Friday, February 15, 2013
Sunday, February 10, 2013
February 2013
The last year has been one of waiting: Waiting to be sure that the sink is stable and that none of the construction compromised the geology or the hydrology, waiting to see how the FS felt about our management plan (they seem to approve), waiting to see if the Western Cave Conservancy might want to join the effort (they might), and waiting for me (David) to decide that the political cracks are wide enough for us to just fall through and get the job done. I can’t help but get the feeling that this is expected of me. I guess, since I said I was doing it. I still feel there’s some doubt out there that the Mistress dig will get us back into the Cave Next Door. I think it has already done that and now the work must begin as per the management plan. Right now, no matter what the future of this project, it is still necessary to fill the sink in around the culvert, and to cap the top of the culvert. The filing in has been going on for 3-4 years. The material for back fill is coming from the bottom of the shaft to minimize surface disturbance. Right now, the most disturbing surface phenomenon is how fast the re-growth in the clear cut is growing, and being a native of Oregon, I’ve seen lots of them growing night and day keeping Oregon green
But the surface is supposed to change like that and in many other ways for many different reasons, and believe it or not, not all those reasons have to do with man and his manipulations of that which he calls his resources. For nature, even drastic changes seem to be acceptable and common on the surface. It adapts fairly quickly. But-not nearly so common underground. There, changes are much slower and occur, usually on a much smaller scale. This would imply to me two things. One-what goes on underground usually does not have a large impact on what happens on the surface. It is of course the other way around. And. Two- we have to be much more careful of what we do underground and how we do it because even our most casual visitation, activities that are invisible and have almost zero impact on the surface, can have very long lasting effects underground. Our management plan is of course designed to minimize these impacts, and constrain them to the “defined” trail.
So what has changed below in the dig during the last year? (You can see the previous blog for other info about this.) I have made it a priority to check for any changes, which means—“Has anything moved?” I can find nothing. Small cracks around fractured slabs of igneous dikes at the opening to Chamber A still hold the same tiny chinks of mud they held when they were uncovered over 3 years ago. I checked very carefully for any separation that would imply movement in the concrete work with any rock imbedded in the wall. Many of these were boulders in situ and had never been moved by us, only uncovered. They were wedged and stable naturally. I looked for spaces between the concrete wall and the igneous bedrock of the south wall. There is not the slightest sign of any movement what so ever and this in spite of earth movements that were felt in the Illinois Valley from an earthquake off the California coast by Eureka. Dripping water has washed everything bright and clean. The Mistress is looking beautiful.
The past year did see progress though. The stonework around the top of the culvert which is part of the locking cap on top, was continued as was the filling in of the sink with its accompanying stonework and drainage. Meanwhile at the bottom, the last section of concrete work, that firmly cemented, and wedged the bottom-most sink boulder to the south wall was finished sometime last summer. It was like we constructed the perfect chink rock that held everything in place, although nothing had moved.
Now geologically, all that construction, right down to the 80’ depth has brought us to what seems to be the neck or pinch point in a sort of hourglass shaped sinkhole. Below us the rubble is more loose and hollow. There is much less talc-y mud. The 12’ wide talc seam of the north and east walls, below the collar 20’ above, have compressed down to not much more than a 1 foot seam at 80’, leaving only 3’ or 4’ from the marble west wall to the igneous south wall at the pinch point. This space seems to be mostly due to the dissolving of the marble by the underground water that caused the sinkhole to happen, and by the washing out of collapsed talc.
Late in January of this year, Charlie and I snow-shoed into the Mistress after many months of absence. We removed almost 4’ of wet packed snow from the roof, (It’s the most water I’ve seen stored in the mountains this time of year for some time.), and crawled in and found it as described above and briefly noted earlier. Last week another 21 buckets were lifted from the bottom to the top with the help of Tony. Charlie and I are learning how to integrate another body into the system while maintaining absolute safety. Tony’s cave and work experience, his common sense, and his enthusiasm for the project are a great encouragement and motivating factor to a couple of old men who may not doubt their sanity but have had to measure it on a different scale. Now remember that everything is vertical and gravity always has the last word if you even give it a chance to speak. We are moving 150-200 pounds of rock and mud out of the bottom in white plastic buckets strung out and clipped onto a pigtail cable, being lifted 20’ up to and through the collar into a 30” laddered steel culvert, and then 60 more feet to the surface. Hopefully all you ever hear is the soft scratching of bucket friction and never a peep from gravity who always seems to take its slightest whisper to cataclysmic proportions. Every wrap on the cable, its speed even at any particular point in the lifting, every twist in the pigtail cable, and the idiosyncrasies of each bucket clip and bail, and how each bucket hangs from each clip, the threading of the buckets through the safety collar, and each imperfection in the culvert: each and all must be within very small parameters for 5 buckets, less than ½ full, to make it all the way up. So, it’s not really surprising that while lifting those 21 buckets, only three fell back down the shaft. Kind of scary though, especially for Tony who was digging at the bottom. Also not surprising, was that all safety structures and procedures worked perfectly, unlike those moody swinging buckets. Now we were hampered by difficult communications due to old ears, and something about radios.
