Hannacroix Maze, 01/29/2024
Cavers: Kat, Gabe, Pip, Kevin, George
Shoutout to George for writing this report! And shoutout to Pip, Kevin, and George for going on their first caving trip :) -Kat
Leaving at the early hour of 6 am the trip to the cave was rather uneventful, aside from a few stalls of the car and the wooden log for sale at the gas station. Parking by some tennis courts, the cave was a short snow-covered walk made longer by having to go back twice for things left along the way. This unfortunately caused a brief slip into the stream causing feet to get wet before even entering the cave. After scouting out the Choice Entrance, which was too wet, and finding another false one, we entered through the Main Entrance.
We first proceeded to the left entering Lew's Room. The room was filled about knee height with crystal clear water, but a large rock in the middle acted as an island we could jump across to avoid getting wet. We continued making our way east, the geometry of the cave cutting out a little shelf for us to stay above the increasing amounts of water. Turning south we went through a squeeze into the Waiting Room that got us quite muddy. The squeeze was wide, but only about a foot tall. This was made easier however by the lubricating mud and extra space given by a small channel through the middle that made it quite quick and comfortable. With nowhere else to go that wouldn't require getting our feet wet we turned back to Lew's Room.
After a quick bit of confusion as to where we should go next, we began traveling south down the Fungus Footpath. Seemingly names for the paths mushroom-shaped cross-section. Here our attempts to stay dry came to an end as it was just too slow to try and stay above the water in the shrinking path. Feet wet now, the wetsuit kept us surprisingly warm as we made our way past The Alligator and the north side of The Window. Reaching the end of places to explore here we turned back toward The Alligator with plans to go to The Gallery.
Getting to The Gallery, involved a longer than expected squeeze. Luckily it opened slightly in the middle giving us a small break between the outer layer tearing a single foot of height. Finally making it through, pushing out packs in front of us and outer layers in tatters. We were treated to a dry passage of fascinating rock formations. We followed this south back to a way finding surprising quantities of animal feces before turning back to leave through an exit just off the side of the gallery.
We exited back into the snow a quick two hours after we entered and ran back to our stuff by the Choice Entrance to change, and here is where it got cold as we bagged up our muddy outer layers and wet suits. We attempted to follow our footsteps in the snow back the way we had come, but quickly lost our way. Luckily the path we did find back didn't require any stream crossing and wet feet, but it put us out on the road from our car about a quarter mile. Not a very long walk, but one that didn't make sense based on how we thought we had strayed from the original path, but the road curved so that may have been it. Cave completed; we began our drive back to campus. We stopped briefly to see the Appalachian trail, but since we were cold, we didn't go onto it, instead rushing back to MacGregor to do laundry.