Post by jspiers on Nov 20, 2008 3:57:47 GMT -5
August 08
Thanks to Jon Lillestolen for the excellent trip report! I hope to have pictures soon, as the view from Rockhouse was awesome, though I am not sure it is worth the climb!
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I had planned to use this past labor day to finish up work on my house, but once again Jeremy was kind enough to call and give me an excuse to postpone it once again. We met at 9AM in Newport where we met up with Mike and his son. Mike then took us up to take a quick look at Rattling Cave. Rattling Cave has a nice 130′ entrance pit and is managed by the SCCi so it has easy access and would make for a nice grotto trip sometime.
From Rattling we headed up to meet Tim. Tim is a member of the Appalachian grotto and was wanting to show us a cave in the Cherokee National Forest that he had some information on. Apparently he had acquired a mapset for his GPS that included a list of caves. The list was commercially available and I was curious how reliable the information was in this mapset. Before the trip I knew we would be looking for a cave somewhere near Del Rio, TN and searched the TCS files without finding anything listed anywhere near Del Rio.
We parked near a set of Railroad tracks and crossed an old rickety railroad bridge. We used our GPSes to find the best way to approach the cave. After a few hours of searching hillsides we finally found the cave which can be seen from the river below. The cave turns out to be formed in a metamorphic type rock very similar to Seneca’s Quartzite, which wasn’t surprising since there is no limestone to be seen anywhere in the area. It’s sort of a rift-type cave and I was able to talk the crew into helping me survey it since I was pretty sure it wouldn’t see too much visitation from cavers. After surveying, relaxing, and taking a few photos we headed towards the cars satisfied that we had actually done some caving after hiking a large part of that ridge.
We got back to the cars to find that we had been visited by the local Forest Service Ranger. He left a number for us to call, and we called to find out that apparently the bridge that we used to cross the river was very off-limits for hikers. He gave us a warning and we spoke to him briefly about the cave. In short time we were all headed our seprate ways home.
After getting home I did a little bit of research on our excursion. I confirmed that this cave had not been listed in the TCS and discovered that it is prominently listed on the topo map as “Rockhouse Cave”. I’m guessing that the list of caves found in Tim’s GPS is mostly taken from the list of Cave Features that the USGS publishes. I wouldn’t be surprised if that list included Alum Cave in the Smoky Mountains. While cavers would not consider Alum Cave a qualifier, Rockhouse cave definitely qualifies, taping out at 97feet of length and about 40feet of total depth. A TCS report form is being filled out as we speak and the map will follow shortly.
-Jon Lillestolen
Thanks to Jon Lillestolen for the excellent trip report! I hope to have pictures soon, as the view from Rockhouse was awesome, though I am not sure it is worth the climb!
==================================
I had planned to use this past labor day to finish up work on my house, but once again Jeremy was kind enough to call and give me an excuse to postpone it once again. We met at 9AM in Newport where we met up with Mike and his son. Mike then took us up to take a quick look at Rattling Cave. Rattling Cave has a nice 130′ entrance pit and is managed by the SCCi so it has easy access and would make for a nice grotto trip sometime.
From Rattling we headed up to meet Tim. Tim is a member of the Appalachian grotto and was wanting to show us a cave in the Cherokee National Forest that he had some information on. Apparently he had acquired a mapset for his GPS that included a list of caves. The list was commercially available and I was curious how reliable the information was in this mapset. Before the trip I knew we would be looking for a cave somewhere near Del Rio, TN and searched the TCS files without finding anything listed anywhere near Del Rio.
We parked near a set of Railroad tracks and crossed an old rickety railroad bridge. We used our GPSes to find the best way to approach the cave. After a few hours of searching hillsides we finally found the cave which can be seen from the river below. The cave turns out to be formed in a metamorphic type rock very similar to Seneca’s Quartzite, which wasn’t surprising since there is no limestone to be seen anywhere in the area. It’s sort of a rift-type cave and I was able to talk the crew into helping me survey it since I was pretty sure it wouldn’t see too much visitation from cavers. After surveying, relaxing, and taking a few photos we headed towards the cars satisfied that we had actually done some caving after hiking a large part of that ridge.
We got back to the cars to find that we had been visited by the local Forest Service Ranger. He left a number for us to call, and we called to find out that apparently the bridge that we used to cross the river was very off-limits for hikers. He gave us a warning and we spoke to him briefly about the cave. In short time we were all headed our seprate ways home.
After getting home I did a little bit of research on our excursion. I confirmed that this cave had not been listed in the TCS and discovered that it is prominently listed on the topo map as “Rockhouse Cave”. I’m guessing that the list of caves found in Tim’s GPS is mostly taken from the list of Cave Features that the USGS publishes. I wouldn’t be surprised if that list included Alum Cave in the Smoky Mountains. While cavers would not consider Alum Cave a qualifier, Rockhouse cave definitely qualifies, taping out at 97feet of length and about 40feet of total depth. A TCS report form is being filled out as we speak and the map will follow shortly.
-Jon Lillestolen