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Below are some images of some of the springs, and one of us staging from a dry area under a skylight. They aren't great, but the best I have right now. |
Copyright © 1999 Kenneth L. Ingham |
This shows Diana Northup in front of another nest of springs. They are under the low rock ledges. The water in this area is very shallow, maybe 4 to 8 inches. The white rims around the rocks is gypsum forming and pyrite forms on the rock surfaces. |
Copyright © 1999 Kenneth L. Ingham |
This image shows a field of springs. The small, oval dark area right in the center field is the first one we found mats in, Flema Spring. It's hard to see but those are actually holes that quickly narrow down. Large sand-sized particles slowly roil around the top in response to the water flow. In the background, the assorted rocks in the background on the right have a number of other springs under them, reachable with a hand. A couple of them have small rocks on top that can be moved. We replace them after sampling. |
Copyright © 1999 Kenneth L. Ingham |
This image shows Flema Spring lit up, the holes are right under the bright spot, plus Slot Spring to the right tucked under the big rock (looks like a dark, skinny rectangle). Mike Spilde is taking gas samples from the spring mouths. |
Copyright © 1999 Kenneth L. Ingham |
Here is a shot of Penny sampling the gases above Sulphur Spring. It's like a pot, raised above the general floor level by about half a meter. The interior of this spring is entirely encrusted with crystalline elemental sulfur, very lovely. It really cooks sometimes, producing tremendous amounts of gas emissions.
To the left of this spring about 5 meters and just out of the image, are the Red and White Springs. The Red one has a high iron content and mixes with oxygen before it comes out. The white spring has lots of iron but no oxygen. Together they empty into Red and White Stream which has a sharp line down the middle of it where the redox conditions go from oxidizing to reducing as these two different waters mix. Unfortunately, I don't have an image of this digitally stored. The pink cave fish swim right up to the redox line, poke their little noses into it and then dart away again safely back to their oxygen-containing half of the stream. |
Copyright © 1998 Louise D. Hose |
This shot shows Diana on the right and Penny on the left going over notes under one of the skylights. The guy in the foreground is Michael Ray Taylor, who wrote Dark Life about work in this cave and others. He's got his mask slipped off and is massaging his face to get the blood circulating and try to reduce the headache. |
