There was a special caving trip to the second, third, and fourth paralells of Cottonwood Cave this weekend for the purpose of cleaning up some carbide dumps that have been there for ages. Cleaning carbide is not fun and nearly impossible, but getting to go to these usually off-limits areas of the cave was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.

The highlights of this trip (aside from hours of picking up spent carbide dust off of mud...) were epsomite needles that were unimagineably fragile, a large gypsum chandelier, and the fourth parallel's "mud passage," which has 2-3' deep boot-sucking mud that makes really humorous noises as one slogs through it. The mud passage is really taxing to move through, but the walls are lined with amazing helectites, soda straws, and shelfstones that make it one of the most beautiful rooms I've ever been in.

Having to cart in a whole change of clothes and spare boots (and having to cart them back out with about 20 pounds of bonus mud) was no fun, but the trip was still one of my favorite trips on record.

The following day I led a group out to Lonesome Ridge Cave as part of my small cave mapping/inventory project. I think we're just about done with that cave now. Eddie and I managed to map the northern passage to its terminus which ended up being only abou 20 meters, though we did find pools with water in them towards the back. It was a fun traverse because it is just a 0.5m wide crack that you end up stemming across with the floor occasionally dropping off by as much as 8 meters.