Trip Report: 2 December, 2006
Georgia Speleological Survey
c/o Brent T. Aulenbach
195 Windy Court SW
Lilburn, GA 30047-6442
7 January, 2007
Buddy Lane, SCCi Frick's Cave Property Manager
40 Hidden Brook Lane
Signal Mountain, TN 37377-2063
RE: Georgia Speleological Survey Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 Trip Report for Resurvey of Frick's Cave, Walker County, Georgia
Dear Buddy,
The 18th day of surveying in Frick's cave was held on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006. There were four participants: Paul Aughey, Manuel Beers, ET Davis, and myself (sketcher). The goal of the trip was to check out some leads and do some cleanup sketching.
The first order of business was to get a 20' long aluminum ladder down from Rusty's deer stand. Rusty, ET's neighbor, nicely let us borrow his ladder. The ladder was needed to check out a high lead at ceiling level as one goes up the breakdown slope from the stream to the Bat Room. One could see that this passage went back about 25' to a wall, but it looked like it might go left and right at its end. Left could possibly lead to another passage I had spotted on the last survey trip, which was at about same elevation, but could not be accessed through a too tight crack. The only other way to access the ceiling level lead would be to do a bolt traverse over to the ledge.
We entered the cave at 10 am. The ladder just fit through the entrance area on the left hand side. If the ladder was just a few inches longer, it might have been impossible to maneuver it into the cave. After that, it was fairly easy to get the ladder where we needed it. We got the ladder in place, and after piling up rocks to stabilize it, it turned out that the ladder was just long enough to get up into the lead. It turned out that at the back of where one could see into this passage, the passage went right for only about 10'. But to the left, the passage continued past the too tight crack previously mentioned. The virgin passage went for about 250', and had many small rimstone dams, flowstone, and stalagmites. The passage trended north between the Bat Room and the passage with the pit entrance. There was one lead in this passage, a hole in the floor that went down a pit about 20-25' which would require one to dig open a too tight constriction at the top.
After this we checked out a climbdown that I had spotted on the last trip that I thought would require a handline. This was in the area just below where we set up the ladder. It turned out that the climbdown could be free climbed and that it dropped into a passage that we surveyed on the previous trip. We tied in the survey from both ends to close a loop.
Next we checked out some survey sketch discrepancies near the pancake room. Then we went to the first breakdown pile in the main streamway to sketch in the passages underneath the breakdown pile.
At this point we were running out of time to push the lead at end of the main upstream water crawl as we had hoped to. But since the water levels were so low, we decided to make a quick trip to see if it was possible to get past a rock in the stream that was blocking the way on and too see if there was any passage past this to survey in the future. It turned out it was easy to move the rock out of the way along with some stream gravel so that we could slip below a too tight crack by immersing oneself in the stream. After this, one had to meander up and down through breakdown for about 30'. Manuel was in the lead and he called back to me to say that it went. From here the passage took off 6 to 8' tall by 12 to 15' wide(!) with the small stream running at the bottom of a triangular cross-sectioned passage. We went another 150' before we turned around in the streamway in order to save virgin cave for the next survey crew. The passage appears to be trending west and is almost under Left Fork Coulter Branch, approximately 60' below the surface elevation.
On the way out of the cave we noticed that the passage that is normally siphoned was now open on the downstream end due to low water conditions. I was able to push this upstream about 115' - fairly close to the upstream end. The passage is about 2.5' wide, with 2' of air space over 2 to 3' deep water. The passage had several 90-degree bends in it.
306.35' of cave was surveyed in 13 shots. The cave is now at 11,864 feet (2.25 miles) long (after removing set-up and splay survey shots). The loop that was closed was not very accurate (5.6% error). Furthermore, the virgin upper level passage surveyed on this trip did not line up very well with the previously surveyed passage at the other end of the too tight crack. Because of this, two artificial survey shots were added to connect the survey through the too tight crack to complete another loop such that the Compass surveying software would adjust the loop such that the passages would be line up better.
Water levels will have to be low in order to safely negotiate the water crawls to survey the upstream section of the cave.
I have been continuing work on rough drafts and electronically drafting the cave. I currently have about 40% of the cave electronically drafted (though the cave keeps getting longer).
If you have any questions, comments, or problems, please feel free to contact me.
Respectfully Submitted,
Brent T. Aulenbach, Frick's Cave Resurvey Project Coordinator
cc:
John Hickman, SCCi Chair
Nancy Aulenbach, GSS Chair
Attached:
Copies of all survey notes with survey data file from Compass
Line plot of cave from Compass with passages surveyed on this
trip highlighted
Cave survey statistics from Compass
Reduced station locations from Compass
Loop closures from Compass
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Last modified: Friday, 13 April, 2007 bta