Here's a caving rule people need to QUIT FOLLOWING!

It has been a caving policy, for almost as long as there has been caving, to always take at least one piece of trash out of the cave on every visit.

People, this doesn't apply to the trash in the Trash Room at Jackson Blue!

I have been diving to the Trash Room just about every month for the past six years, and there is only about one-tenth as much trash there as there was when I started. When I was new to it, there were at least twenty soft drink and beer cans within twenty feet of the line, and there were bottles and jars spread around a 250' section of the cave. Now, there's almost no trash at all.

I've been cave diving long enough to witness the disappearance of the Corn Flakes at Devil's, but that is because of poor buoyancy. People taking souvenirs is just plain crass. The "trash" there is akin to specimens found in other caves. It's part of JB's history.

If you have a piece of trash on your mantle that you took from the Trash Room, PUT IT BACK!

I've never made it to the Trash Room. Care to enlighten me on the history here?

Quick, someone mark the calender, its official that someone has requested trash be taken INTO a cave to restore it for the first time in history!

But I agree, leave it alone

this is one thing about cave diving I suppose I'll never understand.

It is old trash from a farmers field across the street. The hole got filled in. You go up the hole until a depth of about 17 feet. It is about 2000 feet in the cave. The trash was cool. The beer cans were opened with church keys. I hope the stop light doesn't get taken.

Ward

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Originally Posted by b1gcountry

Care to enlighten me on the history here?

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A sinkhole used to exist at what is now p2,250'. Folks used to throw trash into the sink, and it ended up in the cave.

From what I have seen, the sink was open during the 60s and early 70s. There are a few Mr. Pibb cans (Mr. Pibb came out in 1972), and all of the beer and soft drink cans had the pull-tab - the old kind where you have the pull-tab to throw away, not the modern kind that stays attached to the can.

The sink is called the Mystery Shaft on maps, and it no longer goes to the surface.

It's really cool to be half a mile from the entrance and turn the corner to see all this stuff strewn about. But who knows how much longer there will be ANY trash.

I'm willing to bet that nobody kept any of the trash as souveniers... you'll probably have to goto the local landfill to find all the old junk. It would be difficult, but far less difficult to find replacement trash :P



I haven't taken anything... but honestly, I don't know if seeing garbage down there is a good thing, no matter how old that junk is...

Never been back that far with that kind of flow so I've never taken anything.

But is a beer can someone tossed in 1970 no longer litter? When does it change from litter to archeology? In my mind a broken pot from 1800 is far different from a can of Pabst.

Mmmmm... Pabst...

I wish people would take more trash out of the caves so certain sections wouldn't have come to be identified by the garbage left.

im with mat on this one.
a neat room. but I can't say I stopped, awestruck at how beautiful the garbage was, and wished for more :P