Blasting in a cave
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Keith Henson
Jul 23, 2023, 12:33:12 PM7/23/23
to friends-of-annita...@googlegroups.com
Blasting in a cave
Thanksgiving 1965
I had just gone back to school (University of Arizona) after being out
for a few years. I had been working for a geophysics company in
Tucson (Heinrich). When I left they gave me almost two cases of
dynamite to get rid of, leftovers from some (seismic?) project that
used it. (I had disposed of excess dynamite for them a time or two
before.)
The apartment in Tucson where I was living had both a cast iron
bathtub and a shower, so I kept the boxes in the bathtub. This was
long before having dynamite would get you labeled as a terrorist.
(Using the bathtub had a purpose. Powder magazines should stop stray bullets.)
Before I found time to get rid of the dynamite, some local cavers
(mostly friends of the Harlans) heard that I had it. They got in
touch with me and asked if I would consider blasting in a cave.
The cave was Joerger Cave Shaft (named after Carl Joerger who found
it). It was a vertical cave about 400 feet deep with a tight crack at
the bottom and air blowing out of the crack. The idea was to open the
tight spot at the bottom and see how much more cave was below. (There
were no cave formations to damage.) The entrance drop alone was 130
feet. After that, there were alternating tight spots and tall rooms.
In those days, people rappelled into vertical caves and came out on
cable ladders. A few years later, they gave up using ladders and
started using rope-climbing clamps. It is harder and slower to climb
ropes, but you don’t have to carry both to the cave. I think this
started at Golondrinas (Cave of the Swallows) in Mexico where the
entrance drop is 1200 feet.
The local cavers got this expedition together--must have been close to
a dozen people. The expedition included well-known local cavers
Dwight Hoxie and Pete Huntoon. There were 3 or 4 women cavers
including my first wife of a few months, Karen Abrahamson (now sadly
died of cancer). This expedition was the second or third time I had
been caving.
In several vehicles, we drove 75 miles from Tucson. We went through
Ft Huachuca, up to Gate 7, (long closed) down to the first drainage to
the right, and walked up into the mountains to the cave entrance.
It was a difficult hike up taking all the ladders, ropes, rappels
gear, lamps, dynamite, caps, fuses, food, water, etc. The route was
through thick brush and sharp karst. Once we reached the cave, it
took hours of rigging each drop and lowering supplies to the next one
to get to the bottom.
The first day we tried a small mud-packed shot and fired it from the
surface. Some previous expedition had left the wire we used. It is
still there as far as I know. The shot was so far down and the cave
was such a good muffler that a few sticks were almost inaudible. By
that time, it was late so we went back to the cars for the night.
This also let the fumes from the dynamite dissipate. Next day we got
back in to see what it had done. From the amount of rock knocked off,
it was clear it was going to take all we had and maybe more.
I had three gunnysacks with us that were 5 to 6 feet long.
The room just before the crack was a tight squeeze to get into. Once
in it, it was maybe 12 feet by about 3-4 wide and had a lot of dirt on
the floor.
We drove an expansion bolt in the wall over the crack and hung the
sacks in the crack. The crack was about 6 inches wide and several
feet long off the end of the room. It went down 3-4 feet before it
opened out into another room. We then spent much of the next 5-6
hours loading dirt into the bottom two feet of all three bags. We
loaded dirt into the two end ones, dynamite and caps into the center
bag, then about 2 feet of dirt on top. This is called “stemming” and
it is the only way you can get dynamite to move rock without drills.
We were running out of time for the weekend when we got it all loaded
up. We lit two multi-hour fuses made by splicing dethermalizer fuse
(rope) into dynamite fuse. We used a short piece of Jetex fuse (no
longer made http://www.jetex.org/motors/fuse.html). Then we bugged
out. Even with the spur of lighted fuses behind us, it took us about
3 hours to haul all the ropes, ladders, and packs out of the cave. It
was late at night and pitch black when we got to the surface. The
weather was freezing cold out of the cave; this was November at 7,000
feet up in the mountains. (It was cold in the cave summer or winter.)
The people on the surface had built a substantial fire to keep warm.
The cave went straight down into a steep hill, but there was a flat
spot in front of it. That's where they built the fire. It had burned
down to coals.
