You can’t win em all

Puzzled? Not so for the experienced Ontario cave searcher

I whimped out!

I am at this time still barely able to walk. My excuse …

I am out of shape
Jeff is in shape
He walked too fast, I walked to slow
My backpack was too heavy
It was too hot, I missed my dog

Just plain failure of morale, in part based on the everfluctuating readings of a GPS in which I had little faith.

Anyway, those are some of my excuses, but on the bright side we finished the day with some hope and a plan for next time (About a month from now)

We had learned of a cave beneath the power lines and at the edge of a lake and so on this beautiful sunny day we headed up north to investigate. From pictures that another caver had shown me, there is a hole that drops through the rock down into a stream channel that runs through a rubble strewn – sometimes wet passage eventually ending up at the shores of the lake. (Ontario cavers may have seen Cornelie’s pictures. From what I understand the Niebelungen cavers made a visit here about 2 years ago)

We initially arrived where the power lines crossed the road and from the air photos, I had suspected there was only a small stream to cross and then 2 kilometers to the cave – not so, the beavers had set up obstacles since the air photo was taken and we had to approach from another route where the car was parked several kilometers away. We followed up rutted road that became a dirt track that eventually intercepted the power lines. Power lines are hell to follow; you wont get lost but its not easy walking. Jeff and I slogged along over rocky hillocks and through marsh. Again the beavers made the walking circuitous and exhausting. At times we teetered along the rim of muddy beaver ponds – beautiful in amongst the lillies and dragon flies if it were not for the beating sun, progressing headache and screaming legs.

By midafternoon I was utterly exhaused and I backed out before reaching the suspected cave location – not one of my more spectacular outings. It just seemed that the power lines marched on for ever (and they do) and the hills were getting higher and higher and my legs were getting less and less co-operative (and they were -stubborn like mules)

End result, a five hour drive back to Guelph, legs that I am still barely able to get functioning, and a plan to return with a rubber raft before winter and cut across the newly formed lake to take a great distance off the hike.

There are supposedly several other caves in this area and we are resolved to pay a visit to a couple of likely sites before the snow arrives.

Lost a Wheel Somewhere Under There

Where does the tunnel go from here? Is there airspace or do the passages descend beneath the water table?

Next visit we will remove the wheel and try back-float the passage in a wet suit.

A short distance through the mud left me up against this wheel – a good place for mud bogging if you can get your monster truck past the entry squeeze. Notice the scalloping where the water funnels down and the alternating layers of rock above – the tunnel goes on – but it will be a water crawl from here.

New Ontario Cave

Going deeper!

Jeff’s picture

Not being quite high enough to crawl on all fours I had to belly inch my way down this slope throgh numerous jagged glass obstacles that struck up through the rock. Down below the passage gets a little higher and in one spot there is a pretty sizeable fossilized sponge with a scallop scooped into it. The rock looks fractured and the passage wide, but down near the bottom of the slope it almost seems like the pool ahead is possibly in a joint. It is also possible to see the water worn walls of the passage, but I am sinking down into deep mud.

Entrance to “Bed of Glass Cave”

Bed of Glass Cave – a newly discovered Ontario cave

Jeff C.’s picture 

So here is where you slip down the incline from beneath all the tangled wire deeper into the cave. Right next to my helmet there is an old milk churn and in sliding over it I bruised my ribs quite badly and I’m still feeling it today. I am looking down a slope that is strewn with broken glass and old bottles and wondering wheter I’ll be getting my belly slashed today. The cave is likely unexplored by people, but it certainly shows signs of their human presence by the trash that has tumbled in over the years. One thought would be to clear the garbage and restore the cave to a relatively pristine state.

This cave kind of reminds me of the XS wired project that I had been involved with, though also something like Olmstead Cave. It seems like farmers viewed sinks and cave openings as the place to dump all their old fencing. Something else that seems to be quite noticeable is that most dismiss the caves as tiny holes around which they played as children – a fox hole, or an overhang. Most know of the cave presences on their land, though most have a fanciful memory of them. Most wont have even seen the actual opening as it would have been buried under trash heaps from as far back as the 1800s. When I got home last night from the cave trip I found an 8 inch long spine of rusting wire threaded into the back of my pants and through my belt. Fortunatly the wire had passed parallel to my backside as opposed to something a little more noticeable.

“Bed of Glass Cave”

A newly discovered Ontario cave

Initial exploration of “Bed of Glass Cave”

This is Jeff, he discovered Bed of Glass Cave” last weekend.

Having dropped down through the hole that had been broken through the coils of rusting wire we found ourself in a twilight world of subdued light, old car parts and broken bottles. Up above the messy canopy was capped by brambles and old sticks.

What we found ourselves up against was a fractured clifface – behind Jeff there is a roof from which leads a dry tunnel that appears at first glance to get quite small (I am yet to go down there and get a better look.

In the direction that Jeff is looking, there is a sort of convex drop-away that leads on to the lower tunnel. Water from the now dry stream would flow (in time of flood) in from the direction that Jeff is looking.

How do I become a Caver?