As we continue to move through the second largest void we have encountered-Chamber A being the largest- more air is showing up behind the igneous south wall. At first I noticed where some rubble had fallen from a 4” crack about 2’ above the dig floor, and exposed a narrow void extending up and behind the south wall. By the end of the work day, Tony reported that further down the wall you could look up into more void that seemed to be connected to the first. I think his is what I expected as I believe the main cave void to be behind the south wall, much like Chamber A was behind the west wall. I think this because of the airflow and water drainage through the joint fractures (1”-2” wide) in the marble at the adit level 30’ above. We have to dig down and find a way under and through the south wall.
Now since it is my job to worry about everything that might possible go wrong, I’m going to worry about igneous ceiling. I continue to believe that the sinkhole exists because faulting has broken some of the igneous dikes and these broken dike pieces have fallen into the void as the marble dissolved allowing the sink to collapse on up to the surface. I know I have said all this before, but it is important for me to constantly review my theories and compare them with what we actually find. We do find loose pieces of igneous on the south wall-ceiling. All these must be removed of course, while they are still at floor level. As we descend we can leave nothing loose above our heads. They tend to be think plates and they come form some different type of igneous that appeared at 80’ where the hard blue solid wall we had been following down, angled into this softer, browner variety. Perhaps a meta-basalt as opposed to a plutonic dike. I don’t know, but I do know I prefer a nice solid marble ceiling/wall to this igneous stuff. We are going to have to be careful, especially with it being riddled with voids.
At this point everything is too drippy to do any concrete work so shoring is being done with timbers.
Monday, January 28, 2013
CND Update 2013
Update of the Cave Next Door project---
(discovering the biggest cave in Oregon?)
It's been over a year since this has been updated. I think it got lost in the caverns of bureaucracy. So to satisfy the bureaucrats I would like to say at this point--and make it perfectly clear and plain--that this whole project is really just a figment of my imagination. Sometimes I wander around the forest and find myself in this quaint little village with a hole in the ground. I look down this hole and make everything up. What else can you expect from somebody who hangs out with giants? (But I do avoid dragons.)
So after a year and a half of wandering the giants' kingdom and trying to communicate, Charlie and David have found themselves back at the bottom of that imaginary hole. A thorough inspection of all the concrete work done up to this point has revealed no cracks, failures, or any sign of movement in the boulder jam that was cemented together. The sinkhole has remained stable through an earthquake and two rainy seasons. Material is still being moved from the bottom of the 80' shaft to fill around the culvert at the top of the shaft. All of this, of course, is inside the original sinkhole.
Last year due to bureaucratic delays and problems with communication, the hole was only dug 2' deeper. But--a management plan was worked out that seems to be acceptable to everybody. At least nobody has said, "No." I want to be positive and upbeat about this whole thing.
The process of putting an air-lock gate at the top of the culvert is continuing. Dirt from the bottom is being packed around the culvert filling in the sinkhole. Ten buckets were moved last week. In our prime, we could move 50 in a day! :c) Because of the amount of water, concrete work won't be possible, and any shoring will have to be done with timbers until the dry season. There is air space on 3 sides. The dig appears to be at the hour glass pinch point of the sinkhole. The rubble seems loose and hollow with good drainage, air on the ceiling/walls, and more rock than clay. Boy is it ever wet down there!
I am more convinced than ever that the water that flows into the shaft all goes into the cave. That the shaft goes right down the throat of the sinkhole. And into the CAVE!
(discovering the biggest cave in Oregon?)
It's been over a year since this has been updated. I think it got lost in the caverns of bureaucracy. So to satisfy the bureaucrats I would like to say at this point--and make it perfectly clear and plain--that this whole project is really just a figment of my imagination. Sometimes I wander around the forest and find myself in this quaint little village with a hole in the ground. I look down this hole and make everything up. What else can you expect from somebody who hangs out with giants? (But I do avoid dragons.)
So after a year and a half of wandering the giants' kingdom and trying to communicate, Charlie and David have found themselves back at the bottom of that imaginary hole. A thorough inspection of all the concrete work done up to this point has revealed no cracks, failures, or any sign of movement in the boulder jam that was cemented together. The sinkhole has remained stable through an earthquake and two rainy seasons. Material is still being moved from the bottom of the 80' shaft to fill around the culvert at the top of the shaft. All of this, of course, is inside the original sinkhole.
