Lost River - Karst Information Portal

2007 NSS Convention Guidebook
Limekiln Hollow is a small hollow located
in the Harrison Crawford State Forest
between Cold Friday Hollow and Potato Run.
Two cave entrances are located near the head of
the hollow at the limestone-sandstone contact.
The upper entrance is to Limekiln Hollow Pit.
It is a 3-foot-diameter entrance on a wooded
hillside. The 9-foot-deep entrance pit is free
climbable. A stream at the bottom can be
followed into a belly crawl. In only a few feet
the stream disappears into a too-tight canyon.
The entrance to Limekiln Hollow Cave is a
walk-in entrance about 50 feet from Limekiln
Hollow Pit and near a ravine. The first 25 feet
of cave is a narrow down-cutting canyon ending
at a 9-foot climb-down to a room. A hand-line
is helpful for this climb. Off this room are two
passages. The first is a short passage with the
stream from Limekiln Hollow Pit. The other
362
Limekiln Hollow Caves
By Dave Black
is a belly crawl along the top of a 12-foot-deep
canyon. In 15 feet, at the right-hand bend,
the way on is a squeeze down the canyon to a
lower level. This point was enlarged by Tom
Fritsch and John Danovich during the 1979
Christmas holidays. The lower level intersects
a 2-foot-high by 10-foot-wide crawlway named
Paradise Crawl, because it easy and soft on
the knees. To the left, the crawl ends within
100 feet at a flowstone mass. This is where the
passage intersects the hillside. To the right,
Paradise Crawl continues for nearly half a mile
before it intersects another hillside and ends at
a mud plug. Along this long crawl are several
formation areas.
Below the first part of Paradise Crawl
is a lower level canyon complex. This series
of canyons consists of dry walking canyons,
crawls, rooms, and climb-downs. Along the