Trip Report: 24 February, 2007
Georgia Speleological Survey
c/o Brent T. Aulenbach
195 Windy Court SW
Lilburn, GA 30047-6442
9 March, 2007
Buddy Lane, SCCi Frick's Cave Property Manager
40 Hidden Brook Lane
Signal Mountain, TN 37377-2063
RE: Georgia Speleological Survey Saturday, February 24th, 2007 Trip Report for Resurvey of Frick's Cave, Walker County, Georgia
Dear Buddy,
The 19th day of surveying in Frick's Cave was held on Saturday, February 24th, 2007. This trip was planned only the night before when I suddenly had the Saturday free. The water conditions for surveying were prime - as I noted from the previous Saturday at the SCCi's Frick's Cave Open House. Because of the last minute plans, the typical trip announcement process did not occur, and I recruited some cavers to participate. There were three participants: Paul Aughey, Manuel Beers, and myself (sketcher). The goal of the trip was to survey the passage at the upstream end of the cave where Manuel and I scooped about 250 feet of cave after moving a boulder at the end of the last survey trip on December 2nd, 2006.
After bundling up in wetsuits, polypropylene, and cave suits, we headed into the cave at 10:30 am. We started surveying where we had moved the boulder in the stream previously. At that point, a too-tight crack forced us to totally immerse ourselves in order to continue the survey. The next 80' of cave is a circuitous route up and down in breakdown at or up to 8' above the stream level. We then popped into the streamway, which averages about 15' wide and 8' high, has a flat ceiling dipping slightly west, and a floor developed in a shale layer.
As we continued upstream past what we had scooped on the previous trip, the passage gets larger, averaging 35' wide by 25' high. The passage is similar to some of the streamway inside the main entrance of the cave. We surveyed several short side passages. A couple of the side passages have some nice decorations. The side passages on the west side were all formed by small infeeders, and one that is too low has good airflow.
Further on, the streamway is buried under breakdown slabs. Climbing up 5' onto the breakdown slabs led us to a flat room about 8' above the stream level. There we found several spots where we could climb back down to the stream level, but the cave was not passable at this level due to the stream being under breakdown slabs.
From here, we climbed up into another breakdown passage. We entered this near the northern terminus of the passage that is around 30' wide by 10' high. The passage has a flat ceiling, (still dipping slightly to the west) and the floor that rolled down and back up toward the ceiling. Just ahead, our lights were consumed by passage 70' wide and 40' high. Manuel reported from up ahead that the passage opens up to about 100' wide by 50' high. (As if we weren't already excited by all the nice big passage we were finding all day long!) But, alas it was 7:30 pm, and we had to think about finishing up for the day, leaving a 100' survey shot and some big virgin cave for the next survey trip. I believe this was the best find of my caving career!
We finished up the survey at 7:45 pm and exited the cave at 8:35 pm. We surveyed 880.45' of cave in 40 survey shots. The cave is now at 12,743 feet (2.41 miles) long (after removing set-up and splay survey shots). The streamway was approaching going under Left Fork Coulter Branch (about 150' away) but the streamway turned more south while the Left Fork Coulter Branch goes southwest. So we are now further from the surface stream. We are probably about 800 to 1000' from where the water in Left Fork Coulter Branch sinks into the streambed in dry conditions. It is likely that the cave will turn more west and possibly be the upstream end of the cave.
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:
Brian Krebs, 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
Line plot of cave with topographic overlay
Cave survey statistics from Compass
Reduced station locations from Compass
Back to Resurvey of Frick's Cave Main Page
Back to GSS Home Page
The URL for this page is <http://www.caves.org/survey/gss/FrickTR15.html>.
If you have any questions, comments, or corrections about this
page, please contact the GSS website maintainer at gssweb@bellsouth.net.
Last modified: Thursday, 12 April, 2007 bta