My wandering ways brought me to Kentucky for a second time this summer. The first road trip was to visit my brother John and family. His son Nickolus gave us a tour of a cave at Natural Bridge State Park and Jeffrey (who really loves caves) came with us to Carter Caves State Resort. Three weeks later with my son “DEG” riding shotgun (taking care of all those Poke’mons) we rode into wonders of the longest cave. Work started Monday morning after a scenic ride around the outside of the national park (ferry was out, low water). The main cave was impressive so the hike to the work sites and back out twice a day was a pleasure. After checking out all the jobs I started the material (fence, PVC pipe, electric lights, wire and wood) from the walkway. Soon I joined the club of those who broke thru the rotted wood. DJ just seconds after a stern warning to pay attention tripped and broke thru the rotted wood and went over the side. (Luck had it that he landed in soft mud). The other side had a few feet of water. He climbed out himself. 

Timmy: Mommy! Johnny fell into the mud! Up to his ankles!
Mom: Darn it! I told him not to get his new shoes wet!
Timmy: Then it’s OK! He went headfirst!

DJ started working carrying bags from the saw area. He didn’t mind being in those dark areas by himself until a ranger told ghost stories on our learning interpretive tour. The Indian found crushed under a rock made sure he was in sight of another caver the rest of the week. Me I like to listen to the quiet… or the echoes. AH!

Over the week we pulled out 100 feet of walkway, a dock, cut it up and moved it to higher ground. The weekend work camps will move it completely out of the cave. I hope next year we can volunteer again to work with the great group of fellow cavers so dedicated in the quest for a better cave.
 
 

I left the Bronx at 2 p.m. Friday to meet Mark in Jersey City to
start a Simmons-Mingo through-trip. Six of us including Bill, Jessica, Robert, and the
other Mark crammed into his van at Clinton Holiday Inn's parking lot. We talked
about everyone behind their backs on the way down to West Virginia. I wondered what
folks said about me when I was not around. I hope I gave them something good to talk
about. As usual it rained hard throughout the drive. When we arrived,
Bill and I decided to sleep in the Mingo cave mouth at the sheep pasture. The others
camped in the field. 

Yvonne, Errol, and Drew from Virginia joined us. We all socialized
inside the cave mouth for the rest of the evening and passed around the good spirits. 
We even tried to make plans for the following day's cross over through-trip. Dave and
Heidi arrived after we passed out. The N.N.J.G. well oiled machine went into full motion the
following morning.

One team drove to Stan's Blowing Hole (which sucked, in our case) on
the Simmons side with our vertical gear. I entered the Mingo side with the other team. 
Hopefully we would meet in the middle and cross over. 
This is one tough cave. It's full of climbs, water, and
horror crawls. This was my first time on this trip, so I didn't know what to expect. The other
group traveled fast, so we crossed much closer to our side. The cave now showed its teeth. 
Every step was more difficult. The number of curses per situation rose dramatically. 
Pet names like "Five F Falls" spontaneously erupted when we crossed a water hazard. 
Our leaders, who had been there before, rose to the difficult challenge of route
finding. For such a linear looking cave map, there are many places to
get lost and never be heard from again. Our team successfully negotiated most of the cave
in 12 hours. We were tired and glad it was almost over. 
Then it happened. The last move to Stan's Ledge near the vertical exit could not
be found. We knew we were close, but no matter how hard we pushed,
crawled, or cursed, the exit eluded us. A horror crawl was checked back and forth
many times in this area until our knees gave out. We were all slowly accepting the
reality. We decided to wait for rescue from the second group. 

