Hurst Water Crawl and adjacent caves

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HURST WATER CRAWL AND ADJACENT CAVES

Marion O, Smith

Hurst Water Crawl, GSS 112, located in northwestern Dade County, has been
listed on the Georgia Speleological Survey for about twenty years. The first
cavers to note it were members of the old Rockeater ee and Hurst was either
a member or a friend of a member of that club. The Rockeaters Serb Ly did not
make a serious attempt at exploration. Foxy Stafford Ferguson's first GSS print-
out (1967) listed only one entrance, the resurgence, for Hurst Water Crawl.

On March 18, 1970, with directions from former Rockeater Ken Pennington, lI,
along with Dean Gault, set out to relocate the cave. We secured permission
from the then owner, Mr. Joe Doyle (born 1886), and walked about a mile into
Richmond Hollow to the 35 foot wide CGE pe ae Within a very few
feet the passage shrank to stream crawl and we made no attempt to follow it.

We walked a thousand feet or more further into the hollow to where it was
narrow and there were limestone bluffs on both sides. On the left (south) side
was a crawl entrance. I entered alone and traversed maybe /5 feet to the main
stream passage and turned upstream. About 50 feet further, in a side Be suee |
"R WG 1924" was written in carbide. Altogether, I only saw about 300 feet of
passage, and assumed that this was the upstream segment of Hurst Water Crawl.

When I returned to Dean and the surface, we walked another thousand feet up
the hollow and noted “a 20' X 15° sink on the left with a six ft. high waterfall

coming from a wet crawl passage above."

Almost a generation later, May 20, 1984, I returned to Richmond Hollow with
a large group: David Teal, Susan Manderson, Jim Loftin, and Bobby Whorton, all
of Alabama, Rob Pearce of England, Alan Cressler, Melissa Hyde, Will Suggs, Ray
and Chris Gregory, and Jeff Thomas, all of the North Atlanta-Roswell, Georgia,

area. We were there to explore a lead further back in the hollow that Alan had

found a few years earlier while on a botany (fern) hunt. Enroute, we rediscovered

the "Gorge" entrance to Hurst Water Crawl, which I did not recognize or remember

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from my first visit years earlier.

Sevetn of us actually entered the cave: Alan, me, Will, Melissa, Ray, Jeff,
and Chris. Alan and I entered first and explored about 400-500 feet upstream
via stoop, walking, and then crawl passage. When the ceiling reached within
2 or so feet of the floor, we built a cairn and returned downstream to the
others near the "popout' from the crawl entrance.

Ray, Jeff, and Chris took off downstream and the rest of us followed and
soon passed them. Alan and I took the lead and after several hundred feet we
came to a near.sump with a sleezy left side passage. While Melissa got totally
sooked trying to push the sump [all of us were in Tee shirts] I went left and a
dozen feet further found a cobble crawl with strong air movement. Encouraged,
I moved rocks for several body lengths and soon found better passage and after
about 1:40 hours underground all seven of us exited the resurgence entrance.

We were not sure if any passage was virgin, but certainly were among the first,
if not the first, to do this traverse.

Meanwhile, the others had taken a rope and Alan's topo and walked another mile
up Richmond Hollow to Alan's lead, in a southern side hollow. When those of us
who made the Hurst traverse found them, we learned that some of them had done a
15 foot pit which had 30 feet of passage to a tight crawl where they stopped.
Loftin was just then opening a hole a few feet downhill from the 15 foot pit.
He and Teal squeezed in and reached the same tight crawl at the other end and
then exited. I then went in Jim's entrance and hammered my way through the two
or three body length tight crawl, and after Alan put in a rope, hand-over-handed

it out the pit entrance for a “through trip’ in this tiny 20 foot deep, 70 foot

long dud hole, simply known to us as Alan's Lead.

On our way out the main Richmond Hollow, we stopped at another blowhole 20
feet south of the creekbed [but further west into the hollow than the 20' xX 15'

sink]. David, Alan, Ray, and Chris alternately entered it and went perhaps a

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100 feet, all crawl and quite wet. We left and never had a name for this little

Cave.

I intended to get back pretty soon to push upstream in Hurst Water Crawl, but

it was June 21, 198/7, before the trip happened. Alan Cressler, Gerald Moni, and
I proceeded to Alan's and my cairn of 1984, and we crawled past it 250-300 more

feet. It was definitely wet, but nose-to-celling tactics were not necessary, the

passage averaging 1.5-2 feet high and 6-8 feet wide. We were stopped in a sit-up

room, obviously very close to the survace. The air was warmer and was moving

through the breakdown above us. Water also was coming down through the boulders

in some areas, and crickets were in the dry spots. There were no signs of previous

human visitation. Thus, the exploration of Hurst Water Crawl is probably over.

The total length is somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 feet, while the vertical
extent is about 30 feet.

After we got out, Alan and I walked up the hollow to the same "20' X 15' sink

on the left" I had first noticed March 18, 1970. The upstream end of Hurst Water
Crawl is probably directly below this sink, the water for which issues from a
crawl entrance on the upper side.

ae cave opening was low and for me snug, but Alan's enthusiasm to enter was
strong. Once inside, we took turns leading up a meandering stream crawl. We
could actually stand up in maybe two pockets and stoop-walk tae couple of “rooms.”

Going spied a 7 inch long mudpuppy and going out Alan found another, about 2.5
inches long. The passage finally got too low to follow, though near the end it
was perhaps 15 feet wide. On the way out, we explored a 40 foot parallel passage
[on the right going in], and after about an hour we exited. This cave, all virgin

as far as we could tell, is about 600 feet long with a vertical extent of only

12 feet. We named it Mudpuppy Crawl.

The point to this report, which must seem to some to be a big-to-do about not-

very-much, is that there are still virgin passages or caves left in Georgia to
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explore. The three little caves as of yet are not on the GSS list, but I am

Sure someone will corner Alan Cressler at a DCG meeting and get exact locations

[none of the new caves are plotted on my topo].