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Newberry - Bane's continued


CUDDINGTON: On a previous trip, I had seen a zigzag passage going off from the little antechamber before you get to the Vault Room (when you come in from the 92 foot pit way). The zigzag passage went off to the left. I had been down that a little ways; so it was decided that Roy and Earl would go down that passage, and Ed, Joe and I would go down another passage we'd noticed going out of the Vault Room to the left. We three took off down this passage, and finally got over to Bane. Of course, when we first got near Bane, we began to see tracks. I didn't know where we were; I didn't realize it was Bane, and I thought "Good gosh, where are we coming out? In Bland? At the bottom of the Mountains? Or where?" But we ended up in the bottom of Bane. By that time we were pretty tired and hungry. We divided up what few tootsie rolls I had on the way back. We finally made it back through there; Roy and Earl had already made their way up the ladder and they safetied us up. I remember I was one tired caver, and so was everyone when we got out of that trip; but that was the first connection from Newberry to Bane.


Rigged - in at Bill's Rappel Well
Photo by R. E. Clark 		CHARLTON: Well, that trip lasted quite a few days. We originally planned it to last a week, but we go into the ... oh, what-all did we do? Earl and myself discovered a zigzag passage and several other things that trip. Joe, Bill and Ed made the link-up with Bane on the first day. On subsequent days we went down and discovered the Funnel Room and the way down to the bottom of the main drop without doing so much vertical work. Bill just raised Sam Hill. He said, "Roy, you've ruined a perfectly good cave. You've ruined a perfectly good vertical cave. Now you can go down without all the wonderful rappel."


JEAN LOWRY:tab3" Newberry cave is one cave I have no great desire to go back to. I've been in it about five times, and I think I have had it! Once when we were mapping a section called the Zigzag Passage on our map, I came across a rather strange phenomenon, hard, to explain. There was a room off one side of the passage which had mounds of clay about eight to ten feet high. Some of the clay had a coating of wet clay on the surface, and there was a skid mark starting right at the top of one of these mounds going right on down to the bottom. From that there were foot steps leading out of the passage to where we were. What was unusual was that there were no footprints going into the room at all. Just the skid marks and footsteps coming out. A bunch of us were talking about this later; Bill Cuddington was there, and he confessed that he was the one that made the mysterious marks. He'd been going along in an upper passage by himself, and stepped through a hole in the passage, falling approximately forty feet, from the looks of it. He lucked out by hitting on the side of this slick slope, sliding all the way to the bottom, and finding himself in the bottom level, where fortunately there were others exploring at the time. Without a word, he just joined the group as if he'd been with them all the time, and came up and out.
tab3" The first time I went into Newberry Cave with Larry and Betty Sabatinos, ooooo boy, talk about nervous tension. We were in there about fifteen hours which wasn't bad considering that there were much longer trips later. It depends on how many people are on the trip; we once figured it out that it took three people minimum and for each additional person, one hour was added on to the length of the trip. It was a long trip, and we were really tired and chilled. We had a Coleman stove along, and decided to cook something hot to eat. The trouble was we only had one stove, and everyone had brought a variety of things. Tab3" continued

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