Day: January 25, 2003

Brad Ditched Us and I Have Directions To 3D Kinda and 3D is Flooded
Jan. 25, 2003
by Jared Bowie

Well I decided to write up a trip report to show to all you non-believers that the caving club is, in fact, not dead but alive, well, and lazy! Trips have been going out most every weekend and this Saturday was no exception. Orignally earlier in the week i had received emails from Brad Ricks promising a return to his once great position in MUSG as a leader. We emailed a couple times and before the meeting i had a 99% guarantee he was coming to show us a cave that had not been frequented this year. I told the club that i would email everyone about what was up and that the trip would be going out Saturday. Well it turned out Brad preferred the cold weather of skiing to the warm temperatures of an underground paradise. Sharid and i talked over what to do Friday night and decided the best thing to do was to lead a late short trip Saturday afternoon. I decided to go to 3D since i had not been there since the beginning of the year and was pretty confident of my leading skills in it. So i sent an email out and got things rolling. I emailed Chris Woodley “The photographic memory cave location/direction genius” to ask for directions to 3D. He replied by saying he wasn’t really sure about how to get there but tried his best to give me good directions. Well i tried to call some other people who i knew would know, but was unable to find out anything. I decided though that the trip must go on!

We met at 3pm at the usual place i arrived with Sharid to find Kristen, Dean, and Chris (not woodley) there. We knew that Bubba and Chase were going to come and decided to go swing by there place after 15 minutes on the assumption that they were still sleeping. As we left i spotted them driving past us and turned around. We talked and Bubba said they had alot more people coming and we told him we would meet him at the Commons. At the Commons Sharid got ahold of Antera and got good directions to 3D. We were eventually off 11 total me, Sharid, Bubba, Rian, Chase, Chris, Dean, Kristen and some others whose names have escaped my mind.

We arrived at 3D without much trouble parked and headed over to the cave. Everything was found easily. The rules were went over and then we headed down. It took a little time for everyone to get down the initial drop, but everyone helped each other out and everything was ok. I then lead the group down and down toward 4D. After we had gotten down the climb where the metal pegs and webbing is about 20-30 ft ahead of that we ran into some water. Some people had started chimneying over it, but decided to turn back. When i got there i encouraged Sharid to come with me and chimney over to see if we could see the end of the water and if the birth canal was completely submerged. We chimneyed about 15-20 ft on the brittle rock of 3D over to where Sharid could see that the birth canal was missing, it was completely under water. We decided to turn back. Now the climbing/chimneying was a little sketchy because of the brittle rock and lack of footholds and we had gotten pretty high to find footholds, but we successfully made it to solid ground and started heading back.

Everyone made it up everything ok and we headed to the art room. Everyone had fun there and made some things and then we headed out. We got back to campus at about 7:30pm and that was the trip.