Morris cave was really different from any cave I've done before. For starters, there were no formations. These caves are formed by flowing water, which basically destroys formations before they can form.
Also, as a result of the pervasive wetness, everything was coated in mud - including us.
The entrance is behind a waterfall above a nice pond, a really picturesque setting. The first portion of the cave consists of a crawl tunnel that quickly descends, going through a number of tight pinches. The smallest pinch is nine inches high at the highest point and about twenty inches wide.
These pinches would drive a claustrophobic person batty, I think. The passage slopes down into the pinch and then back up on the far side, so you can't look through to see where you need to go. Also, going through requires putting your face up against a wall and there is no room to look forward. I had to put one arm forward and one back along my body in order to tilt my collar bone in order to fit through. This means that I couldn't really use anything to propel myself except my ankles. I moved at about one meter per minute. And what a workout. Whoa.
But once through the entrance crawl, the cave opens up into a series of larger spaces. This includes a very deep lake of emerald green water. We also saw some cute bats.
Through one lead from the main room, we went down through the "granite corkscrew," a vertical portion of tunnel that twists around in circles a lot. At the bottom of the corkscrew was a small room with another pinch. This pinch was filled with water, making it a very cold experience to get through. This meant putting my face and arms in the water and bellycrawling through until the entire front of my body was in the pool, which was so very very cold...
Once in the room, I could see that it was a dead end (or possibly a sump). The pool covered the entire floor of the room, causing me to chimney out over it. Towards the back of the small room, the pool got to be at least two meters deep, by the looks of it. It was a pretty room, although the three of us that made our way into it muddied up the water quite a bit. Unfortunately, the dead end meant we had to go make our way back up the corkscrew to get out, which was a pain.
Being totally soaked and in a 50 degree cave made me thankful for the polypro long undies I bought yesterday, they worked like a charm. The only part of me that got wet and didn't have a synthetic covering was my fingers - which were freezing!
After another hour of wandering around, we decided to make our way out. Going back through those pinches uphill was really trying, especially after four hours of strenuous caving. I was exhausted.
When we made it out of the cave, we were all completely covered in brown mud. We walked back along the trail to the cars, parked alongside the highway. People driving by, seeing seven mud people walking out of the woods, probably though it was the weirdest thing they'd seen in awhile.
We drove to a diner and played with the PA Alex had hooked up to his car. This guy alled Adam, who is an artist working with the biology department, was completely hillarious. We're pulling out of the parking lot at the diner and right when some people are right in front of us, he broadcasts really loudly, "please rescind your marsupial allegiance." just something random that really cracked my up in my tired state.
The four hour drives went quickly, I slept most of the way home. The way there I talked with Adam and Alex about the ethics of genetic engineering (someone made a glow-in-blacklight bunny! I want one!), the railgun, smoke ring geneartors, vintage videogames, and other nerdy topics. Lots of fun.
I fell asleep as soon as my head was on the pillow.
More Adam:
"So the space shuttle just ejects sewage into space, right? and then it reenters the atmosphere and falls to the ground. And there's probably E. coli in there that survived extreme heat during reentry and can survive freezing cold and vaccum in space. This reentry sorta screens out the super mutant E. coli, right? And then it comes down to earth and probably lands on a hamburger."
