It all started when I suggested doing a caving trip completely naked...nobody bought into the idea. Instead about 10 POC'ers and SJVG'ers tackled one of Indiana's top 10 longest caves. The cave was absolutely spectacular. I got the feeling that everyone else felt the same way by hearing all the "ooh's, ahh's, and wow's". Immediately when you enter the deep sinkhole entrance, you see and hear the raging stream passage. We stayed with the stream passage for most of the cave trip. The stream passage ranged from ankle deep to waist deep water. The passage was huge, wide, long and tall! The goal was to make it to the illusive "lake" at the extreme southern end of the cave and back out alive! We encountered neat waterfalls, cascades and siphons heading downstream. When we intersected the huge borehole passage, you could look up and see the ceiling covered in long soda straws and helectites. Helectites are like soda straws gone wild! They twist and curl around, defying gravity. In one place, we saw a massive stalagmite, the size of a person! We missed the turn off to the lake passage, due to a copying mistake of the cave map!...Mark!... So I lead everyone into the treacherous passage heading to the terminal sump. Along the way I spotted huge blue gill, cat fish, and lobster sized crayfish, as well as blind crayfish. Apparently the owner of the cave recently had an entire lake that he had just stocked with blue gill, collapse and drain into the ground! All of his blue gills are now hanging out in the cave! The climb-up to the lake passage was hidden, but due to my awesome cave route finding skills was no problem. We were immediately in the huge high water overflow route. It was a sandy trunk passage that was pristine, a true sign that the 30 foot tall passage completely floods to the ceiling on a periodic basis. It was next warned to "lace up" the boots. We were about to get into foot deep boot sucking mud. After trudging through the mud for awhile, we encounter the illusive lake. The lake is a huge underground lake, ending the cave passage. The trip out involved photography.



A few of us stayed in the cave and poked around looking for more cave. Seeing the cave confirmed my strong belief that miles more cave exists into the northern sinkhole plain. It will be found in the near future...