Upper Cave

Saturday, December 17th 2005 - Tamie Jensen

On Trip: Tamie Jensen and Ralph Powers I drove from Salt Lake to Provo to pick up Ralph. The traffic was terrible through American Fork, so we drove to the other side of the lake through Goshen. It turned out to be a good route. We had a trip planned for Candlelight and wanted to try out my new descender before then. Ralph bought a bobbin to try out too. We parked and followed hundreds of bunny tracks up in the snow up the hill. Ralph and I worked on rigging the rope for the drop. We tried to work out whether it would be better for him or me to go first. It only seemed like an issue because of the new gear. We worked out how to rig my Indy double stop and in I went. I found that it is a bit large for my hand. It was good I had a chance to work with it before Candlelight. We dropped into the cave and shed our gear. I got some pictures of the boxwork at the bottom of the entrance. Ralph showed me what the folks have been using to excavate the silt from the crawl. We chose to head up first. The last climb made me nervous. I didn’t realize how easy it was until I was climbing back down. I took pictures of the crystals Ralph found in the breakdown. Then we headed down for the crawl. There were a couple of skeletons there. One was a rabbit; the other was a mouse. The fossils were gorgeous. I’m curious what they are. If any one knows, send me a private message in the forum. I wasn’t sure what I would think of the excavation. I was worried that it would be doing more harm than good. After going through the crawl, I would be happy to help out. It would be great to be able to just vacuum all that dirt out. On the way out, I had my safety jam in my croll. Ralph grabbed the rope and pulled me up the hill. He was able to pull the line out and we slightly changed the connection for my safety. I made another attempt and it went smoothly. At the surface, Ralph noticed a mouse that had just climbed out of the cave behind us. We were down taking pictures of him when he ran between my feet and into Ralph’s jacket that was under the tree. He came back and ran down into the cave just as we finished derigging. We ate dinner at our favorite spot.