The two fuses were backups in case the electric cap in the dynamite
failed. I really didn’t want to have to go back in to deal with a
misfire.
When everyone was out and stuffing ropes and ladders into packs
and getting ready for a long hike in the dark back to the cars, I
said, “Everyone ready?”
They all said, “Yes,” and I touched the wires to a 6-volt battery.
There was this sharp *thump* through the rock and a second after the
thump there was this huge rush of air out of the cave going perhaps
150 miles an hour. The combination of tight spots and big chambers
acted like a huge muffler, so there was not a lot of noise, just this
giant rush of air.
The Venturi effect from the rush of air sucked the coals from the
burned-down fire into the jet and they went up way up--over a hundred
feet and rained down all over everybody. People were jumping this way
and that and shaking burning coals out of their packs. Fortunately,
we didn’t set the woods on fire.
We left without knowing if we had blown out the tight spot--planning
to come back soon as we could. Then the guy that owned most of the
cable ladder decided he didn't want to go back again and would not
loan out his ladder. To get back into the cave and satisfy my
curiosity about how well the blast had done, I had to make 500 feet of
cable ladder. Being an impoverished student at the time, I made it
out of salvaged aircraft control lines. I could get the cables for
almost nothing from the aircraft scrap yards on the east side of
Tucson. I used plastic pipe (instead of the usual aluminum tubes) for
the rungs.
It was lighter than commercial cable ladder. I could not afford the
crimping tool usually used so I glued the rungs on the cable with
little spirals of bailing wire. This being somewhat unconventional, I
tested a sample at the U of Arizona’s Civil Engineering lab.
The rungs would slide on the cable with about 700 pounds on a step. A
short test cable with glued ends and thimbles broke at 1200 pounds. I
figured that was good enough.
I don't remember exactly when we got back to the cave; I can't see how
I could have got the ladder built by Christmas but I might have.
Perhaps it was over the Christmas break.
I only found three other people who had the time to go look. They
were John Bradner, climber and hiker and known for testing climbing
bolt anchors, Phil Beisel, climber and all-around good guy, both well
known in Harlan circles and John McLean, a geologist. He had the
station wagon we used to get there.
We had to walk a lot further this time because snow had blocked the
road in places. I think it took us over 12 hours to get up the hill
and down into the cave to the former tight spot. It was still kind of
tight, but the blasting had opened the crack to the point some people
could squeeze through.
I stood on the section of the ladder we had lowered through the tight
spot and bashed a lot of shattered rock off with a rock hammer. I
didn’t want to get beaned by falling rocks. This turned out to be a
dumb move since some of the falling loose rock broke out a bunch of
plastic rungs on the ladder. The missing rungs made it a bit dicey to
get back up. (The people above had to pull hard on my safety rope in
order for me to get over the missing rungs.)
We had added about 80 feet to the cave. There was another tight spot
at the new bottom, but this one had so much dirt in it that it didn't
look promising. The room was smaller than the air movement had
suggested. We never did find where the air was coming from.
The blast had knocked out 1.5-2 cubic meters of rock. There is a
pile of broken rock on the floor of the new bottom room. Under that
pile are a few sticks that went between the bags and fell into the
dark when we were loading the dynamite.
The cave is the deepest I know about in southern Arizona. (There are
some very deep cracks in Northern Arizona.)
I replaced the busted rungs on the section that had been in the
deepest part of the cave. I was back there with the ladder on
expeditions twice or maybe three times after that. A friend of mine,
Merle Wheeler (also known to the Harlans), mapped the cave. I used to
have a map copy; I might still but if it is in my papers, I have not
seen it for decades.
Southern Arizona Rescue Association used my ladder for rescue and body
recovery operations. The first time was when an informal caver fell
to his death down the 165-foot Hell Hole in Onyx cave. It was on loan
to them for decades. They found it useful about once a year when
guiding a Stokes basket up the San Pedro overlook on the road up Mt.
Lemon. People were always slipping down there when it was covered
with ice. Eventually, they went to other ways and a few years ago
gave the ladder back. Last year I gave the ladder I had and my
remaining climbing gear to a caving group in the LA area.
