The Ramsey Mill Project
Most cavers and cave divers have heard of “the most gorgeous cave in the world,” whether it was overheard at a grotto meeting or at the local coffee shop. The stories may very somewhat but at some point the conversation turns to location and the silence becomes deafening. Ramsey Mill has been that cave for me.
It happens that I heard it from a good friend of mine that has actually taken me on some of the greatest adventures that you could ever dream up. Mike Young told me of a great and wonderful cave that I would just have to see to believe. As with any story Mike tells, you have to wait till the end to hear the catch and this was no exception. Ramsey Mill is the biggest, most extreme, and most decorated sump that I have ever explored.
The catch, as it turns out, is the entry that was explained to me as a long spider-sucking ear dip but is actually a sump. I was also told that only very few people had been in the system and had not walled it out, so as Mike knew would happen I did have to go see it for myself.
Over a year of high rain fall and busy schedules kept us away and dreaming, but the day did finally come when we could all go. I was the first one to the motel on that cold January day with Mike Young and Mike Wright showing up from Fort Smith. Then Mike Smith. arrived. Robert Ginsberg and Rick Hughes were scheduled to meet us the next morning for a big carb-packed breakfast. Once everyone got their bags and tubs hauled into our rooms, the four of us that were there began our prep work double-checking batteries and packing dry boxes and bags. Mike Smith briefed Mike Wright and myself as neither one of us had ever been to the system before. The morning finally came and we all met got the gear in the trucks and set out for the cave.
The entrance to the cave sits about 50 feet above the valley floor just off an old logging road. We decided to get our cave gear on at the motel since it was pretty cold that morning so it didn’t take long to get started toward the cave. The following description is being done from memory, as we haven’t started the survey as of yet. The opening is a collapsed bluff and we had to slide along a ledge. We had to work our way down over some breakdown and could hear the stream below us as we worked closer and closer to it. From a rocky slope we saw the stream and the sump. We got our gear on there and began to work our way through the sump which is about four to five feet deep and runs very flat.
As we came out of the sump we did a short belly crawl and slump walked to the second sump. It is very short and had some air pockets on this trip but I have been told that it fills up completely with just a small rainfall. We now had to crawl, slump walk and climb back to the waterfall that I believe to be about 1,200 feet in and approximately 15 to 20 feet tall. This is going to be one of the photo stops on our next trip. We went through and over the falls, which has ledges and pools of water twisting and falling. On the other side of the falls there is more walking passage that leads back to a huge dome room with one of the biggest columns I have ever seen—pure white. If you go behind the big column there is a short passage filled with crystal pools and soda straws, some of which are so pure and clean they look like glass tubes.
You could spend hours just in this room and not see every formation. Moving along the stream bed back to the right, the main passage is full of huge breakdown that we had to climb up and over. More walking and crawling through this tunnel brought us to what appeared to be another sump but you can chimney up through a clogged tunnel into a dome room that must be well over 70 feet tall and 100 feet across. We estimated that we were then 7,000 feet or so into the system. The floor was breakdown that may be 20 feet deep and was all the way around the room. I found one small passage along the wall that followed the stream bed and found the other end of the sump. It looks like a large toilet bowl with about a five-foot waterfall feeding it.
Thirty feet on around Rick found an ancient passage full of old formations and a large, eight-foot-square tunnel running very flat. The formations here had a type of crystal formation on them. This tunnel went another 100 feet or so and split. Rick took the left passage and walled it out in a small belly crawl. I got to take the lead to the right and pushed it another 100 feet or so before it walled out in belly passage. There is one more side lead off this tunnel but it was time to go and we just didn’t have time to check it out.
Before we started back out we did take time to pose for a group picture. As we worked our way back out of the cave we could feel just how cold it was outside and no one looked forward to getting into cold trucks when we were soaking wet and tired after a ten-and-a-half-hour cave journey. As we changed into dry clothes in 15-degree air temperature, we tried to tell ourselves it was all worth it. After the drive back to town and saying good by to Mike and Mike, the rest of the team went to a restaurant for a hot meal and to look at the pictures that we took.
I will never forget this first trip into Ramsey Mill and can’t wait to get back in beyond the sump to see the wonders of this cave system and what might be just around the next corner or over the next breakdown pile. The next time I overhear someone talking about the most beautiful cave in the world I know that I will do what ever it takes to go and see it no matter how long it takes. — Adam McDowell