In the morning, we hoped they would wake early and realize we were
missing. We remained on what we thought was the trail, so they could find us
fast. The next seven hours seemed like a plot from a bad TV movie. The group was damp,
cold, exhausted, and low on food, water, carbide, and batteries, but kept a sense of
humor. The passage we were held up in now appeared to be filled with apparitions in
plastic garbage bags gyrating in an attempt to stay warm. Some rocked from side to side. 
Some back and forth. I stood and was described by others as moving like Elvis on
hallucinogens. A pattern formed. The garbage bag people would huddle, sleep some, and
snore a bit. We  would wake at different times shivering from the cold. Then walk back
and forth in the few hundred feet of open passage to generate some internal heat and
ward off hypothermia. This became the unspoken rhythm of that evening. A few
gross jokes were told to keep the spirits up. We all took turns being fooled by the
water sounds, thinking they were our saviors. 
I can't speak for the others, but the Donner Party kept creeping
into my mind. Most cavers are bruised and wiry. Not much good meat. Tennis and
butterfly collecting were looking better as replacement sports. I was ready to break the
glass and pull the handle. "Scotty, now would be a good time to beam me up."
I had just finished saying, "I hope the calvary comes over the hill soon," when our
angels in poly-pro appeared at about 9AM. They presented us with food,
water, and hot carbide lamps. The store bought bagel I was given tasted even better
than a fresh one from New York. We were only five minutes from the connection to
Stan's.  Our heros then led us out the vertical exit without further incident. The last
maneuver required crawling through freezing surface water from snow melt. I looked up at
the exit through the last tight climb to see my friends backlit in the blue light. 
I had been reborn after 24 hours. The next hour I spent in my
sleeping bag in Mark's van eating Girl Scout cookies and fantasizing about grownup girl
scouts. This was the only way to raise my core temperature. Everyone made it out
safely, and, of course, we then had to immediately drive home. 
I want to thank our Virginia crew for finding our useless selves. 
Hats off to our novice caver, Heidi. All her future cave trips will have to be easier.

I don't know if all the talk the night before in the cave mouth was responsible for our
getting lost. Since we were loud and cavalier, the cave might have heard us. This is only a
theory, mind you.  I was glad to be invited to participate in this adventure. I was
finally battered severely enough to forget my day-to-day problems. It could be compared
to slamming parts of your anatomy in a window. It feels so good when it stops. I
went through the usual stages after this kind of trip. The day after: I was glad to get
out and couldn't understand why anybody would want to go caving. The second day: I
could go caving in the future. The third day: Let me check the grotto activity list for
the next good trip. 
 
 

Who:  Yvonne Droms, Errol Glidden, Carl Heitmeyer and Mark Skove.

It's Friday the first day of our three day caving trip in TAG.
Mark and I left NJ at 3 PM on Thursday the 5th and drove through the
night picking up Yvonne and Errol in Harrisonburg, VA. We arrived in
Chattanooga TN around 4 AM and slept in the van until 8AM. 
After a quick breakfast we figured it was late enough to call on a mutual
friend and we then proceeded to hunt down Bruce and Lynn Smith's house.
We found Bruce in his driveway packing his car for a cave trip. After a
short chat Bruce gives us the inside story on the caver's weather/water
forecast. The water will be high everywhere he tells us, we just had 5
inches of rain the day before yesterday. He used the word "sporting" more
than once to describe our upcoming itinerary. 

Finally we arrive at the parking area for Neversink. The hike is
about average for a TAG cave. 15 to 20 minutes and about 300' elevation
gain. I'm leading the way with one of the ropes and I can hear the water
long before even seeing the sink. When I get to the edge of the sink the
sight is spectacular. The waterfall coming in the far side bounces
once up top then about 50' down it hits a ledge then free-falls the rest
of the way down. The pit itself is open air, 50' by 100' wide and 161'
deep. Because the entrance is so big the pit doesn't look much deeper
than 100'. After we drop the rope bags however, the depth of the cave is
readily apparent. My 300' rope bag now looks the size of someone's glove
on the cave floor below.

On the way down due to the beauty of the drop we each take a camera and
decide to take numerous photos. At the bottom there's no escaping a
slight mist, but no one seems to mind, we're too excited having finally
dropped this picturesque and classic TAG pit. We're all fresh and climb
out fast. I think every one was up in under 5 minutes each. Mark made it
up to the anchor tree in 3 minutes and 30 seconds later he was over the
lip. 

At the top we are all still hungry for vertical. Mark tells me he saw a
small pit very close by so we head for that. It's only a 40 footer, but
we're here now and it will be a while before we get a chance to come back
again. So like typical cave consumers we rig and drop this tiny pit.
 
 

Who: Yvonne Droms, Errol Glidden, Carl Heitmeyer and Mark Skove.

