Digging Into Darkness: Surveying a Cave Opened by Determination & Airflow
- tagcaver
- 20 hours ago
- 2 min read
Come along with us as we begin a new cave survey project here in Alabama! This cave is currently known to be around 2,500 feet long and just over 400 feet deep. While it’s unknown who originally discovered it, an initial map of the entrance pits was completed in 1977 by Bill Torode and Jim Hall. At that time, the cave was only documented as 165 feet in length.
In the early 2000s, Danny Dible, a legend in the caving community known for discovering numerous deep, multi-drop caves throughout the TAG region, with a group of Indiana cavers came across this cave and noticed a tight hole at the bottom that was blowing air. Intrigued, they began digging it open and pushed through to another drop and a second crawl way that was even tighter. Over the next several years, they used determination (and a bit of persuasion) to carefully tunnel through, and in 2006, they finally broke through to find five additional drops and over 2,000 feet of previously unexplored passage.
Because the second dig remained tight and physically challenging towards the end at the breakthrough, a full survey was never completed. Danny recently reached out to Jason and me about finally mapping this cave and he even promised to go back and finish modifying the second crawl way to make it easier for the survey team to pass through.
On this trip, Danny and his son JD work on the dig, while Jason and I begin the survey at the entrance. It’s the start of an exciting new project in one of Alabama’s classic deep systems and we can’t wait to see where it leads, while taking in knowledge from a legend in caving.
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