Trip report by Tony Schmitt
Participants:
Dan Lamping
Joe Sikorski
Derik Holtmann
Josh Hafner
Jeremy Weih

Josh, Derik and I arrived at the backdoor entrance around 3:45pm. We immediately started rigging the hole.
Recently we have started rigging the hole a little different. Concern over the strength of the welds on the wall of the silo has lead us to start rigging with a figure eight on a bight with carabiner to the stainless hasp under the rescue hole. We then tie a butterfly with a large loop to the old eyelets welded to the wall. This allows for the rope to fall basically down the center of the shaft. We rappel in and climb out using our Croll on our frog systems as a safety while climbing the ladder. On camp trips such as these, we rig a pulley for hauling camp packs out at the end of a trip. We use a truck to slowly pull the camp packs up the hole. This works out very well, and is tremendously better than trying to haul heavy camp packs after several days under. read more

Project manager: Bob Lerch
Trip purpose: Survey
Areas of Cave visited: Convention Hall
Trip participants: Dan Lamping, Bob Lerch, Joe Sikorski
Entry Time: 7:30 PM
Exit Time: 2:30 AM

Report written by Dan Lamping:

We went into UL2 to fix a blunder in the Land B4 Time survey, as side passage off UL2 that connects to Convention Hall. This was bad data at tie-in from years ago. There’s some pretty tough and demanding passage to negotiate the whole B4 loop. Both Joe and I having been there, but coming from the other way, had forgotten the climbs and tight meanders in the passage. It was tough enough going in that we considered heading out via Convention Hall, but the climbdown, which we’ve gone up before, was a bit too exposed and slick to try coming down. We reshot the bad survey shot and left. We went back out the way we came, which was easier than going in. We completed this and fixed another blunder further up the passage. This all in support of cartography for the U1 Sheet. read more