The directions that Andy Zellner gave us were right on the money. We
locate and GPS find "Water-works Cave" for a later trip and then go over
to nearby Larson's well. Larson's well is a new discovery, it was "dug"
open in 1994. Some TAG cavers while ridge walking were told of a man who
lives "up the holler" that talked of having a crack on his hill that was
200' deep with a lake at the bottom. The cavers thought "sure how many
times have you heard that" but this time it turned out not to be an
exaggeration. After blasting the crack wide enough to get in, it was
surveyed. The map shows 161' entrance pit and only 20' away is another
39' pit. After this the cave passage continues another 400' following the
water down some 3 or 4 climbable water falls. Due to the rain they had,
Bruce's advice, our desire to do the whole cave and because the 39' pit
is directly in the water, we decide to go with wet suits.

We drop the entrance pit and after rigging the 39 footer, there's some
discussion about whether or not to do the last drop. The water is
pounding! "Can you climb in that much water?", "Can you breathe?", "If you
can't get over the lip, I don't think a change-over to rappel is a
possibility".

Straws are drawn and I come up short. It's decided I will drop the pit
and come back up before anyone else goes down. Bruce Smith was right,
"very sporting" is how I would describe the rappel. Rigging my ascenders
into the rope just behind the waterfall I now begin the climb back up.
As I get closer to the lip it brings me more and more into the main flow
of the waterfall. As I near the lip the water is pounding my helmet, and
fans out in a cone like shape, that allows me to breathe without a
problem. Just as I begin to think "how much more of this can I take" my
head clears the lip, and I realize I can make it.

Yvonne is now convinced it's doable and agrees to try it after Mark goes.
The down-climbs themselves are a little tricky because of the water flow
but traction is good and soon we find ourselves at the end of the cave. 
The climb up the 39' waterfall pit is usually followed by a WOOH! of
excitement as we clear the waterfall lip.

Due to the roar of the waterfall it's impossible to hear from the
entrance as Mark calls "off rope" at the top of the entrance pit. The
climb out ends up taking over a hour as we allow each other extra time to
make sure they are off rope.

Our first day in TAG and we've dropped 4 pits, for a total of 401' of rope
work! I can't wait until tomorrow! 
 
 

Where: Simmons-Mingo, cross-over through trip. Mingo, WVa
When: March 21-22, 1998
Who: Mark Skove, Bill Murray, Bob Cohen, Dave Hall, Heidi Stankavich, Yvonne Droms

It's eleven-thirty, another normal starting time for New Jersey cavers who had to drive nine hours to get to Simmons-Mingo. It's drizzling but we don't care, we just finished eating a great breakfast of bacon and eggs and toast and muffins, served by caver-cook Mark Skove in the shelter of the cave entrance. Stalactites are dripping mud into our coffee, but it's nice to be out of the wind and rain.

Of our eleven member group, five drive around to Stan's Blowing Hole entrance to start from that end. Our group of six enters through the sheep meadow. We'll meet half-way then continue on through, derig and bring back the car the others took. Much less driving around and a good plan.

Everything goes quite well for a long time. Mark is our leader and knows the way really well as far as the cable ladder since he's used to doing the "loop." After that we occasionally do some searching, but that was to be expected. It's well-known that the through-trip is much more difficult in this direction and few people attempt it. Mark has never done it this way, only from the other direction, and so he puts his mind in reverse to figure things out. It's hard to do, the chronology is wrong, and things look so different backwards. Places which were obvious in one direction, like coming out from a little hole under a rock into booming passage, become very difficult to find when the hole is hidden or there are five others just like it. I'm constantly amazed at how he's able to find the route amongst all the seemingly identical possibilities. I've gone through this cave in both directions more than once and except for recognizing some features here and there I'm no help at finding the way, so I become very frustrated at myself.

After a while things slow down. Some in our group start to drag and the difficulties of the cave become harder to surmount. This cave is just rigged in reverse, it's meant for the other direction! It's easy to arm-rappel down a 30 foot rope, but much harder to climb up it without ascending gear. Heidi is hanging in there beautifully, courageously attempting everything without a complaint crossing her lips. It's only her second cave! What an initiation... Her glasses break at some point and we stop to fix them. Duct tape to the rescue.

