Remember that beautiful Beatle's tune- SumpThing? Well,  that sums up the Sunday caving trip for yours truly, a.k.a. Greyspider, Rachel, JD, and Mike- all relatively new SAG'ers and excellent caving maniacs!!

The plan was to do the Green Carpet Room in Bells- WRONG!! We got to the first creek crossing in Gardner Canyon and that water was running much harder, and deeper, than the trip a few weeks ago. I stopped my truck short of committing to it and the others joined me. It was hard to see where the rocks were and I'd had a very bad experience with that once before so, even thoiugh we are cavers, we made a sane decision- The GCR ain't going anywhere anytime soon- let's play safe and go somewhere else.

Kick in Plan B- the Huachucas! Yeah! We can hit a few caves that aren't Bat-Closed and just enjoy the beautiful day besides. Nothing to worry about! Hmmmm.... When we turned into the Cave Canyon/Ida Canyon/Oversite Canyon Rd (BTW the Sierra Vista side of the road is closed- you can only come up from Senoita- road work after flooding, etc.) the road was really chewed up. Ruts everywhere. In fact, right around the SP parking area was a swiftly flowing stream cutting right across the road! Being a 2WD owner, I had to take these washed out sections pretty quickly so as not to spin tires in mud- it was hairy, let me tell you. The road to Ida was even worse! Streams everywhere! In fact the hike to Ida was like I've never seen it- the actual trail was a running stream in many sections. The trail was almost imperceptible in places,except that you could tell where the creek was- it was running harder than the trail!!

As for the caves- I have been going to those canyons every summer, monsoons or not, for 16 years and never seen this much water. Cave Mine Cave was like walking through a shower the entitre length. It was really cool to see it that way. However the climb down from the entrance was treacherous as Hell with water covering all the rocks and we ended up actually donning harnesses to rappel down- it was slick/slime city! The water level of the pits where the mining used to be was up to the cave level. The lake room in the back was inaccessible, with the water being literally up to the hole you need to slide through. It sounded amazing, all that water, I must admit.

As for Ida, I have been there after wet winters when you couldn't get down the slick slope into the big room, but this time you couldn't go ten feet past the hole by the register. The water level was much higher than even the old gate in Ida. Pretty amazing!

All in all, a fun day, a little hairy on the roads, but we got to see some Southern AZ caves in a state they don't often attain. Waterlogged.

Greyspider