Participants: Shaun Larson, Jim Nepstad, Darren Ressler

Duration of Trip: 7 hours

New Cave Surveyed: 594 feet

We decided for today's trip to head for the eastern side of the cave to check for leads in the general area of the Attic and Plummer's Pit. The cave here is disrupted by what we believe to be a large fault zone. Every lead found so far is this area runs into massive breakdown which totally closes down the passages. Finding our way through this fault has been one of our goals for quite some time. With new data from the computer modeling of the cave, Jim Nepstad discovered that the fault is most likely intersecting the cave at a sharp angle. This means we are just as likely to cross the fault by going straight up as we are by pushing further to the east. With is new information in mind we started out.

We began the Attic part of our trip by surveying the passage which connects over to Plummer's Pit. This passage had not been surveyed previously and might be one reason why Plummer's Pit is not situated correctly on the map of the cave. After pushing some tight leads which did not go anywhere we surveyed up into the pit.

Plummer's Pit is actually a chimney going up rather than a pit going down. We climbed up until we reached a point where we would need ropes to go any further. Stopping at this spot was difficult because of the strong breeze blowing down on us but we knew it would not be safe to continue without technical gear.

Going back to the Attic we checked for more leads going up. Jim located one which went up into a promising area. He returned, excitedly describing great frostwork displays but also lots of old newspapers and candle sooted names on the ceiling.

The new room had a perfectly flat chert ceiling, mesmerizing frostwork lust in some spots and, on the floor and shelves to the side, more newspaper than any of us had seen in any other single room in the cave. Most of the paper had dates from sometime in October, 1894 and was covered with frostwork samples. These samples were often broken from the walls, wrapped up in newspaper and then removed from the cave to be sold as souvenirs by the Stabler and McDonald families who controlled the cave in the 1890s. John Stabler and Roy McDonald both left their names sooted unto the ceiling here along with the date, February 20, 1895.

Jim and I were discussing what to name this room and Jim had already written down in the notes the name Old News when I happened to look up again at the ceiling and notice that a name had already been chosen. In big black letters across the chert the candle sooted title, Lonely Palace, had been left in 1895. More than likely, we were the first people to see this room since 1895 and Lonely Palace seemed only too fitting. For over 90 years it had indeed been a very lonely place.

While we did not succeed in finding our way across the fault on this trip we did manage to rediscover a beautiful room and to survey almost 600 feet of passageway. Plummer's Pit also remains to be looked at. It reportedly goes up over 100 feet from where we stopped. We will return within the next few weeks to climb up the pit to see what other lost and lonely places we can discover.

Report by: Darren Ressler