A caving trip turned out to be a welcome change from all the canyoning trips I have been doing since back in the U.S. Despite living in New Mexico the last year, land of some truly excellent caves, I managed to see little more than a couple small lava tube and gypsum caves. Trying to coordinate my schedule with the local grottoes' infrequent trips proved difficult and often times I either got flaked out or brushed off. In the end I mostly just crossed a stateline to have my fun somewhere else. I did try to attend a Fort Stanton Cave expedition in April, which I had planned months in advance, only to be told a few days before that there was not room on a trip for me. Very fortunately another opportunity came up with the July expedition and this time it was all go.
For those unfamiliar Fort Stanton is an amazing cave, a miraculous 1.5 hours from Socorro in Smoky Bear and Billy the Kid country. The cave has a long history of exploration dating since at least 1855 when the U.S. Army posted cavalry soldiers at the nearby Fort Stanton to protect settlers. In 2001 one of the most significant cave discoveries in the U.S. in the last 50 years was made when cavers found their way through breakdown collapse into the Snowy River passage. This incredible passage stretches undeterred over 10 miles and still continues off the map. It is so named for a continuous white flowstone floor which is the longest known cave formation in the world. Numerous side passages branch off the Snowy River passage, each with their own incredible formations. The total amount of passage that this breakthrough has yielded so far is well over 20 miles and growing. Prior to our trip, Fort Stanton was the third
longest cave in New Mexico behind Carlsbad Caverns and Lechuguilla Cave,
both further south in the Guadalupe Mountains. Many surveyed passages currently end with notes like "Goes big 40'W x 20'H" indicating the great potential that may yet exist and the exciting times in the cave at present. It is easily the one cave in the U.S. with the most unrealized potential at the moment. Because of the significance of the cave it is carefully managed by the BLM and co-opted with a devoted group of project cavers such that access is highly controlled, permitted, and relegated to survey and science trips only. To this day it only has one known entrance. Exploring this cave has been through marathon 30-40 hour push trips. With the back of the known cave about 14 miles from the entrance, exploration can be an incredible test of endurance! These demanding trips are only done by "light and strong" cavers. Thankfully there has yet to be a major rescue incident.
The one and only Snowy River passage
I arrived at the BLM field house on Thursday afternoon after a 1.5 hour drive dodging scattered thunderheads looking like a great army of jellyfish scouring the plains. I typically don't have good luck meeting people the night before a cave trip (usually you want to know your team members and their skills beforehand), but I could immediately tell Garrett, Sean and Ian would be great people to cave with- fit, capable, experienced. Garrett and Sean were a great help in figuring out how to pack for this trip, which is logistically complicated due to the need of a full clean set of clothes (for the long formation areas) as well as a full dirty set and a covering pack (for the muddy passages). After carefully packing (including much too much water) we all tried to get to bed early so we could be up and ready by 6am the following morning.
We got to the cave entrance without incident by 7am, stashed our spare clothes for the return to the surface, and said goodbye to Steve. Like any good marathon we started with a near sprint before slowing down to a more comfortable pace. Along the way to the Snowy River we passed three separate gates and an incredible 4-5 story elevator shaft with ladders mounted into an otherwise precarious breakdown passage. At the bottom annoying crawling and duckwalking in the Mud Turtle passage brought us to the Snowy River (about 40 minutes travel from the entrance). Here we had to switch to full clean mode- clean white-soled shoes and clean clothes. The dirty outer pack had to be turned inside out and placed inside our clean packs.
Snowy River was unreal. A white ribbon of durable flowstone that we had to travel on for over 6 miles to reach our leads. Most of this distance was accomplished by unimpeded underground hiking, though the river did often meander under low overhangs requiring careful crawling (the ceiling consists largely of black manganese coatings that can fall and become ground into the white floor) or bypasses on "magic carpets," strips of plastic which allow clean walking above the dirty sediment floor. In a few places where the carpets were not available we had to put on shoe covers to cross dirty floored areas. We went through Independence Hall, The Sidewalk, It's Hard to Complain Hall, and Complaint Hall, to arrive at the Crawl from Hell, 1000ft of hands and knees crawling on the hard flowstone while rolling your pack in front of you. Despite wearing little more than shorts and the lightest shirt I own, I
was still sweating up a storm when we had to deal with these obstacles. Hallelujah corner signaled the end of the Crawl from Hell, then more obstacles at Two Way Hill and the Mud Lizard Crawl. Travel then improves through Envy Corner, Resonator Hall, Trash Bag Alley, Babb's Borehole and Slab Dome. We then needed to switch to dirty mode to cross Mt Airy, then had to step carefully on the Eggshell Trail. Travel was then fast past Higher Hopes, the Realm of the Floating Islands, and Dashed Hopes, where we soon arrived at our first climbing lead (~4 hours from the entrance).