We stop and we stop and we stop. Change of carbide, change of batteries, we're not getting anywhere. We should have been out the other end by now and we're not half-way through... We plug along, surmounting all obstacles slowly but surely. We eat lunch at the cable ladder. Then comes the drop already rigged with two ropes, but we add a third, some webbing to use as an arm-rappel. When we try to pull it down, it is stuck. Dave goes back up to free it and quickly slithers back down. 

Soon we'll reach the water passage, my favorite part. I'm determined to fully enjoy that part of the cave, so since there is no getting lost here, I take off ahead to be in clear water. It helps me pick where to step, since my sprained ankle is still giving me trouble. What a beautiful stream... The water is running faster than I've ever seen it, and the current is noticeable against the back of my legs. It's way above knee level at times. I'm wondering what the waterfall area will bring if the current is so strong here already.

We soon find out. As we get nearer, the water, forced through narrowing walls, produces a deafening roar... I love it but wonder what it'll be like to go down the chute, will it pull my feet out from under me and sweep me away? It looks pretty daunting and I have no clue where I would even want to step. How deep is it? Is it even feasible? What should we do, risk it? Turn around? Where is the other group? Did this obstacle stop them too, and did they have to go back to Stan's? Mark and I are just in the middle of debating this when miracle! we hear voices approaching! The other group is coming! What a coincidence. Errol shows up, chimneying along the walls just above torrent level, making it look super easy of course. He stops at a wider area and steps into the water, showing me it's not as big a deal as I feared. I'm relieved and very happy that those guys showed up just in time to demonstrate!

We all gather, right in the middle of the most beautiful part of the cave, and talk for a while. We're happy to see each other. That group is having a fantastic fast fun time and they're all enthusiastic. They ask us if some of us want to go back with them, but we stick together and off we go again, continuing to progress slowly. We get confused at City Blocks. Mark's hunch that we need to step across from the top of one onto another block is completely right, but that upward jump actually looks unfeasible from our direction, so we hesitate. We decide not to attempt it, since sliding back down after jumping would mean a nasty fall. So we send out everyone in all directions, even if we don't really know what we're looking for. It's a neat maze and people keep appearing on top of blocks or from around another corner. I've been here before, and what did I do? Have I seen this block already? If we weren't so late, it would be fun!

Someone eventually finds the way. Yeah, one more hurdle behind us... Not many confusing spots left after this, or so we thought. We go through the very muddy, slippery "etrier-down, traverse over the scary pit, etrier-up section," and that takes forever. We pass packs through to help, but after a few there is nowhere to put them up in front so we stop. I'm in front and unsure of which hole to go up into. Mark yells from a few people behind "go up into the hole at eleven o'clock." Good, that was the one I was in. I hope it means he remembered it in reverse, having come out it from five o'clock the last time! Well, I won't insist. I'm in the midst of breakdown and pretty confused about all the holes around me. The going is tough, very tight and steep and convoluted. Up and down and around. I hope I'm not leading everyone into a different part of the cave... Communication is impossible. I decide to always follow the strong wind current, that should lead us to Stan's pit, right?

After a while we are all belly-crawling along a drippy muddy passage. Eventually we emerge into walking passage and things look good. That is until we realize we don't remember this part and we might be wrong. So off the entire group goes, back through all the nasty stuff, then back again, and we search and search for hours. I recognize a little pit traverse nearby and I'm pretty sure we're on course. We finally give up searching at 2 am, more than fourteen hours after entering the cave. We decide the group is too tired, we've seen it all five times, and there is just nothing there. We'll just have to wait and trust our friends to come back through Stan's and lead us to the elusive connection. After all that... and so close to the exit, how frustrating...

We cover up in plastic and sit on our packs or kneepads. The wait starts. Everyone is introverted, thinking their own thoughts, lost in their own misery. How long will it take till our friends are out, have eaten, have slept and start worrying? It's not a question of "if," luckily, just "when," since we fully trust our buddies to do the right thing. So we have to just hang in there and keep warm. That in itself is a chore. I'm muddy and wet and I'm shivering uncontrollably. I can't possibly go to sleep. I listen to three people softly snoring in the darkness. It never lasts long, since they can only ever catnap before the cold wakes them or they become too uncomfortable. I'm jealous of their ability to fall asleep so easily. We get up and walk around every 40 minutes or so. I'm fine, really. I have food left and don't even feel hungry. I have ibuprofen and distribute some. We're all thirsty and out of water, so I decide to go get some since I can use my water-purifying pills. What a mistake that was... I search all over, crawling through wet mud toward the most promising, loudest drips, only to find that it would take hours to fill a bottle. I got myself soaked again for nothing. 