Last year due to bureaucratic delays and problems with communication, the hole was only dug 2' deeper. But--a management plan was worked out that seems to be acceptable to everybody. At least nobody has said, "No." I want to be positive and upbeat about this whole thing.
The process of putting an air-lock gate at the top of the culvert is continuing. Dirt from the bottom is being packed around the culvert filling in the sinkhole. Ten buckets were moved last week. In our prime, we could move 50 in a day! :c) Because of the amount of water, concrete work won't be possible, and any shoring will have to be done with timbers until the dry season. There is air space on 3 sides. The dig appears to be at the hour glass pinch point of the sinkhole. The rubble seems loose and hollow with good drainage, air on the ceiling/walls, and more rock than clay. Boy is it ever wet down there!
I am more convinced than ever that the water that flows into the shaft all goes into the cave. That the shaft goes right down the throat of the sinkhole. And into the CAVE!
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Dig Update 1/30/12
A further note on the progress made to rediscover and construct a safe and permanent trail into one of Oregon's largest and known marble caves....
I hesitate to call it a dig since no digging has been done. Too bad too, (note: if you drew a line down the middle of the last 3 words and the two halfs would almost be mirror images--as in--oot bad too.) anyway--because the Mistress dig has been really dry and there hasn't even been a mile of snow to shoe through. Could have had another 5' dug down, and built. I have been working on getting a permit with the help of many people. I have drawn up a management plan, written some letters, and have been better able to define what the CND is all about. It is like building the same structure out of words and meanings that in the past 12 years has been built out of physical steel, stone, and sweat. An image of hopes and dreams formed while spending 1000's of hours in a 4'x4' hole wondering how far to go and what would be there, other than, of course, a big void underground.
Now in a physical sense that is all a cave is, with mineral and bio attributes of course. As a tree is just a bunch of hydro-carbons stuck together with all their attributes. Anything else that defines a cave or tree is some kind of cultural transparency laid over the physical for human reasons. Reasons we choose because we are homo-sapiens on earth and we seem to be the ultimate choosers on the planet. To which god shall we sacrifice to, so to speak, the smooth-tongued Mammon? Coy Minerva? Staid Science? The strong exotic one? The elusive unknown one? The one of "things as they really are"? And the eternal question: Do I sacrifice this for myself or do I sacrifice myself for this? And what is this other than a hole in the ground, or what I have made it to be? That is a question we probably shoule ask about everything on Earth we touch: What is this other than what I have made it to be? Is "to get an answer" reason enough to answer a question? A good question seems to be more common than a good answer. So some how, you have to sort out which question needs answering, and for that, you need good reasons for answering it. There cetainly have been plenty of questions to ask for a reason to dig. If I couldn't find a good one, I used a bad one.
These are the sort of questions that have suggested themselves, (how do questions do that?), over the years of digging into the unknown for unknown reasons. These are the sort of ruminations that have found their substance in the proposed management plan, a plan that emphasizes the gentlest possible touch on the cave to allow the cave an opportunity to speak for itself in whatever way a cave may speak. Just in case a cave is more than rocks in a void.
There is a growing body of evidence that plants feel and react to human emotions and actions. That might imply they would like more choice in the conditions of their lives, or at least someone to listen and help them out a little bit. Where did that garden keeper go? You know, the guy with the shovel and pruning hook? And if the Spirit has penetrated into the vegetable world, might it also have penetrated into the heart of matter? Yea, even be what holds it together?
Did I mention that Charlie and I visited the cave dig for a safety check? The foot or so of rain that came with the end of January finally brought the water table up, and the dig is dripping again. Not only water, but a 6" hole at collar level in southest corner dribbled a half dozen buckets of mud and gravel down the steps. The hole was plugged with spilings driven in. That is just part of digging an active sink hole. There were also a couple of freeze-cracked valves in the water line. We remvoed them for replacement. Since the snow had melted back and the rock pile was exposed, we got the rocks out of the weather and put them under roof in case, we got back to work before the snow is gone in the spring. If we get any snow that is.
Charlie took some more video with a new camera. He's trying to capture the experience of descending the shaft. Our photography is weak. We have very few pictures that do the project justice. This is do a lot I guess, because, when we get to the site, we just start digging and the tech end of things gets neglected. It's hard to be the photgraphic recorder of one's self. We need a dedicated techie and someone to escort buckets up and down the shaft added to the team. I wonder if those come with a Forest Service permit? If anyone reading this would like to tell the FS that you are in favor of what we are trying to do you can email Leslie Jehnings at ljehnings@fs.fed.us , and say so. Otherwise, these updates might get more obtuse.