Above the Snowy River in High Hopes
Garrett led the climb up a loose breakdown slope and we surveyed our way towards him. The passage started modestly, maybe 10ft wide as we followed the breakdown slope upward. We soon came to a large breakdown chamber which was beginning to look more promising. We surveyed up and down two minor summits, then followed it down to a low crawl which appears to sump sometimes. Through the crawl the passage got somewhat bigger, big one more turn in the passage found us face to face with a 15ft wide boulder completely blocking the continuing passage (hammer and chisel would have been required). This was an abrupt and very disappointing end to this lead, having surveyed only about 400ft of passage (a rare put-down for this cave). We called the passage Letdown and headed back to Snowy River to check out our next lead.
Start of the easy surveying near High Hopes
We retraced some of our steps on the Snowy River back to Dashed Hopes. This looked like a much trickier climb towering to the side of Snowy River. We spread out a sheet of plastic across the Snowy River to catch the inevitable loose rocks we would have to deal with. Garrett attacked the base of the climb, but his enthusiasm quickly waned. He was pulling off the best hand and foot holds and making little vertical progress. I said I would be willing to have a go. I tied a webbing handline to my pants and took a boost from Garrett to get off the ground. I made it up the first couple feet to a depression in the rock which I could pull myself into. From here I would have to traverse out to the left around a slight buldge, with a nasty fall below. The whole slope was loose. I dug a foothold into the crumbling sediment and found one acceptable handhold above me. I made my move and quickly kept moving upward, trying to keep my momentum and passing unstable rocks faster than they could take me out. I made it about 20ft up the slope to the next steep and loose climbing section. This one looked even worse, and this time had some real consequences if I fell. There was nothing solid enough to use as an anchor so ironically the safer option was to continue climbing instead of retreating. I could see several potential routes, but none looked great. In the end I chose a diagonal option after giving a good heads up to the others below. Loose rocks rained down. A few intense seconds and I was up. A nearby boulder provided an anchor for the handline I carried up.
I had a quick look around and could easily see that the main lead died at a blank wall about 100ft away. I crawled over some boulders into a side passage which also got small and unpleasant after about 50ft. The others, rightfully so, had no interest in going up the climb so they sent up the surveying gear and I surveyed the 200ft or so of passage as quickly as I could. I carefully climbed back down to the Snowy River. We dubbed killed lead two Trashed Hopes.
Looking down the wretched Trashed Hopes climb to Snowy River below
We were all feeling a little defeated at this point. Fort Stanton leads are not supposed to die like this! We still had the High Hopes leads to go, which at least looked to be the most promising leads we had seen. Once back below High Hopes we set out a plastic tarp on the Snowy River to protect it from falling debris. Garrett pioneered a route across the mud slope and led the climb for the rest of us to follow. Crossing above Snowy River here was a tall canyon passages totally open in both directions. It looked great! We began surveying. After shooting one shot in the downstream direction we went upstream in the passage (southwest). This required an easy but exposed traverse around a bulge to gain the upstream passage floor. It started as a sketcher's dream, a 20-30ft wide flat mud floored passage, easy conditions to survey. Soon we were brimming with enthusiasm- finally the cave was being good to us! I was even skipping down the passage at one point because I could. After hundreds of feet breakdown started appearing, usually not a good sign. Garrett yelled back the report- the passage we had been in continues with a lower floor and even bigger dimensions. Gypsum chandeliers, red velvet, black stals, and selenite needles all decorated the passage. The good was getting better!
This was genuine borehole passage. I was in charge of sketching profiles and cross sections and as such was continually amazed at how flat the ceiling was despite all the breakdown we encountered. We surveyed many shots, eventually finding ourselves at the base of an enormous breakdown pile which seemed to stretch to the roof. We were now getting worried. Garret gave the report from the summit: the passage continues back down the other side of the hill at even bigger dimensions! We named this dome and rockpile False Summit. Thrilled that the passage continued, we kept on surveying at an ambitious pace. We began to dream of breaking the cave's single day survey record of 6000ft. If the cave obliged and we kept going at the same pace, it was certainly possible. Joy of exploration fueled us on. The sights got better, the borehole even bigger. The passage grew to greater than 100ft in width in large swooping meanders. We typically took the most direct route cutting off the meanders.
