Trip Report: 10 January, 2004
Georgia Speleological Survey
c/o Brent T. Aulenbach
195 Windy Court
Lilburn, GA 30047-6442
29 January, 2004
Buddy Lane, SCCi Frick's Cave Property Manager
40 Hidden Brook Lane
Signal Mountain, TN 37377-2063
RE: Georgia Speleological Survey 10 January, 2004 Trip Report for Resurvey of Frick's Cave, Walker County, Georgia
Dear Buddy,
The ninth day of surveying in Frick's cave was held by the Georgia Speleological Survey (GSS) on Saturday, 10 January, 2004. There were six participants making up two survey teams. Meeting time was 9:30 am. An orientation was given to all participants and the one new surveyor was taught how to read survey instruments. The teams entered the cave at 10:30 am.
One team, consisting of Hubert Crowell and ET Davis, worked on the gravel stream crawl where the majority of the water in the cave flows from. They reached the beginning of the stream crawl at 11:15 am. A lot of water was coming out of the crawl as water levels were higher than we had hoped. They had to work at moving gravel out of the entrance to the crawl in order to lower the water level and provide enough space to get into it. They took two survey shots from the tie in station to get into the crawl. Then they got too cold to continue. Then they surveyed a side passage in the vicinity of the crawl that needed surveying. This also took two survey shots. They exited the cave around 2:30 pm. The team took a total of 4 survey shots for 56.8 feet of survey. It appears that the gravel crawl will need some more gravel moved aside before people can survey upstream.
The second team consisted of Brent Aulenbach (sketcher), Mike Hopkins (new surveyor), Jessica Maddox and Ben Theune. We started surveying at 12 pm in the southwestern end of the cave at station J50. The passage started out as a belly crawl until intersecting a walking passage. One end of the walking passage ends in a 45 foot high dome with some water coming down from it. From the base of the dome, a side passage led off into previously unmapped territory (original survey) as an upper level hands and knees crawlway. The passage split. One direction lead back to the walking passage we had just surveyed and some upper level rooms that appeared virgin and were not fully checked out as we did not survey in this direction. The other direction was surveyed south to the top of a 15 foot climbdown into a narrow canyon that returned to stream level. This passage was not virgin. Downstream got too small to reconnect to the downstream passage, but upstream continued as far as it was checked. Hence, at least one more trip will be needed to finish up surveying this area. We completed our survey at 4:30 pm. We exited the cave at 6:40 pm. A total of 16 survey shots (continuing the J survey) were taken for 260.9 feet of survey.
There was one new surveyor who learned how to read instruments and set tape. Two of the six people who participated on this trip had not been on a trip before. So far, 43 different people have participated on the project in nine days of trips.
Brent Aulenbach was designated by the head SCCi Frick's Cave Property Manager as the SCCi representative for the trip.
The survey currently stands at 426 survey shots and 10,771.2 feet surveyed. Surface surveys, spray shots and setup shots have not been removed from these statistics. I don't have an exact figure after excluding shots, but the traversable length crossed the 10,000 foot mark on this trip.
The remaining areas to survey are the upstream gravel crawl (estimated as 1,000 feet), the most southern end of the cave, and to resketch a portion of the main trunk passage including surveying some side pancake crawls along this passage.
I have started to make rough drafts and started drafting some parts of the cave.
Respectfully Submitted,
Brent T. Aulenbach, Frick's Cave Resurvey Project Coordinator
Cc:
John Hickman, SCCi Chair
Scott Carmine, GSS Chair
Attached:
Copies of all survey notes with survey data files from Compass
Copy of existing map with passages mapped thus far highlighted
Line plot of cave from Compass
Survey statistics from Compass
Reduced station locations from Compass
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Last modified: Monday, 24 May 2004 bta