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Permit: Your Permit Number
Leader: Ken Long
date: 9/20/2003
manager: Mike Hartley
Assessment: Upstream-Round Room or beyond
participant1: Ken Long
participant2: Eric Hertzler
participant3: Bryan Cook
participant4: Kerry Rowland
TimeIn: 0930
TimeOut: 1800
Damage: Yes
Date: Wednesday September 24, 2003
Time: 06:40 AM

purpose:
Purpose of Trip Finish trail marking to end of mapped passage

details:
We dropped the pit at 9:30 am and everyone was in and ready to go at 10:00 am. We headed upstream toward the round room. The trail to the round room has already been marked so we just followed the markers. We stopped at the shower head to take a few pictures and a few pictures were also taken of flat rock falls. After reaching the round room we decided to stop and rest and have lunch. We talked about how long it would take us to reach the end of the mapped passage. We were also wondering why we hadn't seen very many fish (only two between the backdoor and the round room). After lunch we continued on to our final destination. This is where we started to see more fish. It seemed like they were staying in the deeper pools but we also found a few in the rapids. We stopped at the azure pool and took some pictures of it. After the pool we started to mark the trail. Most of the time we just stayed in the river. Because of the terrain in the upper thunder passage it is much easier to stay in or next to the water. The bed of the river is solid rock and even with us in it and crossing it the water stayed clear. We saw several fish up here but they were in the deeper pools of the water. We reached our destination around 1:45 pm. Here the cave has a very large breakdown pile and it seems as though it ends here. But the river comes out from under the breakdown pile in a passage about 5 to 6 feet wide and about 2 to 3 feet tall. We did not push this passage but it looks like it just keeps going. This passage has huge breakdown on top of it and it looks like it could be very interesting to maneuver. After resting here for a while we turned around and started to go out. We made sure that the trail was marked so that you could see it from both directions. In all we counted over forty cave fish and also some parasites that were enjoying a deceased bat. We made it back to the backdoor around 5:15 pm and was out of the cave by 6:00 pm.

Vandalism:
Arrows painted on the cave wall in several spots

RestoNeeded:

Broken or mud stained formations.
Graffitti
(FOD) Foreign Object debris
High traffic area
Miscellanous