Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 13:44:55 EST
From: Rickhines
Subject: 3/19/05 Trip with Early Explorers
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As part of Gary Johnson’s research for an article on Carroll Cave he tracked down and interviewed several of the original explorers of Carroll Cave. We invited them on a trip into Carroll and two of them, Jim Helwig (62) and John Cantwell (68) took us up on the offer. John currently teaches math at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Jim is a petroleum geologist commuting from Arkansas to work in Mexico. |
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Fright night, 3/18/05, we (John, Jim, Gary, Bill Copeland, Randy Bruegger and Rick Hines) meet in Camdenton for dinner and conversation. We move on to the Schoolhouse to be greeted by Peddgie and a roaring fire. Eric Hertzler joined us Saturday morning and six of us (John, Jim, Gary, Randy, Eric and Rick) were in the cave by about 10:45. We started down the Carroll passage. We studied and photographed the formations and speculated on the mechanism causing some soda straws to grow at an angle. After a minor problem with John’s boots (he lost his sole in Carroll Cave) we turned and headed back to the ladder. Fortunately Eric had a second pair of boots in his car that would fit John. Randy climbed out and retrieved the boots and lowered them down on a rope. John decided to use the boots to climb out, which he did in very good time. Jim, Gary, Eric and I took the short cut to Thunder Falls for a quick look
and a few photos. Our last stop was the Angel Pool passage. Jim and Eric
pushed it to the formation choke. On the way out we again speculated on the
bent soda straws before exiting the passage on the upper level ledge and |
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