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| Our group heading on down to the entrance. | Everyone gets their picture taken at least once! <grin> | Twice if you're in the back of the line! |
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| There was an entrance collapse many years back and they were able to keep the main entrance open. | It has been pretty dang cold lately around here! | Water dripping from the surface down to the entrance made this really neat picture. I've been a cave needing to leave and have an exit blocked like this before! <grin> |
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| Beginning rules and procedures being taught | Mostly our regular crew together again for this count. Me, I just took pictures instead of counting. :) | Right off the bat lots of bats in the entrance room. |
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| They were single and weged into cracks really thick this year. Being cold helps! | Mike was again our official recorder. | Jerry going where no one wanted to tread... up on the upper rocks which lead near the collapse area. Watch out Jerry!! |
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| Nice thing about the ABC count is that most of it is on trail! | Except for the entrance room (and Lower Cave which a team seperates and goes wild caving while counting bats. | The rest of us take it easy on the trail! |
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| Down to the low point of the cave... getting near the breakdown. | And then back up (stairs shown are the ones last picture). Here is were the collapse starts. | Since the tour comes in the exit now and leaves that same way, the path had lots of guano on it along with debris from the fall. |
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| You turn the corner after coming up the stairs and see the damage right away. | Mike pointing out where he is thinking they might be able to make an alternative trail to join back up to the existing one. | |
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| Those rocks were together at one time...and there is about a 15-20 foot drop below that! | Maybe by making a suspended walkway they won't have to hall out all of the 100's of tons of gyp out of the cave. | Nobody was in the cave when it happened. The first morning tour discovered it. Surprise! Your cave is broke! |
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| And after all of that work getting these really nice lighted hand rails! But I got to tell you, they are dureable!! | One giant slab being held only by that about 1 inch on the right from sliding down further. | At least now we could go look up close at the lighted gypsum crystals! |
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| They were neat from the trail but are much more awesome when you are near them! | A lot of crystal was smashed in the incident. We were picking up basketball sized crystals and admiring them... but they stay there... against the law to take things out of a cave. | This crummy picture is actually all of the dust in the air when we slid down the side of the trail. |
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| It settled down pretty quick | Mike took Mel and me down and though the breakdown to the other side. Those were the old insulators that used to be about 30 ft above us! | When you see it this close, it is pretty awesome... how many TONS of rock came down?? |
