Friday, September 30, 2011
From the Archives: the very beginnings of the CND
September 16th.
A Saturday morning. Hot languid August is sobering up after summer's careless dissolution and pure laziness (boy, was she ever stingy with tomatoes this year!), and I am realizing that it's the middle of September!
Oh my gosh! I think that was a shiver running down my spine...Off with the green dress of Summer and on with the yellow and brown cloak! Personally, I hope she goofs off a little more. She came late to the party and ought to be the last to leave. I say phooey on sober Autumn and let's all celebrate and encourage a fickle pretentious Summer (easy to say if you've got a large pile of firewood). And there is nothing like a tinder-dry, leaf-crackly hunting season to hone the skills of the hunter who can always use more patience. Be patient, Summer.
I am digging and building wall as fast as I can. Most of the dirt was removed this winter, but it still takes 30 buckets of dirt out to prep for the next wall section. This work will be impossible once the rainy season comes as the water soaks the talc.
In the past 12 days we have extended the concrete wall we are building down another two feet, making six feet in all, plus another step on the North wall. We have also built a two-foot high secvtion of wall on the West side. This wall completes the concrete work done last winter under a hanging rock and brings that earlier wall down to where it sits on immoveables and is joined to two steps cemented to the same.
Last night I worked until dark, prepping these steps for cement work this afternoon when Charlie is available. I surely am thankful for Charlie. He has been the best helper I've had. He has been my sole surface support and second man on the dig for the last year.
Last year at this time we had not even begun installing the upper half of the culvert. I was still building its rock foundation at the 30 foot level. Now we are just two feet from the top with backfilling. Electrical conduit with 110V, 12V, and 2 camera lines are installed with lights. We have the capability of recording everything digitally onto a laptop. Now we are ust a dozen or so digs short of having everything shored up down to almost 80 feet deep. One thousand buckets out this year. That's 200 climbs up the shaft for me and almost three miles of lifting buckets for Charlie.
We got a real treat last Sunday when a young fellow James from the Cascade Grotto (he was down helping Hester Mallone with some cave restoration she is doing fo the Park Service) gave us a helping hand. Boy, was it ever nice to have young blood escorting buckets up and down the shaft while these two old boys do our work. I ust built wall, didn't have to climb for buckets. Those buckets go up nicely, but not down without help.
A construction note: The East wall, five feet down from the present cedar shoring--that is, five feet below the ledge--is cemented to and around a quite large boulder that was behind the muds. There was air space behind it against the South wall and the mud looked to be what was washed in there during the Veteran's Day slump, three years back. This boulder seemed not to have moved during the slumping but had muds flow past it. Seems though, like I said, the same thing about some other rocks ten feet below that I have yet to deal finally with! You know, maybe the big jam-up at the pinch point...
A Saturday morning. Hot languid August is sobering up after summer's careless dissolution and pure laziness (boy, was she ever stingy with tomatoes this year!), and I am realizing that it's the middle of September!
Oh my gosh! I think that was a shiver running down my spine...Off with the green dress of Summer and on with the yellow and brown cloak! Personally, I hope she goofs off a little more. She came late to the party and ought to be the last to leave. I say phooey on sober Autumn and let's all celebrate and encourage a fickle pretentious Summer (easy to say if you've got a large pile of firewood). And there is nothing like a tinder-dry, leaf-crackly hunting season to hone the skills of the hunter who can always use more patience. Be patient, Summer.
I am digging and building wall as fast as I can. Most of the dirt was removed this winter, but it still takes 30 buckets of dirt out to prep for the next wall section. This work will be impossible once the rainy season comes as the water soaks the talc.
In the past 12 days we have extended the concrete wall we are building down another two feet, making six feet in all, plus another step on the North wall. We have also built a two-foot high secvtion of wall on the West side. This wall completes the concrete work done last winter under a hanging rock and brings that earlier wall down to where it sits on immoveables and is joined to two steps cemented to the same.
Last night I worked until dark, prepping these steps for cement work this afternoon when Charlie is available. I surely am thankful for Charlie. He has been the best helper I've had. He has been my sole surface support and second man on the dig for the last year.