Toronto Caving Group

Another  new Cave near Lake Erie 

A question that is commonly asked by people who visit this site is, How do I become a caver? or, How do I start caving in Ontario?

Well, aside from the obvious (start caving on your own) Join a caving club.

I had been caving for many years as an independant before I joined the Toronto Caving Group. I had initially taken a caving course in the army while I had been stationed in Gibraltar but that only covered the basics of sport caving. To really cave as an independant required far more knowledge than that.

A caver needs to know how to find caves and short of that knowledge, you need to align yourself with people who already have that skill to learn. Your first caving trip with the TCG (Toronto Caving Group) will likely be to the Niagra Escarpment caves (e.g. Mount Nemo or Rattle Snake Point), but after that, and with the appropriate contact (That you will make in the club) your horizons begin to expand. Later caving trips might be down to Dewdney,s or Moira caves and then later with more experience – Friars Hole in West Virginia. Somewhere along there you begin picking up the skills to progress further in the field of caving.

This picture was taken yesterday and it is above a new cave that Jeff discovered last weekend. The cave (“Bed of Glass”) is buried beneath a pile of rusting wire fencing and old car parts. A dry stream weaves through a nearby woodlot and disappears beneath the big pile of crap. Jeff had made a hole and down this hole we went. My first task had been to ascertain the absence of snakes. I had seen several in the grass that day and I hate snakes. Nowhere more appealing to snakes than beneath a big pile of garbage just like this.

Pool at the End of Dead Mouse

Pool in Dead Mouse Cave

IMG_7892, originally uploaded by Mic2006.

I suppose it would not be unreasonable to assume that I have managed to fit in a significant amount of study since the last post went up, but unfortunatly I was again distracted and ended up visiting my good Friend Jeff (SNAFU).

Jeff M. is a techie, I am not. I’ve been trying to figure out how to record a fire alarm sound and then play it at work for the betterment of those who do not understand our two-tone system. It had seemed like an impossible task. Fortunately, my frustration was soon aleviated by Jeff who said that I had the wrong connections at the back of my boom box. You see the peole at Futureshop had sold me the wrong connection, or maybe I had bought the wrong connection – either way, I’ve been feeling pretty frustrated. Problem solved, SNFU knew the solution right away and now everything is good.

Now an explanation of the cave picture.

This is what lies at the furthest extent of where I was willing to crawl in “Dead Mouse”. It is a strange little dam that holds back a crystal-clear pool of water behind(not the muddy one you can see in front) and Jeff C. who I was with at the time said that he might have been able to push the passage further as it is wide and curves sharply off to the left beyond this picture. For me, this is as far as I will be going in dead mouse. There are better options in the area of which I was then aware and I will explain that morning’s big success in my next set of posts – I just wanted to finish off on the “Dead Mouse story before diverging off onto more exciting news.

Oh, one kind of interesting thing. You might have noticed that rock in the middle of the dam, its kind of like a cork in a dyke. It had forced its way into the hole from behind.

Pushing Dead Mouse

A disapponting conclusion – I’m to fat to go much further

IMG_7898, originally uploaded by Mic2006.

Just a quick post as promised – a conclusion to the newly discovered cave – “Dead Mouse”. In one sense, you did not miss out to much here Greg. The cave soon changed to something less explorable, but it was the exploration earlier in the day at another spot found by Jeff that really made the journey worthwhile.

I am again supposed to be studying for a health and safety exam. This is the last of the delay tactics that I can employ – a quick update that I will build upon in a following few posts later this evening.

As we have discovered over the weeks since our last visit, the Onondaga Escarpment is a rich caving ground if you know what to look for. The escarpment winds all wriggly and convoluted across the top of Lake Erie – interspersed with layers of chert and some fabulous fossils.

More to come soon.

Scallops in the Tunnel

Check out the scalloping

An Ontario cave near Lake Erie

Notice the scalloping – wear features shaped like spoon scoops, they are indicative of the water speed and direction of flow. The roof above is grey and hard and worn smooth – no sign of the ceiling joint that governs passage direction in many Ontario caves (e.g. Ongleys Hole/ Dewdney’s Cave), so as for water just trickling in from the fields above, that does not seem to be an option at this time. The water certainly rises high in the tunnels, but today it is drizzling outside and no sign of raised water levels.

Up ahead there appears to be either deeper water or less rubble in a “T” junction. I wonder if the left leading junction meets up with the surface depression that we saw? Does it function as an overflow conduit like in Little Stream?

We are left considering the possibility of some kind of dendritic feeding system, or a single point at which the water sinks. The passage seems to be widening up ahead and so we resolve to return to “Dead Mouse” in about two weeks with the appropriate equipment and push on deeper in.

Is this a pilgrimidge?

Penance in suffering

Exploring a newly found Ontario Cave 

I am crawling along on sharp edged cobbles, a lot of the time with my flashlight in my mouth. For the dead mouse that we found, we decided to call this cave “Dead Mouse” – as in, “Wear kneepadswhen you are visiting “Dead Mouse”, and be prepared to get wet as I can see that there will be a belly crawl up ahead”.