March 30, 2005
PRINTED CIRCUIT CAVE, aka Rock Spring Cave
Position:
Main Entrance: WGS84 - 18 18' 16.3" N, 77 34' 14.2" W, +/- 5m
Farmyard Entrance: WGS84 - 18 18' 12.8" N, 77 34' 07.4" W, +/- 10m
Double-Entrance: WGS84 - 18 18' 14.7" N, 77 34' 04.1" W, +/- 10m
Positive-SE Entrance: WGS84 - 18 18' 17.2" N, 77 34' 05.6" W, +/- 10m
Positive-NW Entrance: WGS84 - 18 18' 20.5" N, 77 34' 08.6" W, +/- 10m
Emitter Entrance: WGS84 - 18 18' 22.2" N, 77 34' 17.1" W, +/- 15m
Northwest Entrance: WGS84 - 18 18' 23.8" N, 77 34' 13.9" W, +/- 15m
Field notes: D. K. ROGGY
Cavers: R. S. Stewart, I. C. Conolley, D. Roggy, E. Slack
Time in: 9:00 EST, Time out: 12:00 EST
THREAT VULNERABILITY: Medium
Entering the entrance that Stefan and myself had found the previous
day, we found ourselves in a low, winding stream passage. Most of the
time we were stooped over and a fair amount of the time we were crawling
or squatting. After about an hour we came to another entrance. It was
choked up with rocks and a couple thick logs. Using my ingenuity as
a civil engineer, I spent some time moving the rocks aside. I then did
my best to pry and pound the logs out of the way, using sticks and some
rocks where necessary for a fulcrum. I didn't want to have to go back
out the way we came, and ultimately we wanted to get a GPS position
of this entrance, so it made sense to do our best to try to get out
this way. I managed to shove one log aside, then another and squirmed
out.
Two little children were standing about 30 feet away, holding plastic
buckets and looking at me with wide eyes. I said "I bet you always
wondered where white people came from, didn't you?" and they just
kept looking at me, dumbfounded. Stefan got a real kick out of that.
We found that we'd emerged at what appeared to be a place where there
were two entrances that faced each other. This more or less helped us
to make assumptions about the layout of where we'd gone in, where we'd
come out, and where other entrances should be.
We proceeded north, up a rise and down into a field of coffee bushes.
We encountered a farmer who showed us a couple more entrances. They
both were filled with sediment and required crawling, at least as far
as I went in.
|