So I freeze on, stiff and miserable. Mark's watch beeps on the hour. One time the beeping happens again with almost no interval. Yes, that means I must have fallen asleep for almost an hour! Around 8 am we revive a bit and walk around. We know it shouldn't be too long now.

Nine o'clock. Bob says: "It should be time for the cavalry to show up." And five seconds later we hear them! Bill screams back and everyone is so excited... Errol, then Jessika and Drew show up. Our heroes! Jessika distributes cheese and canned pears, what a welcome treat. And we drink lots of water. We gather up our stuff and follow Errol, who shows us how close we were, if we had only decided to try that invisible inconspicuous #@*&# hole, which, to make it even less obvious, faces in the opposite direction...

Coming up through the terrible slot is made easy by Errol and Drew who lift us out of it by sheer muscle power. I think they elongated Bill a bit... Finally we're at Stan's pit and then starts the last push to get everyone out. Errol helps people get on rope, Drew sits in a waterfall at the top of the rope, half hypothermic, helping people get off rope. Then it's on outwards through the windy cold and wet crawlway, then the nasty ice covered entrance drop. Bob is in it now, just ahead of me, and slip-slides around miserably for a while. I'm asked to help but only my head would fit in the hole under his feet, and he would trample me! So I can't. I'm lying in very tight quarters in an icy puddle and I'm hoping he gets out soon... After a few tries and some help from above, he is free of Simmons-Mingo. I too emerge, into the arms of the welcoming committee, Robert and Mark Stover and Jessika. They are patiently waiting there, helping to haul up the packs while standing freezing in two inches of new snow...

Two fast running streams left to cross and then finally after twenty-four hours in the cave, warm clothes, warm car, cold beer... and many new memories, good and bad, new lessons learned, and another shared experience with my NNJG pals. As a final analysis, I had a great time, if only I could erase the seven hours of shivering. As Mark put it: "Everyone should have to spend a few hours in a cave waiting to be found; it builds character." All in all nothing major went wrong, no one was hurt, everyone learned something, and some gained experience in preparing for a rescue. In my book, that amounts to a successful trip.
 
 

Where: Simmons-Mingo Cave, Randolph County, West Virginia
When: March 21, 1998
Who: Errol Glidden, Robert Monczka, Mark Stover, Jessika Thomas, Drew Toth

Simmons-Mingo is rough, tough stuff, and there just isn't any way around it. No other cave has so chewed me up and spat me out and worn me down. It's got everything you want if you're in the mood for abuse: climbs, crawls, squeezes, route finding, and real cold water, and miles to go before you sleep. As one grizzled cave veteran told me at the OTR bonfire, "When you get out of that cave you feel like you just sparred a couple of rounds with the champ. Yes indeed, sonny, you do the Simmons-Mingo through trip, you're gonna know about it afterwards."

Simmons-Mingo is like dinner at your mother in law's when you eat real fast so you can get it over with. Big mistake. At "Mom's" they see your empty plate and they pile it on, higher and deeper. At Simmons-Mingo you start out strong and pretty soon you've got all the cave you can handle and then it just gives you more, more, more, and you have no choice but to slow down and savor the punishment.

But it's the best kind of punishment. They should change the name from Simmons-Mingo to Simmons-Masochism because it's got all the twisted cave perversions this side of whips, chains and rubber suits. At the end of the through trip everyone is battered and beat up, happily showing off their new bruises and eating and drinking in a big way before a well deserved sleep. If there was ever a place to send you flying through cave passages in your dreams, this is it.

We planned a crossover trip. During and after the obligatory breakfast and gabbing in the cave entrance at the sheep meadow, we settled on a group of five and a group of six. Mark Skove, Bill Murray, Yvonne Droms, Dave Hall, Heidi Stankavich, and Bob (Guru) Cohen went through the historic entrance at the sheep meadow and the rest of us drove around to Stan's Blowing Rock entrance on the other side of Mingo Knob. Before we left, Bill gave me his map and Dave gave me a copy of the hand written directions he had made a few years ago.

