Participants:
Mary Laycock, Mike Laycock, Greg Nepstad, Jim Nepstad

Duration of Trip:
6 hours

New Cave Surveyed:
461 feet

A trip the previous day had revealed several hundred feet of new cave in the area known as City Sewer. Absent-minded explorers had forgotten to bring a tape however, and were unable to survey their finds. As this area is only 30 minutes into the cave, we decided to survey the next day after work.

Following several hundred feet of very nasty crawls we came to The Manhole, a 40 foot pit leading down to the City Sewer area. After carefully negotiating this climb, we found ourselves in a series of low, tube-shaped crawls which give the area its name. From here it was only a short distance to the new area.

We began surveying a series of parallel fissures which ran northeast by southwest, an unusual direction for Wind Cave passages. Much of this was walking passage, but getting from fissure to fissure often required low crawls. Three fissures were surveyed and another was left for next time. As they all ran side by side, we named this new area in the cave the Side Roads. Lots of cave remains to be explored and surveyed in this relatively nearby part of the cave.

Report by: Jim Nepstad