Thomas Harlan discussed this cave with me from the standpoint of a
cave rescue. Fortunately, nobody has gotten hurt in it that I know
about. A good thing because a rescue from the bottom of that cave
would be a major effort and an injured person might well die of
hypothermia before the rescue people could get them out.
Keith Henson
April 2021
PS. Looking around on the net, I found this:
http://grandcanyonhistory.org/uploads/3/4/4/2/34422134/butch_farabee_oral_history_part_1_april_20_2019.pdf
It’s an oral history with Charles “Butch” Farabee, names many people
familiar to this group and discusses the early history of SARA. There
is a short bit about this adventure, search for Huntoon.
July 2023 Someone wanted to see this tale. I went looking and
realized I had not posted the story.
Best wishes,
Keith
Thanksgiving 1965
I had just gone back to school (University of Arizona) after being out
for a few years. I had been working for a geophysics company in
Tucson (Heinrich). When I left they gave me almost two cases of
dynamite to get rid of, leftovers from some (seismic?) project that
used it. (I had disposed of excess dynamite for them a time or two
before.)
The apartment in Tucson where I was living had both a cast iron
bathtub and a shower, so I kept the boxes in the bathtub. This was
long before having dynamite would get you labeled as a terrorist.
(Using the bathtub had a purpose. Powder magazines should stop stray bullets.)
Before I found time to get rid of the dynamite, some local cavers
(mostly friends of the Harlans) heard that I had it. They got in
touch with me and asked if I would consider blasting in a cave.
The cave was Joerger Cave Shaft (named after Carl Joerger who found
it). It was a vertical cave about 400 feet deep with a tight crack at
the bottom and air blowing out of the crack. The idea was to open the
tight spot at the bottom and see how much more cave was below. (There
were no cave formations to damage.) The entrance drop alone was 130
feet. After that, there were alternating tight spots and tall rooms.
In those days, people rappelled into vertical caves and came out on
cable ladders. A few years later, they gave up using ladders and
started using rope-climbing clamps. It is harder and slower to climb
ropes, but you don’t have to carry both to the cave. I think this
started at Golondrinas (Cave of the Swallows) in Mexico where the
entrance drop is 1200 feet.
The local cavers got this expedition together--must have been close to
a dozen people. The expedition included well-known local cavers
Dwight Hoxie and Pete Huntoon. There were 3 or 4 women cavers
including my first wife of a few months, Karen Abrahamson (now sadly
died of cancer). This expedition was the second or third time I had
been caving.
In several vehicles, we drove 75 miles from Tucson. We went through
Ft Huachuca, up to Gate 7, (long closed) down to the first drainage to
the right, and walked up into the mountains to the cave entrance.
It was a difficult hike up taking all the ladders, ropes, rappels
gear, lamps, dynamite, caps, fuses, food, water, etc. The route was
through thick brush and sharp karst. Once we reached the cave, it
took hours of rigging each drop and lowering supplies to the next one
to get to the bottom.
The first day we tried a small mud-packed shot and fired it from the
surface. Some previous expedition had left the wire we used. It is
still there as far as I know. The shot was so far down and the cave
was such a good muffler that a few sticks were almost inaudible. By
that time, it was late so we went back to the cars for the night.
This also let the fumes from the dynamite dissipate. Next day we got
back in to see what it had done. From the amount of rock knocked off,
it was clear it was going to take all we had and maybe more.
I had three gunnysacks with us that were 5 to 6 feet long.
The room just before the crack was a tight squeeze to get into. Once
in it, it was maybe 12 feet by about 3-4 wide and had a lot of dirt on
the floor.
We drove an expansion bolt in the wall over the crack and hung the
sacks in the crack. The crack was about 6 inches wide and several
feet long off the end of the room. It went down 3-4 feet before it
opened out into another room. We then spent much of the next 5-6
hours loading dirt into the bottom two feet of all three bags. We
loaded dirt into the two end ones, dynamite and caps into the center
bag, then about 2 feet of dirt on top. This is called “stemming” and
it is the only way you can get dynamite to move rock without drills.
