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TAG Fall Cave In 2003 - Mother's Finest Bill Walker On Friday October 10th, Stephanie Juiliano and I went with Chuck and Karen Smith to Mother’s Finest in Alabama. This is a cave that Josh Smith (?) and Chuck had found last year and I had heard a lot about it. I was excited to get to see their new cave. We arrived at the mountain and hiked up about 400 feet to elevation and then followed the contour about a mile to the cave. The cave has a 70 foot, open air pit entrance and it’s amazing that this had never been found before – especially since it’s close to known cave. Just goes to show you that there are still obvious entrances out there left to be found. The pit is broken up with a large ledge about 25 feet down, which was good for Stephanie because it was her first good sized pit. It was almost like doing two separate small pits and this took some of the fear out of it for her. Chuck went down first to belay the two ladies and I was the last one down. The pit drops down into a good sized room filled with breakdown. Straight across this is the window, which looks 50 feet down into a large room where water can be heard. We took the opposite direction which heads back under the pit to a 15 foot climb-down “rigged” with 1” manila rope with knots tied in it. This then leads past pristine formations and a couple of domes to a much larger dome with a waterfall coming out of it. My guess is that it was about 80’ high. We saw a couple of coils of rope stashed in this room and Chuck told me that Jim Smith was planning to climb this dome in the near future. On our way out I noticed a small side lead with water flowing out. I climbed up and into this tight passage and noted that it was obviously virgin (the popcorn crackled under my feet) I continued on and up, following the water to a crawl under. I didn’t proceed any further because I didn’t want to scoop Chuck’s cave without permission. The passage continued on though, and I could see through the crawl and up into a dome room. I’ll have to come back at a later time and push this passage after hunting season. I met back with the group who were following the water down through some tight canyon passage. The passage led to a room where the water plunged down into a 70 foot pit. Across the pit and past a really exposed ledge, the room continues and is actually the same room we saw through the window at the entrance. We didn’t drop this pit, but apparently this is where the rest of the cave is. I think the cave is about 400 feet deep total with around a mile of passage right now. We exited the cave and climbed back up the pit. Stephanie climbed out like an expert on the frog Brian made her the night before. I, on the other hand, had many difficulties with my ropewalker. I couldn’t get the bottom Gibbs to feed correctly, which made for a difficult climb. I’ve never had a climbing rig where it actually worked like it’s supposed to. One of these days I’ll figure it out. |