Well, we did it. And it may well have been the Last Honey Creek Cave tank haul. Or, at least, I think, the last one I organize.
I was among the last three to get out of the cave yesterday, coming out at 9:00 a.m. after a 23 hour trip. Nine hours of that was spent in one place, on a not-so-comfortable rocky mud bank, waiting on the two divers, James Brown and Jean "Creature" Krejca. I tried to sleep, didn't think I did, but found out later that I snored and people laughed about it, so I must have slept some. I'll write a more detailed report tonight and post it here. I'll also commit to writing a detailed review of the push of the upstream HS sump for an upcoming issue of the Texas Caver. The upstream HS sump project has been ongoing for the past several years. But here's the short version of last weekend's trip. About twenty (I'll have an accurate count with names tonight) cavers went in the shaft entrance of Texas' longest cave Saturday morning. Most had a share of the load for the two cave divers, including four tanks, regulators packed in Pelican cases, BCs, lead weights, fins, wetsuits, a camers, survey gear, and a cave radio graciously loaned to us by Brian Pease of Vermont. It took 5 1/2 hours for us to reach the beginning of the 1,435 foot long sump. It took another three hours for the all the gear to be located in what pack and unpacked, passed through the mud and gloom (in not so great air) to the divers when they called for this or that piece of it, and for them to commence the dive. The results were that James and Creature surveyed 1,000 feet of passage and reached another sump. The cave radio transmission was not successful, in that Kurt Menking, waiting on the surface over that part of the cave in the evening dark, thought they were going to transmit about between 200 - 400 feet upstream from the 1,435 foot long HS sump, but instead they trasmitted from the second sump they reached, 1,000 feet upstream from the HS sump. However, it doesn't really matter, because given that there's another sump, putting in another shaft entrance into the 1,000 feet of passage they reached, won't get us into the going air-filled cave we're hoping to reach. More tonight, Bill Steele Irving, Texas --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
