break down... descending into blackness. The room I was in was not huge, it was gigantic! Climbing up and over break down, some the size of small cars, it took us 20 minutes to traverse from one side to the other. I was the first to reach the reflective marker that could be seen from way way off and once there I heard water dripping at a quick rate. I looked around and looked and couldn't see where it could be coming from. John caught up with me and when asked, he simply looked straight up and I followed his movement/light to a small hole in the flat ceiling that was dripping water from a height of about 60 feet. We then moved on to the 3rd room and that is more commonly known as the Rotundra <sic> Room. This one was accessed by a 200 foot semi-walking/ semi-crawling passage. This room I understand is to be roughly 3 acres in size/volume. It's a beautifully shaped room, perfectly round ceiling that reached about 40 feet above our heads. Our measly lights couldn't do this room justice, even if all of them were grouped together. Off to one side of this particular room was (again) a large passage with a wide river running through it. John remarked that the river was a lot higher than he'd ever seen it. He also told me that further up-stream there are two rubber inflatable rafts tied up waiting for anyone wanting to paddle down stream to the sump. Wish we could've done it but it'll have to wait til next time I come here. (More to this mini-novel later)