6.2 O Happy Cave!

Doug Marchant’s e-mail made it sound like we would be going to a newly discovered cave—there would be surveying and maybe even some exploration. Being so new to organized caving, Kimberly Kanigel and I figured this was a rare chance to do something really cool. We had been told that we would meet at Trout Lake at 10:00am sharp. If we weren’t there by 10:10, we would be left behind.

The night before; Friday, the 18th of July. I got off work at around 11:30 PM, drove home at breakneck speed and rushed through the last of the packing with Kim. We jumped in the Rodeo and drove the four or five hours to Trout Lake, switching off at the wheel every hour or so. It seemed more like eight hours, really. We arrived around 4:30 and were asleep soon after in the back of the car, my sleeping-bagged feet sticking out past the bumper. Luckily it didn’t rain. We woke up groggy around nine and headed for the meeting site by way of a nutritious meal of pre-packaged tuna sandwiches and apple juice requisitioned from the one little general store in town.

10:10 came and went, but we found it in our hearts not to leave without the rest of the group. Not knowing where the cave was helped a bit with that decision. Everyone on the trip was from the Willamette Valley Grotto except myself and Kim. Doug Marchant and his son Damon arrived in the promised blue Voyager at around 10:15. Everyone else arrived within another 15 minutes, including Claude Koch, who had discovered the cave. It had been found some three years ago and then lost, and then re-found a week ago. Claude and the first exploration group last week had gone some distance into walking passage and had turned around with more continuing out of sight. Everyone was definitely excited. There were brief introductions. In addition to Doug, Claude and Damon were Dennis Glasby, Chris Molyneaux and Patrick Finney.

Suddenly Kim and I were running for the car, jumping in and speeding off to chase them down long, winding mountain roads at break-neck speeds. Since we’re new, time was taken when we arrived to explain why we shouldn’t make the location of the cave public. "If anyone asks I’ll just tell them I don’t know where it is," I said. "After that drive, it’ll be the truth."

I asked the name of the cave. Doug hesitated a moment. "Big Mo’ Fo’," he said. "That’s what we’re calling it right now." Doug described the kinds of tight, tiny, knee-grinding caves they usually found in the area. This one was different. It was actually walking passage! There was a brief meeting before heading off. New names were discussed. The old hands were so happy to have found a new walking cave that quickly someone said, "How about ’Happy Cave’?" and that was it. Happy Cave.

We hiked off to the entrance. It was a low, unpromising belly crawl trending sharply downhill through dirt. We geared up and some attempt was made to teach me how to use the compass and clinometer properly. I was to be in the front-sighting team. Kim was to be back-sighting. Kim and Dennis headed in. When my turn came, I was to take readings from station zero on my belly, in the sunlight and dust, downhill, with almost no idea what I was doing. I tried a few times, not being able really to focus my eyes on the numbers in the compass. I ventured a few numbers (which turned out wrong) and decided that this was not the best place to learn this stuff. So I headed in and Chris took over. The dust was almost overpowering. The result of my own poor technique, I suspect. I’m starting to think dust masks might make a nice piece of standard kit for me.

Eventually everyone regrouped in the first little room. Kim helped survey for a while, but eventually Kim and I started to realize we were just in the way, so we went on a bit with Patrick, staying ahead of the survey team.

Maybe two hundred feet in we found what I thought was the best room in then cave. There were long chains of "microgours" (as Dennis called them) on the ceiling running from red to white. They looked like strange alien backbones embedded in the rock. There were lavacicles and colored deposits of some sort. There were long bunches of roots hanging from the ceiling, sparkling with thousands of tiny water droplets. The effect was otherworldly. Patrick mused that the microgour/spines looked like something from the movie Aliens. We joked about this and started calling it the James Cameron room.

We went on, maybe another four hundred feet, poking into a lot of little holes, and found another major room with several offshoots. Kim tried to get into one without success. Eventually I found a way through one and into a little room. From there another very tight squeeze (for me, anyway) led back to the main tunnel. I found Dennis there. He told me I was now a member of the Star Trek club. "Oh," I said. "Uh, great… the what?"

Word had come forward that the main survey team was going to exit the cave for lunch. Dennis left, but Kim and I had driven eight—er, I mean five—hours to get here. Damned if we were going to just sit outside. We ate a quick lunch in the cave, then Patrick, Kim and I continued on.

Patrick needed to be on the road early, so we set a turn around time of 3pm and on we went. Another, say, two or three hundred feet of mostly walking passage led finally to what felt like the end of the line. And so it turned out to be. A last little squeeze and then a tiny room led to nothing but a "sub-human" passage continuing on.

We turned around and met the survey team near the junction area where we had left Dennis earlier. Patrick continued out with Kim following to keep him company, and I picked up with the surveyors and helped run tape and took a few readings (better this time), and generally tried to help and learn as much as I could all the way back to the end. The total for this first survey was 903 feet.

We poked around a bit on the way out, and Kim came back in to join us. Edd Keudell, who had arrived late and joined the main group during their lunch, stayed behind a bit hammering at a tiny hole, trying, ultimately unsuccessfully, to squeeze through.

Eventually we all ground our way out the entrance crawl and back into the hot sunlight and began talking almost immediately about when we would return.

Other people who were on this trip have been in the same area weekend after weekend—some for years—tramping around the woods and squishing into inhuman little fissures. Kim and I made a lot of comments about our general unworthiness to have been along. A brand new cave, exploring new walking passage, surveying… and this was only our second trip with an actual organized group of cavers. Kim and I now consider ourselves spoiled rotten—and hooked. Thanks to Doug and Dennis and Claude and Patrick and Edd and Chris and Damon! We’ll be back!

First printed in Cascade Caver.