Question about Fricks Cave Open House

What's the cave like :

The entrance is big. Not far in, you can climb a steep slope to the right and go up in the bat attic, where the greys sleep and poo (mostly poo). Then you can go back down to the stream level and follow that a long way. We went about a mile back and we got pretty wet before turning around. We just did a short trip and came out to eat burgers and sip a brew or two. I don't remember seeing anyone with vertical gear.

Saturday, Feb. 2nd, 2008.

Fricks has a vertical entrance of approx. 25 feet. If you take the gear (and perhaps a rope), you can do a vertical through trip.

John

Cool - so there is a second vertical entrance?

Here's my brief trip report from when I went to Fricks the year before last.

http://hatch.blogspot.com/2006/02/caving-hatch.html

Once you enter the cave, there's some low passage (4 feet?) with some historical signatures on the ceiling, then you hit the stream. You go left through some small breakdown then you enter a large room with a big pile of breakdown on the back side. There's also some nice flowstone formations here.

If you climb up the big pile of rocks, you'll start noticing pretty quickly that they're all covered in guano which gets thicker as you go up. At the top, you go left and up a spiral sort of passage and enter the main bat room, which has a huge pile of guano in the middle. This room has some small decorations and may even have a few gray bats to look at.

Out in the main big room, you can follow the stream passage for quite a ways back. I think they're still finding new passage back there. You'll fairly quickly hit a point where you have to get in the water and possible crawl through the water. The water is cold, so be prepared. It's a great way to clean off a lot of the guano from going up to the main bat room, though.

I'll ride with you Dave. Let me know what time you want to meet and where.

Dave, are you reading your PMs?

I'm not? Huh. Well, I'll see if I can fix that.

I've got room for three to sit comfortably in my truck. I think Hatch, Eve, and John Law are riding with me. I'll have room if someone bails, or maybe we can caravan at least. Sometimes it's nice to have an extra car, and maybe someone will want to split up.
I think we will leave from the Shoney's on Bell Road at 8:00 am. Get there earlier if you plan to eat first.
My cell # is 347-O922

The cave is open form 9:00 until 4:30. You should be able to come and go as you please. There will be a BBQ sometime in the afternoon. It's an hour time difference and a good 2+ hour drive, so don't wait too late!
Maybe someone else can post more specifics if you need them.

Hatch bailed out, so I got room for one more. BrettC?

No Hatch?

It was a brisk trip through FRICKS. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting new cavers as we went through the cave. The bat room was very warm but the stream crawls were very cold. I think we got fairly far in the cave - it kept changing and opening up. We turned around at the top of a 30 foot canyon shortly after the 10 foot climbdown.

Well - it is drought no longer in Jackson County, AL - the ground was saturated with puddles of water every where we looked this weekend. We went to Stephen's Gap yesterday, in spite of the rain, and the waterfalls were raging nicely. What an amazing place! It's quite a scene to rappel while a waterfall falls beside you and rapids rush underneath you. It was very cool. Although there was a little incident when I accidentally started a chain of events that led to an unadorned helmet tumbling into the pit. :oops: Impressively, the Petzl Ecrin Rock did not split, although the side lights smashed to pieces and the suspension system inside the helmet broke. The LED's inside the Petzl Duo-Light were all bent but still working - a testament to PETZL I must say. Anyway, I think next time I go to Stephen’s, I’ll tie a traverse line around that ledge. One slip and it could have been me and not that helmet falling down the pit. Anyway, I feel like someone beet me with a bag of rocks this morning which is always a great reminder that I saw some pretty cool stuff over the weekend.

Well, yeah - that's the worse part, it wasn't even MY helmet. My helmet was on my head. It was Jason's helmet. So, don't leave your helmets around me or they might end up at the bottom of a pit !!