Area 24 Project (can’t remember cave passage name)
COG Participants:
Anne Ault, Steve Beleu, Duane Del Vecchio, Roy Diehl, Gary Harrington, Dale & Lil
Town, Jon Woltz
Narrative:
We checked in with Tom at Cave Recourses and had a choice of a couple of assignments.
One was an area we had never done before right off the trail in the Big Room;
the other choices were in Lower Cave. We decided to try to the one in the Big
Room with Dale, Gary, and Jon splintering off to go check out the National
Geographic Pit in Lower Cave to see how a year has done to it (we cleaned it
last year). The other five were shown the project... and whoo boy...what
a project! Many
many years
ago
the electrical wires in the cave were buried with red clay dirt (actually...there's
no red dirt...just red clay!!) People would walk on it and being the clay it
was, it sticks to your shoes. Then everywhere else you go, you track the red
clay with you... over clean formations if you have to pass by them, by the
pond in the area we were at, and on the walls where slips in the past had people
grasp the wall in a squeeze part. Also there is settlement in the first couple
of feet of the pond. Another grotto had begun in the back of this area and
cleaned high spots working their way down to the floor. We picked it up from
there and started to work.
There is a skinny walkway with lake water on either side that is just red instead of the grays or whites it should be. We started at that point. There is a rock formation where the trail winds around and then up a bit to what we call the mushroom squeeze then back down to the back room where the trail after about 30 feet peters out. The rock formation was where Lil & Anne started. Duane, Steve, and Roy went past the rock, though the mushroom constriction and onto the trail beyond. Roy picked up from the other grotto work and came down to the floor where it forks. Steve and Roy worked on the high part of the path (path isn’t really a good name as it’s not any kind of trail or anything…) but you can tell where people walked. Steve and Roy started at the part of the path where the hole is in the ground and worked backwards. Duane worked on the mushroom area. Everyone’s goal was to get to Lil & Anne’s rock so that from that point on, only water shoes could be worn (to stop tracking the red clay on the soon to be clean floor).
We could get fresh water from the pond which we refilled about four times with the sprayers and used the existing water from the previous left over silt filled buckets for the initial fillings. We used brushes and toothbrushes to loosen the clay and then sprayed water on it and absorbed it with “super sponges” that could probably have sucked the whole pond up! <grin> There was one thing we particularly had to look out for… we could not let any ‘dirty’ water enter back into the lake. We brought along a couple of five gallon buckets for waste materials (clay and dirty water).
After working the morning, we took a lunch break and then returned back to work. About an hour later the lower cave crew came back and joined us. Some stayed on the trail and worked as interpretive guides, and others helped us. Roy, Steve, and Duane had cleaned from the back, to the mushroom squeeze, and to the rock where the girls were finishing that area.
Some of us then cleaned some of the stepping-stones to get to this area free of the clay that had been deposited on them. This put us in clear site (though a very good distance from the trail) so hence the trail interpretive guides. One particular stone (when you hug the wall and have to step on the stone to avoid falling in the pond was cleaned and enough clay off of that one rock made a clay ball as large as my fist. The other rocks on either side were equally dirty. Though these were not part of our area, it is something that every person has to step on to get through so we thought at least cut down on further tracking.
The girls finished “the rock” and we pulled up stakes and left the area. We brought back two of the old silt filled buckets back to the top and left three that needed settling first so as to return the water or use it in further cleaning and left the two old buckets on the dock where the dump trucks get the rock hauled out of the cave near the pet kennels. Also left there was a collapsible bucket with the items retrieved from lower cave N.G. pit (coins, glasses, and wood chips).
We would recommend that only aqua shoes be allowed from the rock back to the back of the area as there is tons of clay before that point still to be cleaned.
Submitted:
Duane Del Vecchio
Central Oklahoma Grotto
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