Approaching the False Summit breakdown pile
False Summit Dome
The borehole continued and we now had to think of a name. After several rounds of suggestions, we all seemed to settle on my simplest suggestion: Bliss. We could think of no other passage more fitting of the title of the Blissful Borehole. The formations, the variety, the dimensions, were all fantastic. It was quickly becoming not only one of the best cave passages I've ever explored, but also one of the best I have ever been in.
We surveyed along, the breakdown becoming more and more numerous. We were getting pretty tired, especially Sean and I (the sketchers) so began looking for a place to bivy for a couple hours (it was 2:45am). Fortunately we found a patch of soft and somewhat flat mud just big enough for the four of us, a glorious island of mud in a sea of large pointy breakdown. All of us easily slept two hours and were feeling much rejuvenated after (though more sleep would have been nice). We resumed our survey from pretty much exactly where we slept. We surveyed through more breakdown borehole but gradually the meanders died out and we found ourselves in a more modest, but extremely well decorated stretch of passage with mud or formation floors. We made good time surveying through the easier passage, averaging 100ft shots for much of the survey! Through extrensively mud-cracked sections, we reached the best formation area yet. Stalagmites and columns to 15ft, red velvet colored formations, solid ceilings of stalactites. Some of the stals had fallen from the roof impaling spearlike into the soft mud floor. Although Bliss was still an appropriate name, this area had a different feel to it and we ended up calling it Dreamtime.
About halfway through this formation stretch a yellow flowstone river materialized. This is certainly one of the most unique flowstone formations I had every seen. Here we had to remove our shoes and walk barefoot across it for hundreds of feet until it vanished as mysteriously as it appeared.
Back on mud, we carefully chose a path through mud cracks and stalagmites. The formations were even better here. Sean and I (and maybe all of us) were getting tired again and at this point we knew we had surpassed our goal and everyone's expectations on the surface. We continued surveying up to station 80 or so. The passage broke down to a 10ft long crawl over breakdown, then opened back up to its original dimensions with typical formations. We gave it one more shot then called the survey closed. We still had the non-trivial task of getting out of the cave!
I was tired at this point and was having trouble eating food and drinking water. I was at the stage where both made me feel nauseous, but I tried to consume what I could knowing I would need it for the way out. We carefully retraced our steps out the mile plus of new passage, which in typical fashion seemed to go by very quickly the second time around. Back down on Snowy River we cleaned up the plastic tarp and worked our way downstream, through all the costume changes. My knee pads had torn up my knees something terrible so the Crawl from Hell was pure torture. The rest of the cave went easily enough, though we certainly did not run through the entrance series of the cave as fast as we did on the way in. We reached the surface after 32.5 hours underground.
Once back at the field office Garrett did an amazing job telling our trip from beginning to end with a straight face. He said how our trip started disappointingly, how we killed two of our leads pretty quickly...and how we then went on to survey a record breaking 8500ft! No one saw it coming! All were impressed and excited. After somewhat quick defeats on the first two climbing leads (Letdown, Trashed
Hopes) our team of four struck gold with the third. We surveyed a record
breaking 8500 ft (1.6 miles!) of virgin borehole passage
during a 33hr cave trip into Fort Stanton Cave. We found some of
the best features (stals, gypsum needles, red velvet, broomsticks,
flowstone rivers) in an already well-featured cave and it was easily some of the
nicest and most diverse passage I have ever found or even just been in. Our trip pushed the cave longer than Carlsbad Caverns, and Fort Stanton is now second longest in New Mexico. The borehole continues
undeterred in both directions off of our survey and seems to be the most
significant upper level passage in the cave found thus far. It was an incredible trip for the
history books. Huge thanks to Garrett, Sean, Ian, and the rest of the FSCSP volunteers.
My first weekend back in southern California and nothing to do. I was without a home and my office was not really set up yet. It was the perfect excuse to get out of town for a trip and fortunately I found a group of canyoners that were headed to a canyon I have wanted to visit for years: the North Fork of the Kings River, just north of Kings Canyon National Park. It has a reputation as one of the wetter and wilder classics in the Sierra Nevada, complete with waterfall rappels to 150ft, countless jumps up to and in excess of 80ft, slides, and bottomless potholes, all in a relatively inescapable gorge. An early start Friday afternoon got Dan (my carpool buddy) and I through the worst of Friday LA traffic and we made good time out to the campground. We past the very sad, very low Pine Creek Reservoir, an obvious victim of California's prevailing drought to arrive at camp just before dusk. I readied my gear for the next day while meeting people trickling into camp. A friendly bunch.
