Written by Fred Rydholm:
Russell continued to go to the cave in 1987-88 to probe a little further. He was convinced that there was much more there to be seen.
Besides the doorway at the bottom of the trap (the first one he discovered), he thinks there may be several other such openings to that same cave or others like it in the same valley. He also has reason to believe that the doorway by which he gains entrance to the cave cannot be the main entrance. (It certainly seems to have been sealed from within.)
Each time he entered the cave he would gain some new knowledge, but there was always so much more to be seen and discovered. It may take years before the full scope of his discovery is realized.
The five statues continued to fascinate him. He learned through his digging and probing in the silt that they are standing on pedestals. He also noticed that the room where the statues are standing must be something special in respect to the rest of the cave. The roof or ceiling of that room has been cut as smooth as the walls. The walls are also decorated with designs, painted red and yellow, and there seems to be more lamps on the walls there. He noticed that the eyes of the statues and the eyebrows all appear to be painted, and the belts and sword hilts appear to be gold.
The further he went into the cave the more startling were his discoveries. The crypts that had been protected from the silt by their sealed doorways are in almost perfect condition, with the exception of what time will do and the deposit of a fine white powder on everything. (He thinks the powder is possibly from the limestone.) In any case, whatever caused the cave to fill with silt did not affect the three crypts which he examined.
(Russell Burrows):
The burial crypts were found early on in my exploration of the cave and I was certain that no others were going to be discovered. But in 1987, while exploring deeper into the cave, I reached a breakdown. There was a room on the other side!
Having worked my way into that newly-discovered room, I was amazed to find that I could actually stand and walk in that room on the other side of the tiny opening. I have no explanation for it but the flood or whatever filled the other part of the cave had not affected this portion.
This was a whole new piece of the cave and in it was another surprise. Through a breakdown in the main part of the silted cave I could gain entrance to this new part. Later explorations of this new portion led to a dead end at one end and to this large room at the other. The large room is not the end of that part of the cave, but it was in the large room that I made my most exciting discovery. On one wall was a large, round, wheel-like stone; it upright against the wall but sitting in a trough. It was obviously a closer, or a door of some kind, and my curiosity was set on fire.
This stone wheel had been cut from the wall, and the trough in which it rested had been cut beneath it. Apparently, when the wheel was cut free it dropped into the trough and rolled downward, thus sealing whatever it was designed to close. The wheel itself was covered with figures and script of some kind, all beautifully done. I am sure the engraving on this wheel has some very important message about who is behind it, because everything about this room seems quite different, more extravagant and very important.