We were running out of time for the weekend when we got it all loaded
up. We lit two multi-hour fuses made by splicing dethermalizer fuse
(rope) into dynamite fuse. We used a short piece of Jetex fuse (no
longer made http://www.jetex.org/motors/fuse.html). Then we bugged
out. Even with the spur of lighted fuses behind us, it took us about
3 hours to haul all the ropes, ladders, and packs out of the cave. It
was late at night and pitch black when we got to the surface. The
weather was freezing cold out of the cave; this was November at 7,000
feet up in the mountains. (It was cold in the cave summer or winter.)
The people on the surface had built a substantial fire to keep warm.
The cave went straight down into a steep hill, but there was a flat
spot in front of it. That's where they built the fire. It had burned
down to coals.
The two fuses were backups in case the electric cap in the dynamite
failed. I really didn’t want to have to go back in to deal with a
misfire.
When everyone was out and stuffing ropes and ladders into packs
and getting ready for a long hike in the dark back to the cars, I
said, “Everyone ready?”
They all said, “Yes,” and I touched the wires to a 6-volt battery.
There was this sharp *thump* through the rock and a second after the
thump there was this huge rush of air out of the cave going perhaps
150 miles an hour. The combination of tight spots and big chambers
acted like a huge muffler, so there was not a lot of noise, just this
giant rush of air.
The Venturi effect from the rush of air sucked the coals from the
burned-down fire into the jet and they went up way up--over a hundred
feet and rained down all over everybody. People were jumping this way
and that and shaking burning coals out of their packs. Fortunately,
we didn’t set the woods on fire.
We left without knowing if we had blown out the tight spot--planning
to come back soon as we could. Then the guy that owned most of the
cable ladder decided he didn't want to go back again and would not
loan out his ladder. To get back into the cave and satisfy my
curiosity about how well the blast had done, I had to make 500 feet of
cable ladder. Being an impoverished student at the time, I made it
out of salvaged aircraft control lines. I could get the cables for
almost nothing from the aircraft scrap yards on the east side of
Tucson. I used plastic pipe (instead of the usual aluminum tubes) for
the rungs.
It was lighter than commercial cable ladder. I could not afford the
crimping tool usually used so I glued the rungs on the cable with
little spirals of bailing wire. This being somewhat unconventional, I
tested a sample at the U of Arizona’s Civil Engineering lab.
The rungs would slide on the cable with about 700 pounds on a step. A
short test cable with glued ends and thimbles broke at 1200 pounds. I
figured that was good enough.
I don't remember exactly when we got back to the cave; I can't see how
I could have got the ladder built by Christmas but I might have.
Perhaps it was over the Christmas break.
I only found three other people who had the time to go look. They
were John Bradner, climber and hiker and known for testing climbing
bolt anchors, Phil Beisel, climber and all-around good guy, both well
known in Harlan circles and John McLean, a geologist. He had the
station wagon we used to get there.
We had to walk a lot further this time because snow had blocked the
road in places. I think it took us over 12 hours to get up the hill
and down into the cave to the former tight spot. It was still kind of
tight, but the blasting had opened the crack to the point some people
could squeeze through.
I stood on the section of the ladder we had lowered through the tight
spot and bashed a lot of shattered rock off with a rock hammer. I
didn’t want to get beaned by falling rocks. This turned out to be a
dumb move since some of the falling loose rock broke out a bunch of
plastic rungs on the ladder. The missing rungs made it a bit dicey to
get back up. (The people above had to pull hard on my safety rope in
order for me to get over the missing rungs.)
We had added about 80 feet to the cave. There was another tight spot
at the new bottom, but this one had so much dirt in it that it didn't
look promising. The room was smaller than the air movement had
suggested. We never did find where the air was coming from.
The blast had knocked out 1.5-2 cubic meters of rock. There is a
pile of broken rock on the floor of the new bottom room. Under that
pile are a few sticks that went between the bags and fell into the
dark when we were loading the dynamite.
The cave is the deepest I know about in southern Arizona. (There are
some very deep cracks in Northern Arizona.)
I replaced the busted rungs on the section that had been in the
deepest part of the cave. I was back there with the ladder on
expeditions twice or maybe three times after that. A friend of mine,
Merle Wheeler (also known to the Harlans), mapped the cave. I used to
have a map copy; I might still but if it is in my papers, I have not
seen it for decades.