.+
I hesitate to call it a dig since no digging has been done. Too bad too, (note: if you drew a line down the middle of the last 3 words and the two halfs would almost be mirror images--as in--oot bad too.) anyway--because the Mistress dig has been really dry and there hasn't even been a mile of snow to shoe through. Could have had another 5' dug down, and built. I have been working on getting a permit with the help of many people. I have drawn up a management plan, written some letters, and have been better able to define what the CND is all about. It is like building the same structure out of words and meanings that in the past 12 years has been built out of physical steel, stone, and sweat. An image of hopes and dreams formed while spending 1000's of hours in a 4'x4' hole wondering how far to go and what would be there, other than, of course, a big void underground.
Now in a physical sense that is all a cave is, with mineral and bio attributes of course. As a tree is just a bunch of hydro-carbons stuck together with all their attributes. Anything else that defines a cave or tree is some kind of cultural transparency laid over the physical for human reasons. Reasons we choose because we are homo-sapiens on earth and we seem to be the ultimate choosers on the planet. To which god shall we sacrifice to, so to speak, the smooth-tongued Mammon? Coy Minerva? Staid Science? The strong exotic one? The elusive unknown one? The one of "things as they really are"? And the eternal question: Do I sacrifice this for myself or do I sacrifice myself for this? And what is this other than a hole in the ground, or what I have made it to be? That is a question we probably shoule ask about everything on Earth we touch: What is this other than what I have made it to be? Is "to get an answer" reason enough to answer a question? A good question seems to be more common than a good answer. So some how, you have to sort out which question needs answering, and for that, you need good reasons for answering it. There cetainly have been plenty of questions to ask for a reason to dig. If I couldn't find a good one, I used a bad one.
These are the sort of questions that have suggested themselves, (how do questions do that?), over the years of digging into the unknown for unknown reasons. These are the sort of ruminations that have found their substance in the proposed management plan, a plan that emphasizes the gentlest possible touch on the cave to allow the cave an opportunity to speak for itself in whatever way a cave may speak. Just in case a cave is more than rocks in a void.
There is a growing body of evidence that plants feel and react to human emotions and actions. That might imply they would like more choice in the conditions of their lives, or at least someone to listen and help them out a little bit. Where did that garden keeper go? You know, the guy with the shovel and pruning hook? And if the Spirit has penetrated into the vegetable world, might it also have penetrated into the heart of matter? Yea, even be what holds it together?
Did I mention that Charlie and I visited the cave dig for a safety check? The foot or so of rain that came with the end of January finally brought the water table up, and the dig is dripping again. Not only water, but a 6" hole at collar level in southest corner dribbled a half dozen buckets of mud and gravel down the steps. The hole was plugged with spilings driven in. That is just part of digging an active sink hole. There were also a couple of freeze-cracked valves in the water line. We remvoed them for replacement. Since the snow had melted back and the rock pile was exposed, we got the rocks out of the weather and put them under roof in case, we got back to work before the snow is gone in the spring. If we get any snow that is.
Charlie took some more video with a new camera. He's trying to capture the experience of descending the shaft. Our photography is weak. We have very few pictures that do the project justice. This is do a lot I guess, because, when we get to the site, we just start digging and the tech end of things gets neglected. It's hard to be the photgraphic recorder of one's self. We need a dedicated techie and someone to escort buckets up and down the shaft added to the team. I wonder if those come with a Forest Service permit? If anyone reading this would like to tell the FS that you are in favor of what we are trying to do you can email Leslie Jehnings at ljehnings@fs.fed.us , and say so. Otherwise, these updates might get more obtuse.
.+
Monday, January 2, 2012
Poem: "Coming of Age"
As more caves are discovered and explored
And as the days of "busting virgin passages" are coming to an end;
As spelunkers become cavers, and cavers become women and men,
And we learn to treat these caves with the respect that they demand;
It becomes time to slow down, stop--even look around a little bit.
There might be more to these old friends than just the thrill of it,
These capsules of time, with secrets written in stone and whispering magic sands.
Getting to know one can be a lifelong undertaking
What with the mysterious forces that go into the natural making,
And the slow tedious comprehensions of cannots and cans.
Maybe it's the urge to settle down that tends to afflict old age;
You know--a new perspective from the rocking-chair, or by turning a new page,
Or, perhaps, the heart is just catching up with the hand.
And as the days of "busting virgin passages" are coming to an end;
As spelunkers become cavers, and cavers become women and men,
And we learn to treat these caves with the respect that they demand;
It becomes time to slow down, stop--even look around a little bit.
There might be more to these old friends than just the thrill of it,
These capsules of time, with secrets written in stone and whispering magic sands.
Getting to know one can be a lifelong undertaking
What with the mysterious forces that go into the natural making,
And the slow tedious comprehensions of cannots and cans.
Maybe it's the urge to settle down that tends to afflict old age;
You know--a new perspective from the rocking-chair, or by turning a new page,
Or, perhaps, the heart is just catching up with the hand.
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