Last year at this time we had not even begun installing the upper half of the culvert. I was still building its rock foundation at the 30 foot level. Now we are just two feet from the top with backfilling. Electrical conduit with 110V, 12V, and 2 camera lines are installed with lights. We have the capability of recording everything digitally onto a laptop. Now we are ust a dozen or so digs short of having everything shored up down to almost 80 feet deep. One thousand buckets out this year. That's 200 climbs up the shaft for me and almost three miles of lifting buckets for Charlie.
We got a real treat last Sunday when a young fellow James from the Cascade Grotto (he was down helping Hester Mallone with some cave restoration she is doing fo the Park Service) gave us a helping hand. Boy, was it ever nice to have young blood escorting buckets up and down the shaft while these two old boys do our work. I ust built wall, didn't have to climb for buckets. Those buckets go up nicely, but not down without help.
A construction note: The East wall, five feet down from the present cedar shoring--that is, five feet below the ledge--is cemented to and around a quite large boulder that was behind the muds. There was air space behind it against the South wall and the mud looked to be what was washed in there during the Veteran's Day slump, three years back. This boulder seemed not to have moved during the slumping but had muds flow past it. Seems though, like I said, the same thing about some other rocks ten feet below that I have yet to deal finally with! You know, maybe the big jam-up at the pinch point...
Sunday, September 11, 2011
September 4, 2011.
A good dig yesterday -- Saturday. I got there early and got started with the last prep work. Charlie was picking up free food in Grants Pass for food give-aways and churches in the Valley. We got started with the actual mixing, moving, and construction after 5pm and worked until after 10pm. There was twice as much wall to build and the wall on the north needed two steps on it.
Thinking about it now, after they are built, I wonder why I didn't make them wider, so I would still have room to work back on the East Wall. I'm having a hard time visualizing what I'm doing now (building a concrete wall) -- or I should say, visualizing the effect that the work I'm doing now is going to have when I get down to the depth of that compromising boulder. You know, that one that hangs over you like a sinister plotting Lord, trying to figure out when it would be most to its advantage to crush you like a bug. Yes, that one. The one I can't dig under until it is either broken up and hauled out of the hole in pieces or securely cemented into a permanent trail wall.
The other possibility I need to keep in mind is the chance that the way into the cave is over towards the East, and that I am currently digging down alongside the cave and will come in at the floor level. Think about the air coming out of the dissolved joint fractures in the marble in the side tunnel (the adit) almost twenty feet above my current position -- twenty feet above the deepest I've dug. Or Chamber A that had been ten feet from the shaft for years and wasn't found until we dug down and found a break in its intrusive walls and looked upwards into it.
To the east is where I've never found bedrock. Chamber A was found behind the bedrock (igneous) wall of the SW corner. The South wall being igneous plutonic I believe and the North some kind of talc and the West an igneous basalt or very altered and mixed chert. I have felt bedrock by probing to the East from 60 feet down, but what is a wall at 60 feet might be a ceiling at 70 feet. Once I'm cemented out, though, it would be hard to go back and look. My tendency is to follow the mud down, and the water that comes in from the NE corner.
Thinking about it now, after they are built, I wonder why I didn't make them wider, so I would still have room to work back on the East Wall. I'm having a hard time visualizing what I'm doing now (building a concrete wall) -- or I should say, visualizing the effect that the work I'm doing now is going to have when I get down to the depth of that compromising boulder. You know, that one that hangs over you like a sinister plotting Lord, trying to figure out when it would be most to its advantage to crush you like a bug. Yes, that one. The one I can't dig under until it is either broken up and hauled out of the hole in pieces or securely cemented into a permanent trail wall.
The other possibility I need to keep in mind is the chance that the way into the cave is over towards the East, and that I am currently digging down alongside the cave and will come in at the floor level. Think about the air coming out of the dissolved joint fractures in the marble in the side tunnel (the adit) almost twenty feet above my current position -- twenty feet above the deepest I've dug. Or Chamber A that had been ten feet from the shaft for years and wasn't found until we dug down and found a break in its intrusive walls and looked upwards into it.
