Lost River - Karst Information Portal

2007 NSS Convention Guidebook
Exploring with Bob Louden, Rothrock, Sibert
family members, and others, he dug into B-B
Hole and many nearby caves in a futile search
for the elusive stream level of Wyandotte Cave.
He later married one of the Rothrock daughters
and wrote several books on the cave. Evidence
of these early efforts remain today with
wooden tracks, winches, and cables outside the
promising sites.
Discoveries within the cave slowed following
a flurry of exploration and development
through the 1940s. In 1967, Leo Schotter—a
renowned, old-time local caver—shared the
location of a pit near Wyandotte Cave that he
had discovered many years earlier. Members
of the Indiana Speleological Society (ISS)
including Gary Roberson, Richard Newton,
Terry Crayden, George Jaegers, and Al and
Neal Erickson decided to explore the pit on
2 0
Wallace Rothrock in Little Wyandotte Cave.
Photo by George Jackson.
From the John Benton photo collection.
Easter Sunday, 1967. There was a small opening
at the bottom of the pit that was blowing air
but an altercation broke out between the
Erickson brothers and the dig was abandoned.
The pit they named Easter would not be visited
again for almost 20 years. In October 1986 the
squeeze at the bottom of the pit was enlarged
and pushed by Glenn Lemasters, Danny Dible,
and Ted Wilson into going cave (see page 21).
Surveying began in November and the tight
canyon crawl connected to a large dry walking
passage similar to those in Wyandotte Cave.
Over two miles of new cave was mapped by
Dible, Lemasters, and Wilson who were joined
by Joe Oliphant, Dave Black, Holly Cook, and
others. A difficult climb in Fools Dome by Ted
Wilson, aided by Dible and others led to a tight
crawl and eventually to Wyandotte Cave. The
connection was made on October 3, 1987, and