Southern Arizona Rescue Association used my ladder for rescue and body
recovery operations. The first time was when an informal caver fell
to his death down the 165-foot Hell Hole in Onyx cave. It was on loan
to them for decades. They found it useful about once a year when
guiding a Stokes basket up the San Pedro overlook on the road up Mt.
Lemon. People were always slipping down there when it was covered
with ice. Eventually, they went to other ways and a few years ago
gave the ladder back. Last year I gave the ladder I had and my
remaining climbing gear to a caving group in the LA area.
Thomas Harlan discussed this cave with me from the standpoint of a
cave rescue. Fortunately, nobody has gotten hurt in it that I know
about. A good thing because a rescue from the bottom of that cave
would be a major effort and an injured person might well die of
hypothermia before the rescue people could get them out.
Keith Henson
April 2021
PS. Looking around on the net, I found this:
http://grandcanyonhistory.org/uploads/3/4/4/2/34422134/butch_farabee_oral_history_part_1_april_20_2019.pdf
It’s an oral history with Charles “Butch” Farabee, names many people
familiar to this group and discusses the early history of SARA. There
is a short bit about this adventure, search for Huntoon.
July 2023 Someone wanted to see this tale. I went looking and
realized I had not posted the story.
Best wishes,
Keith
Loma
Jul 23, 2023, 2:15:37 PM7/23/23
to Keith Henson, friends-of-annita...@googlegroups.com
Thanks, Keith, for another peek at life in “the good old days”.
🥰🐿
On Jul 23, 2023, at 9:33 AM, Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:
Blasting in a cave
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Rosalind Newren
Jul 23, 2023, 7:35:15 PM7/23/23
to Loma, Keith Henson, friends-of-annita...@googlegroups.com
The things done in earlier times
and in one’s youth.
and in one’s youth.
Rosalind
Sent from my iPhone
On Jul 23, 2023, and I’m ones at 12:15 PM, Loma <lomagr...@gmail.com> wrote:
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/friends-of-annita-and-tomas-harlan/8319C106-D16D-45F8-8178-36E540A6D45F%40gmail.com.
Mykle
Jul 24, 2023, 11:05:05 AM7/24/23
to friends-of-annita...@googlegroups.com
If you want to read more about and by Butch Farabee, he and David Lovelock have just "finished" a history of SAR in Southern Arizona.
The (free) PDF is available on Butchs' website: https://butchfarabee.com/download.html
This is not a small file, but it is interesting to just peruse
the appendixes. Mostly about SARA, but LOTS of other related
stuff.
Mykle
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/friends-of-annita-and-tomas-harlan/75B24E4C-2A7A-4146-98EA-E84945DDB22C%40gmail.com.
Keith Henson
Jul 26, 2023, 3:28:02 PM7/26/23
to friends-of-annita...@googlegroups.com
A list member noted
> Keith: Great story, even if it has a disappointing ending (no huge cavern, dinosaur, Fountain of Youth, etc)! You are certifiable. Not sure as to what.
It's worth noting that I didn't originate the expedition.
f wonder at this distance if we could reconstruct who was there
I know Karen Abrahamson, and two other women cavers were along, plus
Peter Huntoon and Dwight Hoxie. I certainly deferred to them and
other experienced caves in getting in and out and they deferred to me
about how to use the dynamite.
Butch noted he was there.
Any other names?
> Keith: Great story, even if it has a disappointing ending (no huge cavern, dinosaur, Fountain of Youth, etc)! You are certifiable. Not sure as to what.
It's worth noting that I didn't originate the expedition.
f wonder at this distance if we could reconstruct who was there
I know Karen Abrahamson, and two other women cavers were along, plus
Peter Huntoon and Dwight Hoxie. I certainly deferred to them and
other experienced caves in getting in and out and they deferred to me
about how to use the dynamite.
Butch noted he was there.
Any other names?
Christina Jarvis
Jul 26, 2023, 5:59:48 PM7/26/23
to friends-of-annita...@googlegroups.com
Yup, I would have noped right out of every bit of that, but I'm glad
there are adventurous people in the world able to pull it off. Pretty
amazing!
:)Christina
there are adventurous people in the world able to pull it off. Pretty
amazing!
:)Christina
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