To the east is where I've never found bedrock. Chamber A was found behind the bedrock (igneous) wall of the SW corner. The South wall being igneous plutonic I believe and the North some kind of talc and the West an igneous basalt or very altered and mixed chert. I have felt bedrock by probing to the East from 60 feet down, but what is a wall at 60 feet might be a ceiling at 70 feet. Once I'm cemented out, though, it would be hard to go back and look. My tendency is to follow the mud down, and the water that comes in from the NE corner.
August 31, Two Digs Later.
Sunday -- prepared the wall for concrete.
This amounted to removing the rock pile that was in front of and above the clay-talc East Wall, which needed concrete and steel and rock shoring. The rock had originally been just backfill to keep the clay from sloughing, when I moved the wall to the west to find an end-hold that would hold the south end of my shoring up without it slipping out. Hard to do when my nice vertical wall wants to become a sloped ceiling.
Now, by using concrete, I can attach it to the rock -- that's bedrock, no matter what the shape. And remember there is almost no side pressure because a sinkhole operates vertically and all material wants to go down. In digging at the bottom, when you drive a tool into the clay, it feels hollow and wants to sink down by just agitation. Put it in a bucket with a bottom and the clay becomes like cement!
So I am building a concrete wall. Twenty-five buckets of boulders, broken up with a sledge, while standing on an 18" ledge overlooking the hole that has been dug since last October. Ten steep tall steps leading down into the unknown chambers below. Also removed two layers of cedar shoring, exposing enough clay and making enough room to start building wall which happened on Tuesday evening when Charlie and I put in another 5 hour work session and managed to get enough concrete mixed, sent down the hole, and put together with iron and rock to build the top two feet of the wall.
I built a scaffolding platform to hold and wash rocks on and stand on safely while doing the concrete work. All went well; the mix was thick and sticky and now it needs a few days to set up so I can dig under it and build more wall down. I hope this works. It was dark when I got to the surface.
I talked to Steve K. about the dig. He has found and will deliver a vertical stretcher that could lift an injured person (i.e., me) out of the hole. He also said the Forest Service is concerned about Resource Impact (which is, in fact, very negligible) and about my safety. Not as much as I am I'll bet! I am overjoyed that someone, anyone, somewhere is interested and I do hope it will be a positive step in the direction I have always dreamt this project can go. And I know I will soon be to where I can stop digging and proceed to the next phase.
This amounted to removing the rock pile that was in front of and above the clay-talc East Wall, which needed concrete and steel and rock shoring. The rock had originally been just backfill to keep the clay from sloughing, when I moved the wall to the west to find an end-hold that would hold the south end of my shoring up without it slipping out. Hard to do when my nice vertical wall wants to become a sloped ceiling.
Now, by using concrete, I can attach it to the rock -- that's bedrock, no matter what the shape. And remember there is almost no side pressure because a sinkhole operates vertically and all material wants to go down. In digging at the bottom, when you drive a tool into the clay, it feels hollow and wants to sink down by just agitation. Put it in a bucket with a bottom and the clay becomes like cement!
So I am building a concrete wall. Twenty-five buckets of boulders, broken up with a sledge, while standing on an 18" ledge overlooking the hole that has been dug since last October. Ten steep tall steps leading down into the unknown chambers below. Also removed two layers of cedar shoring, exposing enough clay and making enough room to start building wall which happened on Tuesday evening when Charlie and I put in another 5 hour work session and managed to get enough concrete mixed, sent down the hole, and put together with iron and rock to build the top two feet of the wall.
I built a scaffolding platform to hold and wash rocks on and stand on safely while doing the concrete work. All went well; the mix was thick and sticky and now it needs a few days to set up so I can dig under it and build more wall down. I hope this works. It was dark when I got to the surface.
I talked to Steve K. about the dig. He has found and will deliver a vertical stretcher that could lift an injured person (i.e., me) out of the hole. He also said the Forest Service is concerned about Resource Impact (which is, in fact, very negligible) and about my safety. Not as much as I am I'll bet! I am overjoyed that someone, anyone, somewhere is interested and I do hope it will be a positive step in the direction I have always dreamt this project can go. And I know I will soon be to where I can stop digging and proceed to the next phase.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)