This new cave discovery in northern Utah could prove to be Utah's 7th deepest cave at an estimated depth of 420 feet! This was recently discovered and explored by Daniel and Chris Erickson. Zeke and Tony Post have helped with the survey which is still ongoing. The following pictures and description come from Daniel and Zeke about this great discovery!
"The first 40' are very tight and scraped us to pieces. If you go in it, there is a sizable loose rock in that entrance passage, which if it fell in could partially block the passage. It is wedged in place with a stick, so don't step on the stick or rock as you slither down in.
The cave is almost all vertical with little horizontal passage. It follows the same fault all the way down. About 2/3s of the way the fault shifts directions slightly. We didn't find many formations. We found a couple of columns and a little flowstone. There is not too much water in it. Overall, the rocks are rough and sometimes sharp. We were very careful choosing our rope paths and only had to rebelay a couple of times.
About 175' down there is a room that we dug and smashed through. There was an empty bag of chips there. Either someone threw it down the hole and it worked its way there, or someone chased the cave that far before us and left their litter. Accordingly, the first part of the cave may have been known at least to someone. The latter part, obviously, is new.
The digging only took us around an hour
and with the help from a badger rib bone. It was kind of crazy because we really had to just dig out a few large rocks and scrape around with the bone and the floor fell out from beneath the area we were digging.
Once we saw the floor start to become unstable, two of us stepped back, and one got on rope, which was kind of wise as the floor around the new pit fell out. The opening was only around 2'x4', but it still seemed like a lot of rock fell. We poked our head into the new hole to look underneath and see that the rock was stable, which it was, and so Chris lead into the new pit while I ascended up 150' where we left an additional rope, which we ended up using towards the bottom.
I'm not too hopeful on finding further passage at the bottom that we found. As I stood in the bottom hole I thought I could feel a little breeze, but I can't be sure. It seemed to come around a fault crack. I tried moving rocks around on the floor with my feet, but there was quite a bit of sediment."
Great find guys!!! We look forward to seeing the official survey results!
0 comments:
Post a Comment