All,
Dave Belski reminded me of this GypKaP trip that took place back in
1989 . . .
Carcass Cave was a rather interesting gypsum cave that we'd been
working on with a little under of mile of survey. One part of that was a
gruesome crawlway called Wayne's Madness that had around 1500 feet surveyed,
with no end in sight. It was named for Wayne Walker, who had been on the
original survey.
The reason that I said it was gruesome, was that the first 30 feet or
so of the passage was a swim through a sulfur mud near sump. Somehow Dave
conned Wayne, myself and Jeff Bauknecht on a return trip to continue the
survey. I had not been on the first trip so I had an excuse for going, but for
Wayne and Dave to return to push this passage makes me seriously doubt their
sanity! Or at least -- that is what I think now.
Not only did we do a return trip, but we did it in the winter with a
good bit of snow on the ground. I remember both Wayne and Dave getting stuck
on the way there. I was riding with Jeff and the only reason he didn't get
stuck in his 2-wheel drive vehicle is that he DIDN'T drive on the road, such as
it was. At any rate, we got to the cave around 10 am or so, leaving Carol
Belski (and I seem to remember someone else, but can't remember who) on the
surface, saying we should be out by about 6 pm.
The entrance to Wayne's Madness is a couple of 1000 feet into the cave.
You drop down a short chimney into a muddy crawlway. The sulfur mud is fairly
solid for the first person through it, somewhat less so for the second, really
messy for the third, and completely soupy for the 4th. Guess who was 4th? If
you haven't smelled sulfur mud from a gypsum cave, you haven't lived.
So we figured, how tough can this be? 1500 feet out to the frontier,
survey a few hundred more feet, it will probably pinch out, we'll return and be
out of the cave before sunset -- no problem!
What made Wayne's Madness problematic was that the crawlway was plenty
spacious for belly crawling, but was just low enough so that you couldn't get
up on hands and knees. But we made it to the previous frontier with not
particular issues, and continued surveying. The passage stayed pretty much the
same -- low and slow, very sinuous, so that long shots were few and far
between. After surveying 3 or 400 more feet we came to an intersecting
mud-filled passage. But that wasn't what was exciting -- the exciting thing
was that there was room to stand up! Well maybe for two or three people at a
time, and you had to be pretty friendly at that.
I recall Dave being out in front, I was reading instruments and in
back. I kept yelling at Dave, asking if he found the end. He kept saying, "It
looks like it's going to do something around the next corner!" Yeah, it did
something alright, it kept going. At some point, we realized we were not going
to make it back out by our 6 pm deadline and we talked about whether to
continue on, or head back out. The thought of doing the sulfur mud crawl again
was not inviting; we decided to keep pushing.
At about 6 pm, coincidentally, we reached the end, or at least as far
as was humanly possible for us to go. The passage disappeared down a small
hole in a chamber about the size of a bathroom. But you could stand up again!
And all 4 of us fit into the room, at least if we got in the right position.
Once we wrapped up the survey, we headed back out. The trip out was long, but
uneventful until we got to the sulfur mud crawl. This time everyone had to
swim! And we had to make the climb out the chimney at the upper end, while
covered with mud. I remember dropping my carbide lamp into the mud, whereupon
it was completely unusable. I wasn't the only one though. I can't remember
whether it was Jeff or Wayne, but somebody else dropped their lamp into the
mud, and we couldn't tell which one was which -- but no matter, neither one
worked any more. So out came the flashlights and we slowly made our way back
to the entrance.
About 100 feet or so from the entrance there was a boulder with a crack
in it that you had to crawl over. To add insult to injury, when I crawled over
it, my knee sunk into the crack and became stuck. (How you ask? I don't know
-- I just know that it did.) I told the others to go ahead and cut it off -- I
didn't care any more. I just wanted to get out of the cave. After some
pulling and prying we got my knee out of the crack and we continued on out of
the cave. We found Carol asleep in Belski's car and discovered that it was
about midnight. We had planned on camping out, but it was COLD, and undressing
was not an inviting prospect. We decided to head to town (Roswell) and see
what we might find there. We all went into town and found that Denny's was
open. As we stood at the hostess's stand we looked at one another and realized
that we were quite a sight. While we had taken off some of our dirty clothes,
we were still covered with sulfur mud. Fortunately, it was 2 am and
the restaurant was full of drunks trying to sober up, so we sort of fit in.
Nevertheless they stuck us in a corner away from everyone else.
After returning home, Dave totaled up the survey and discovered that
the entire length of Wayne's Madness was 3448.28 feet. I doubt that anyone
else will ever travel to the bitter end again. (Much of the time it is truly
sumped, though right now it's probably not.) The four of us who were there are
now permanently "Wayne Damaged!"
Steve Peerman
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from
the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
attributed to Mark Twain, but no record exists of his having written this.
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