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Iron Cave

 Iron Cave is located up a short, steep hill, at the base of a rock bluff. The entrance is a horizontal slit that is about 2 feet in height and 4 feet wide. There is a steep descent just past the entrance into a small domepit full of breakdown. There are grey flowstones here in the first room that look almost like poured concrete. The next room is a small breakdown room with some beautiful small rimstone pools. There are several small stalactites, a couple of small columns and several small stalagmites present in the second room. After the second room the passage becomes a relatively straight, low, breakdown passage. A couple of hundred feet from the beginning there is a flowstone ledge that you must climb down off of. It is quite tricky but cane be done without ropes. Here is where the cave gets interesting. A lower level room is present just below the aforementioned ledge. You must use ropes to descend here and we did not do it. If you continue forward, there is a small, low crawl through breakdown on the right side of the main passage that descends steeply. This emerges to a low, wide bedding-plane crawl that has tremendous air blowing through it. This is the alleged connection to Your Cave. We did not attempt it as we had too many beginners on the trip and the crawl looked grim anyway. Back in the main passage we continued towards the back of the cave.
 Greg found a passage leading up through the breakdown at the rear of the main passage and he and I went up into it. The air blowing in this passage may have been even stronger than the other, lower passage. The passage became very loose with shifty breakdown We later learned that this passage had been enlarged. I went all the way to the top where the passage opened up into a very wide upper-level bedding-plane crawl way. The passage goes left and right. The ceiling gets low after about 30 feet on the left and there are two large pits that are kind of in the way on the right. I was alone at this point and did not push the passage. I do not yet know where it goes, but according to the volume of air blowing it goes somewhere.
 Iron cave has several promising passages and lots of very small formations. Cave coral is thick but very small. I saw it in rust color, tan, grey, and totally black. We saw flowstone that was orange, grey, tan, and brown. The colors and the small rimstone pools are very rewarding in this cave. There is virtually no destruction and although the main passage is not very long, the cave can be as challenging as you want it to be. There are bats hibernating in Iron Cave in the winter. Cave crickets and small flies were also noted. The lower portions of the cave showed evidence of periodic large volumes of water.

Photos

 
Multi- colored rimstone pools with lots of "popcorn" or small cave coral coating the inside surfaces of the pools.

 

 

 

Multi-colored drip-stone and rimstone. 

 

 


  
Barry, Andy, and Matthew inspecting some formations in the second room of Iron Cave.

 

 


Pete Kinsey leading Jane Day through the entrance room. 

 

 



An Eastern Pipistrelle bat hanging upside down in Iron Cave. He had lots of friends nearby.

 

 



The low, bedding-plane crawl that alledgedly leads to Your Cave. Height is about 20 inches here dropping to a belly crawl within a few feet.

 

 

That's me helping a student over a ledge as Greg King looks on.

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