Our first day on the ridge consisted of three hours following a confusing step log and 20 minutes of caving. The cave we visited was very short but quite steep and heavily decorated. Unfortunately, due to the fact that John's lost luggage had not turned up, Del was forced to go to town. The hike along the ridge was beautiful and we stopped every so often to look at the holes in the canyon bottom and basin ridge. If ten percent of them are caves that go anywhere, then there are hundreds of undiscovered caves out here. We all find this very exciting.

July 14, 1999

Exploration was postponed today so we could concentrate on learning new vertical caving skills. The day was spent at an old abandoned fire tower about a 1/2-mile from camp where John Gookin ran us through the basics of rigging and fine-tuning our jumar system. After rigging two ropes off the tower and tuning our frog systems, using pulleys to create a vertical rope treadmill, and tuning our frog style jumar systems, we ran through a number of problem scenarios. The scenarios range from getting your T-shirt/ body parts jammed in your rappel rack, to finding an unforeseen hazard while on rappels. Fixing the problem in the scenario usually consisted of switching from rappel rack to jumar ascenders or vice versa. This is not as easy as first thought, especially while dangling off a rope.

July 15, 1999

Seven AM and we're up again. Today we went to an unsurveyed cave, a hard hike away from base camp. We spent the day doing our first survey map and inventory. The cave was small but our work kept us there until five PM. On our way out we found a new cave entrance. We began excavating it because wind was coming out. We continued until seven PM at which point we began our two-hour hike back to base camp. After eating a quick meal, we tried to go to bed. Due to a strong wind keeping us up, we didn't hit the sack until 11 PM, with another early wake up call planned.

July 16, 1999

Seven and 1/2 hours of sleep left us groggily ready for another long day of hiking and caving. A quick breakfast got us out of camp at 8:30 am. Two hours later we arrived at our stashed gear and spent two hours exploring "Gigantic Cave". Then after a quick discussion we decided to stay in "Big Moor," the new cave we'd begun excavating the previous day. Unfortunately after an hour of moving rock, we were still looking at more to break down. The final cave that we would visit on the ridge, "Sink Cave", was also the most impressive. In "Sink Cave", there is a rappel as well as unbelievably convoluted formation. Everyone was very impressed as we started out of the cave and back along the ridge for the last time.

July 17, 1999

After four days of caving in caves that have limited passage, we were excited to spend five hours underground in spacious "Tree Cave". Being a cave that formed along a huge underground joint, much of the passage was accessed by climbing up off-width cracks. Piles of breakstone kept us busy for hours due to the large number of tight passages within. Once all of the leads had been followed to the end, Dave took a few rolls of film documenting the wonderful cave scape. After surfacing we rushed in time to pick up our new instructor Ben. To save time and to position us closer to the Wal Mart Shopping center, we spent the night in a nearby campground.