Text by Mark Minton - Photos by Yvonne Droms
Blue underlined text is links to photos
On June 9, 2009 Tony Canike, Brad Cooper, Yvonne Droms, Mark Minton and Nate Walter worked on the Air Dig in Butler. On our way into the cave, we found two fawns nesting in the grass beside the trail. They didn't budge as we passed by and inspected them closely. Water in the cave was a bit high after the recent rains, so we got our feet wet getting to the lead.
We decided that instead of working at the front of the dig, we needed to spend some time lowering the floor and improving access to the face, which was an on-your-side squeeze facing downhill. There was noticeable airflow. The old custom-made, heavy iron drag bucket was still quite functional, and worked remarkably well in the narrow trench of the floor. Tony brought two 100-foot ropes, which we attached to opposite ends of the bucket to pull it back and forth. Even at that we had to add a little extra cord to make the lines long enough. We removed many bucketfuls of fill near the end, converting a belly crawl into a small sit-up room.
We also leveled out the floor of the passage in order to make pulling the drag bucket easier. The only problem was that as we dug the floor down in places, the walls got closer together and the bucket would get stuck. We had to shave a couple of spots to make the bucket move smoothly again. We also removed a considerable amount of rock at the second corner near the end so that one could approach the face head on rather than sideways. We ran out of drill power so there is still a bit more to do before real forward progress can be made.
We gathered up our gear and left the cave at about 10 PM after a satisfying 11-hour trip. Plans are to return on July 4.
Text & HTML by Nevin Davis - Photos by Phil Lucas
On 4 July Jean Vargas, Nevin Davis, Tony Canike and Scott Olson continued the excavations in the Air Dig by first cleaning up the broken rock left by the previous trip. Some of the wall near the floor was also removed to make dragging the bucket easier and less likely to get hung up. Sometime near 1:00 PM Phil showed up and after taking a few pictures he was hard to get away from the lead end of the dig. It is now spacious there so the next trip will have little difficulty making forward progress.
Looking Down the Largest Part of the Passage
L to R Jean, Scott, drag bucket, and Tony at the End of the Day
