Ever since I was a kid, I've enjoyed getting underground every chance I've had - storm drains, boulder caves, abandoned mines, show caves, tourist mines, you name it. It wasn't until I took a "wild cave" tour at Mammoth Cave last fall that I realized how much fun the real "down & dirty" caving could be. Once back home in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan I started to look around for a local grotto to join, only to find that the nearest Michigan groups were 6 hours away in Lower Michigan. It turned out that the Wisconsin Speleological Society meetings at Chilton were a couple hours closer (and had caving on site!) so I traveled down, joined the grotto & joined in the digging at Ledge View. After a couple afternoons of filling & hoisting buckets, I was privileged to be one of the first dozen or so people to make the belly crawl from Carolyn's Caverns to Mother's Cave. After this great introduction to Wisconsin caving, I was eager to experience "Wisconsin's longest and most challenging cave", Horseshoe Bay Cave in Door County.

Arriving at Murphy County Park at the crack of 10 AM, I met a caravan leaving the parking lot led by Gary Soule, who stopped to let me know that they were heading for Big Pit & Small Pit. I decided to join them, and drove down the road a mile or two to the parcel of land (recently purchased by the Door County Land Trust) where these two caves are located. A short walk in the woods brought us to Small Pit, and a few yards farther to Big Pit. Big Pit is basically a collapsed dome that was used for years as a trash dump before being cleaned up by the WSS beginning in the 1960s. Gary showed us where there is potential for the discovery of additional cave by digging. Downhill from Big pit we saw an area where a good stream of water was flowing from the base of the hill, raising hopes for another new cave. Back at Small Pit, Kevin had rigged a cable ladder to assist in entry, so we took turns climbing into the cave and exploring the two leads that have been excavated there. Both ends gave a taste of real caving, with a short squeeze into a nice little room on the west end with potential for further passages.

After returning to Murphy Park, Gary led the group off on the short walk to Wellever cave, a walk-in sea cave in the bluff beyond Horseshoe Bay Cave. I decided to skip this one and grabbed a quick lunch before taking my gear and heading up to the main cave. At the entrance gate I met Dawn Ryan & John Lovaas gearing up to begin surveying the cave, as well as John DeLong, Bob Moore & "Nuke" who were getting ready to head into the cave. These three agreed to wait for me to gear up, so I changed into my wetsuit & coveralls and we started in. We didn't go far before we realized it was going to be a wet trip - the section up to the Duck Under is usually relatively dry in January, but now had several inches of water above the floor. The unseasonably warm weather as well as over an inch of rain the day before had left the cave much wetter than usual. By the time we reached the Duck Under, "Nuke" had decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and his lack of a wetsuit would not let him visit any more of the cave in safety, much less in comfort. The remaining trio headed on in, ducking under the Duck Under, which had become an ear-dipper. For the rest of the way in, most of the passage was wet, or muddy, or muddy and wet, or (very rarely) dry.

We decided to head for the Elephant Room, so we bypassed the Big Room & kept on heading in, going through a couple of ear dippers and some full body immersions (nice for washing the mud off!) before taking a break in the Lunch Room (Break Room?). As we sat on the breakdown, we began to hear voices and see lights coming from farther in. A group from the Wisconsin Hoofers Outing Club were making their way out of the cave after being stopped by high water levels in the Mississippi River section.

Our next stop was a quick side trip to see the Onyx Room; then we crawled the last hundred yards or so to the Elephant Room. After a bite of lunch, I tried my hand at cave photography with my trusty disposable camera, taking shots of the beautiful formations. As I had followed John & Bob into the cave I was mostly watching were I was going, but I'd occasionally take the time to stop and look around. It was a real treat for me to see the speleothems dripping, realizing that they were forming (albeit very slowly!) before my eyes. The Elephant Room had some of the nicest, with stalactites, columns, rimstone dams and a flowstone waterfall.

On the trip out we decided to visit the Big Room. We stopped at a narrow crack in the wall which Bob & John had pointed out on the way in, mentioning that this was there the Big Room was. John led the way, squeezing into the crack and climbing down into the Crevice Room. I passed him my pack & asked him to dig out my camera to take a picture, with me chimneying down the crevice with Bob head-high above me, but when water came out of the ZipLock along with the camera, we knew the photo shoot was over. At first it looked like the tube from the bottom of the Crevice Room to the Big Room was going to be too full of water to traverse, but it turned out to be navigable. We sloshed on through, coming out on a ledge halfway up the side of the Big Room. We could hear water running under the breakdown that formed the floor of the room, bringing visions of virgin cave to our heads. The bats hibernating in the room were starting to wake up, so we left them to sleep and headed back out.

The other way out from the Crevice Room is by way of the Mud Tube, an aptly named belly crawl with a floor of viscous mud. It would be easy to overlook the beautiful formations in this tube while maneuvering through it, but I saw some flowstone and stalactites that are impressive enough to make me come back with another (better protected) camera.

The rest of the trip out was anticlimactic - one last ear dip in the Duck Under, meeting Dawn & John still surveying away, and the cold air signaling our approach to the cave entrance. We emerged after 3 1/2 hours wet, muddy and tired, with sore knees and bruised elbows - in other words, happy cavers.

I'll be back!