Lost River - Karst Information Portal

top of Fools Dome
began to take only an
average of 2 hours.
At the top of Fools
Dome the survey
indicated a possible
connection with
Wyandotte Cave to
the southwest. Many
trips passed through
a place affectionately
called Sleepy Hollow,
a place that became
reminiscent of the
many long, sleepless
trips into the cave.
Camping inside the
cave soon became
common.
Not far from Sleepy Hollow the passage
seemed to end, but we found a small,
inconspicuous hole in the floor leading to a
small crawlway. Within this crawlway an item
of curiosity was found. There in front of us was
an antique flashbulb lying tucked upon a small
alcove. It had to have been transported to this
point by pack rats. Or had it been thrown there
by humans from the other side? But what and
where was the “other side”? The small crawlway
narrowed abruptly except for a small hole the
size of a half-squashed pie pan. Air flowed from
it. This hole was one of the lowest and tightest
crawlways found in the cave and if not for the
airflow and the flashbulb, we probably would
have left it abandoned. A line plot generated
from our data showed the end of Flash Bulb
Crawl to be amazingly close to Avenue No. 3 in
Wyandotte Cave. A connection was inevitable.
After a few trips to enlarge the hole which,
by the way, was made through what had to be
some of the hardest mineral deposition in the
cave, it became penetrable.
On October 3, 1987, Wilson, Dible, and
Oliphant entered the hole and connected to
Echo Avenue in Wyandotte Cave. The two
caves were now one. The event would remain
secret for a long time as we continued mapping
passages stemming from Fools Dome and
A typical crawlway.
The Saga of Easter Pit
making a few new discovery trips into the far
reaches of Wyandotte Cave.
Over the past 150 years various maps and
stories of Wyandotte Cave have appeared,
touting its length as much as 23 miles. In the
late 1960s, Dr Richard L. Powell, an Indiana
state geologist (now retired), with the help
of the Bloomington Indiana Grotto, mapped
Wyandotte Cave for the state. Indiana was
going to buy the cave from its current private
ownership and a reliable map was needed. That
survey provided a total length of 5.36 miles
of passage in Wyandotte Cave. As a fellow
caver, Dr Powell assisted us in disclosing our
discoveries to the Department of Natural
Resources sometime in 1989. We were allowed
some time to map the newly discovered passages
within Wyandotte and continue mapping in
Easter Pit.
Our group surveyed the following areas
within Wyandotte Cave:
The Adventure Trail, an extension of what
is known as the Old Cave. This led from Plutos
Ravine through a series of breakdown climbs; a
lengthy crawl led to a short walking passage that
ended in a nonforgiving breakdown choke.
Kings Gauntlet, a passage found long ago
but subsequent to the 1966 Powell map.
Teasing Wind Trail, a crawlway extending
off to the southeast from Butler Point at the far
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