Ennis Cave

Ennis Cave Trip Report

During the week from March 19 - 25 nine Kansas City Area Grotto, KCAG, members met at Ennis Cave in Arkansas. We were there on the invitation of Randy Rose, the owner, to work on two projects. Randy came from California to work on the construction of a third shelter house and to guide us to spots where he needed photos for a book he is writing on Ennis. The stay for the Kansas City crew ranged from a few days to the full week. The KCAG participants were Rick Hines, Jim Cooley, Shelly Field, Mark Lankford, Jonathan Lowrey, David Mead, John McGuire, Mike Smoker, and Pic Walenta.

Randy led two 6 or 7 hour photo trips. We made another 6 hour trip to Taj Mel Hall and several shorter trips to log about 25 hours of photo work for the week.

We visited and photographed, the Birthday Room, the 40 ft Waterfall, the 55 ft Waterfall, the 100 ft Waterfall, Column Hall, TimBuckTwo, Pinocchios Room, P2, Taj Mel Hall, the Wave, the Womb Room, the Camp Room, Crystals Room , and the Rose Rotundra. We took about 350 photos that quickly got thinned down to about hundred for Randy to pick from for his book. Ill estimate that we got about a third of the shots Randy wants so it looks like well need another couple trips at least. Let me know if you would like to help on a future photo shoot.

We used a Nikon D700 with interchangeable lens and carried as many as 16 Vivitar 285 slave flash units. The slaves were triggered with an infrared flash on the D700. The 100 Waterfall Room and a few other areas required multiple shots to cover the area of interest. Five or six photos were merged together to form the image of the ceiling to floor shots of the formations in the 100 Waterfall Room.

Rick Hines

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Ennis
• Cave
• Arkansas
• caver
• Nikon
• D700
• Rick
• Hines

[gascondy]

AWESOME video! I sure missed not making it this last Memorial Day. I have never seen it with such great lighting. Can't wait to go back. Thanks for posting and great job! Oh, and I really like the groovy music.

[marsbugs]

I need to go here soon.

[cavegirlkb]

This is my favorite cave to go exploring in!!!!!!! Great to see there's a video up of it finally :)