Trip Reports

Trip Reports
	6-9-06 ~ 6-11-06 Camping & Caving at Bowden & Hamilton	Part 1: Camping out near Bowden Part 2: Bowden's Third Entrance Part 3: Pushing the Back of Hamilton
This will be a 3 part trip report, that takes place over 3 days of camping and caving. This trip started out Friday afternoon after I got home from work. Ben, Sam, Ezra, and I were on this trip. Ezra is al old time friend, and had not gotten the chance to go out with us in a long time. He had only done one other caving trip to Sinks of Gandy Cave a couple years ago with Ben, and was excited to go on another caving trip.
Part 3: Pushing the Back of Hamilton
This was the third day of the trip, and we were all a bit hazy when we awoke in the morning. Again, I was amazed they we were all up by about 9 AM. We got to bed alittle earlier last night, at about midnight. We were all beat, but still excited to go caving at Hamilton today. We grabbed a bite to eat, drank our required coffee dosages, and packed up camp. Hamilton Cave was over an hour drive from our Bowden camping spot. I think we got on the road at about 2 PM. Ben, Sam, and I had been to Hamilton before, and really enjoyed it. Hamilton is basically a large grid of passages making up a maze. There are some crawlways, but they generally are not as bad as the ones in Bowden's third entrance. Most of the passages are low walkways, or hands and knees crawls.


The best thing about Hamilton, is the abundance of formations that it has, especially toward the beginning. There are sections that are entirely covered with soda straw formations. Everywhere you look there is something to look at.


We actually had a map to this cave, and wanted to push our way to the back of the cave, where there are a few fairly large rooms. The cave is very confusing, even with a map and compass. We would stop at each intersection, taking a look at the map, and deciding where to go next.

After only a couple intersections, we began to get confused about where we were. The sections on the map were not matching up with what we were seeing. The first half of the cave is a grid pattern, with a north east heading when you go in. So we at least knew we were heading back further into the cave. We would still try to compare the shape of the cave to the map though, trying to keep a feeling for where we were. We also placed glow sticks in certain places to ensure we could find our way back out.

We made our way back into the cave, to a large room, well, at least it was large for this cave. We took a break here and grabbed a bite to eat, while still looking over the map. We had a pretty good idea where we were, and there were at least 3 passages leading out of this room. There was one particular passage that looked promising, both on the map, and looking at it. The passage was also heading in the direction we needed to go, so we started down the passage hoping it would open up into another set of rooms.


We made it only about 40 feet into this narrow passage, when we came upon a spot that got very tight. It looked like you could crawl up under a shelf, but it was very tight. Both Ben and Ezra took a turn looking at it, and both said there was no way they were making it through it. This was rather disappointing, as it seemed this was the way to go. This has happened to us before though, some of the cave sections are surveyed by very slim people. Just because its on the map, doesn't mean you can get to it.

We headed back to that larger room we were in, and checked out some of the other passages leading off of it. A couple of them went in a ways, but got too tight after 15 feet or so. Another looked to be passable, but it was also very very tight, and none of us felt like squeezing through it that day. We headed back out of the cave, taking our time looking at the many formations and fossils in the rock face. We were expecting there to be more formations toward the back of the cave. Since not as many people go that deep in the cave, and maybe more of the formations would be preserved. But there were actually less formations toward the back of the cave. Only a couple turns from the entrance, is the coolest part of the cave that we have seen. off to the left side, are a couple passages that are absolutely covered in formations. I wanted to make sure Ezra got a chance to see this section of the cave. I think he really enjoyed it, and it was a nice change from the grueling crawlways he had to deal with the day before.






It was a really fun trip, and it was nice to get all 4 of us out there at once this time. We were all completely exhausted by the time we got home. Ben and Ezra stopped by a swimming hole at Seneca Rocks on their way home. Sam and I went straight to my house to unload all my gear. Sam and I were definitely not looking forward to going to work the next morning, and we only had a couple hours to get a shower, put away some of the gear, and crash out.