Today, I embarked upon a journey of rediscovery. My goal today was to gather accurate GPS locations on a half-dozen or so old caves in and around Vanlahr's Valley. These caves are intimately associated with Webster Cave, whether they know it or not. Specifically, I wanted to visit Melody Hill and the Briar Hole caves, as these are/will be very significant to the survey in the time to come.

I made it to the area around 0930CST and immediately took the Jeep down the farm access road to Melody Hill Cave. It had been nearly two decades since I'd been here, and it wasn't at all what I'd remembered. I walked over to a tree lined sink that should have been the cave; it was. I took a few images, got the GPS, and then headed over towards Briar Hole Sink and Vanlahr's Cave.

Way back in the mid-eighties, we did a little bit of work in Briar Hole Cave. Todd Hack and I discovered it, and did the initial exploration. Bill Holmes had also located a cave nearby, which was called Vanlahr's Cave. Bill had never known of Briar Hole.

Today, I made my way down to Briar Hole and started pulling out logs, sticks, flood debris, and rocks. In short order I had the cave reopened, and cold air was rising out. This cave is now ready to be surveyed! After this, I trotted over to Vanlahr's Cave. Vanlahr's is only about 40 or 50 feet to the south, in the same trench complex. After pulling away some flood debris, I stuck my head into a low wide cave passage. I was shocked and excited to hear the sound of falling water off in the
distance. I donned my cave helmet and crawled in to take a look. I was immediately met with a large chamber complete with bats. Around a few corners and I was presented with the source of the sound: a nice waterfall. The water was crashing out of a small lead and disappearing into a low wide chert crawl. I am convinced this is the same water that feeds Marathon. Hopefully, this cave will connect with Brair and at least bypass the nasty water crawl just below its entrance.

I propose we concentrate our efforts on Marathon Crawl and these two other caves, once we finish Giger and Upper Giger. There's a lot of footage to be had, and perhaps a new entrance. Looks like we're about 1500 feet away from Marathon, but the lead trends towards these two caves. The similarity between the caves and Marathon is significant. Although it (Briar Hole) appeared to end in a sump, there were lots of side leads, so maybe we can make the connection this summer. I left
some flagging tape near the two entrances to assist others in finding them. If we could get two survey teams going on one day, we could knock out a significant portion of both.

Leaving Briar behind, I walked south, up Dempster Ridge, to Turtle Sink. This is another cave discovered back in the 80's. This deep sink is located high up the ridge slope. It's pretty deep, probably 35 feet or more, and has a rock lined passage at the bottom. It was blowing some
air and with a little bit of digging looks like one could open up a small canyon passage. It's some distance from Upper Giger, but needs to be looked at too.

Leaving Vanlahr's Valley, I walked over to Basham Sink. This rock filled sink is located right under HWY333, and has a sizable cave beneath. I was unable to see the way down through the boulders. It is possible they may have shifted to the extent that entry is impossible.
I could feel cool air blowing out though. I think I saw the way in, but with out gear I decided against it. This cave is close to both Bundy Canyon and Necronom leads.

After picking a bunch of ticks off my clothes, I headed over to Mr. and Mrs. Shilts place for conversation. Charles Vanlahr soon joined us, and I showed off the latest set of maps for the cave survey. Overall, it was a good day, and I am happy that we have two good caves now to survey. I even shot a short video of the days exploits. You can visit it at...

Ridge walking video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UouYIN3XbHI (note:
17MEG file)