Intermediate Trip 2 at Bowden Cave

This cave visit will follow the beginner cave trip route about 3/4 of the journey to the shower room to where the stream flows into the main hall from the right. Depending on the amount of rain that month, the stream passage will be anything from a babbling brook to a gushing torrent. (This is a "contact cave," with direct connection with surface rain water runoff, but it takes a really big continuous rain to really flood this passage to where it is unsafe to attempt passage)

We will travel up the stream passage for about 300 yards to another large hallway passage like trip one, with hall widths 60' wide an ceiling heights of 20 feet. The stream passage is a hard rock hall cut by the passage of water for tens of thousands of years. The walls are irregular polished smooth limestone shelves that make much of the passage possible with dry feet by "wall walking," using your knees and hands against a shelf on each wall, but this is slow going even for experienced cavers, sooooooooo we will walk in the stream bed and be prepared to get your legs wet to at least your knees in 54 degree water. Yes it is cold, but you quickly warm back up walking at the other end.

The stream passage averages about 6' tall and 3' wide. There is one area about 5' long where the rock ledges from each side meet in the middle, and you must crawl over this with the stream running underneath, but this is no smaller than the old gated entrance, about 3' tall and wide. The large hall at the end of this passage is a mostly dormant stream bed. Every hundred feet or so, you must crawl through large breakdown areas like the one to the right of the shower room on trip one. There are several of these large bolder breakdown areas in this passage, but to see the hard rock stream cut stalagmite-like formations you must go through these. 99% of this trip is walking, with only 5 or 6 short areas of breakdown to crawl through. Duration of this trip will vary with the amount of sightseeing done and the experience of the group, but usually averages about 3 to 4 hours.
 

What is a cave like? Come find out for yourself!  Join your poly friends in a new adventure.

Mike and his daughter in trip 1 passage.

Passage is so large it doesn't show in light from flash. Note wet legs on my daughter from water passage, this would be part of trip 2 intermediate trip. Water is 54 degrees. Note mud on me from crawling 100' in 18" ceiling area about 6' wide of trip 3 to the "agoney". This area is only for the cave hardy and attendance on trip 2 required to attempt trip 3. Not the most difficult passage I have encountered caving, and far from the tightest and smallest passage I have been through.... but you want to be comfortable with tight places and not scared of mud and water to go there. Large room (15' round) with 3' ceiling at end of crawl and a view of "Agoney" passage. Agoney is about 18" round, wet and very tight for 45'. No attempt to go through there will be made this weekend, but ya will feel proud just getting to look at it.
 

Climbing breakdown

My daughter and caving friend Clem climbing "breakdown" at end of water passage of trip 2. Large bolder area with one or two tight squeezes between fallen bolders to get thru this area. Lots of fun and easy to climb for all ages. Several areas like this about 30 feet long with very large and wide passage between them to get to curtain formations in picture below. This area is second half of trip 2.

Curtain formations

Caving buddy Clem with curtain formations in end of trip 2 area. These were formed by water cutting out rock like stream passage area. Many of these are visible on ceiling also. Note steam in picture from my breath, air temp is 54 degrees year round in this cave. Hold your breath and wave away steam before taking pictures to avoid this effect on your cave visit.