Stan's Blowing Rock entrance was clear, thanks to Errol and some of his friends, who had done the through trip the week before and spent a couple of hours digging out gravel and mud which had slid down the hill into the narrow entrance. The heavy rain of the previous day had not brought in any new debris, but the water was flowing and we got wet, chilled and muddy right away.

There were some big icicles in one of the small rooms between the entrance and the pit, and the cold wind was really whistling into the cave. But once we were all down the rope everything got comfortable. Errol's memory was sharp and the early going through crawlways, fissures and breakdown was at a fairly zippy pace. We got stalled for a while at City Blocks, but Robert eventually found the connection. There were two ways through to the other side: an evil, mean, bitter pinchy squeeze, and a frightening crawl over breakdown that got uncomfortably close to a ceiling that looked like a bunch of bowling balls held up with mud and persuasion. When we all got through somebody said something about Simmons-Mingo being nothing more than a beat up old broken down cave.

Everyone pretty much agreed with that, and just looking up at the ceiling sometimes was a scary thing to do. Dave's directions came in real handy a few times, but we didn't rely on them often. We'd cave for an hour or two until someone (usually Drew) would announce "Story Time." Then we'd sit and have a snack and I'd read from Dave's often graphic description of the section of cave we had just done. It was remarkable how accurate they were. One crowd-pleasing description went something like, "Crawl, drop down at left, crawl, stoop, crawl, cross stream, can't stay dry, climb, crawl, tight, stay left, go low, crawl."

After four hours of this kind of thing we entered the stream passage and soon heard the rumble of the waterfall. We met the other group right at the top of the cascade, and climbed up through the torrent for a brief reunion. They were not moving as quickly as we were, but they were all still enthusiastic. We talked for a few minutes and then our group moved on in a somewhat subdued attitude. We knew we would not get out of the cave until at least 9 or 10 that night, and we knew they would be hours after us. There would be no bonfire that night, no trading of war stories, no tall tales. But we also knew there would be as much food and beer as we could handle.

We soon left the water and found some easy walking and big passage, and before too long we were at the cable ladder. Simmons Mingo is shaped roughly like a needle. We entered the cave through Stan's at the point of the needle. Where the eye of the needle connects with the shaft you can go two ways to get to the sheep meadow. The low road follows the stream passage, and the higher route above the cable ladder follows some unpleasant crawling through the Rectum and the Jar of Marbles.

We decided to go down to the stream passage, even though we were less confident of route finding this way. Although we pushed it nearly to the end, with Jessika leading the way into every stray lead, the cave got the better of us and we never found the connection. So we decided to go back and up the cable ladder and out through the other side of the loop. This wasn't a great loss since we'd planned on doing the loop on Sunday, but finding the way ourselves would have been satisfying.

The upper part of the loop contains some of the roughest caving and trickiest route finding of the through trip. While poking my way into a promising but false lead, my carbide light sputtered out. I had some water left but decided to drink it since we were close to the exit. I caved by maglight power until I caught up with the group and then accepted some spirited abuse from the electric crowd before Errol filled my lamp from his water bottle. From there it was a bit more route finding and then the unpleasant journey through the Jar of Marbles.

When we made it through, we stopped at Clay Perry rock and had an early celebration. Then it was up the monstrous breakdown pile and into the cave where we'd had breakfast. There was snow on the ground outside and a chill in the air. Our feelings of satisfaction were diminished somewhat by the fact that the other group was not out yet and there didn't seem to be much point in lighting a fire. So we had a quiet dinner and talked for a while. As for the others, we knew they were in for a late night. Our projection of their rate of travel would put them at the rope near the far side of the cave after midnight, then they'd all have to climb, change, and drive around to the sheep meadow. It didn't make sense to sit up and wait. We all went to sleep and I don't know about everyone else, but I dreamed of cave passages.
 
 

Where: Guy's Cave (Eureka, Alabama)
When: Sunday February 8, 1998
Who: Andy Zellner, Paul Massey, Mark Skove, Carl Heitmeyer, Errol Glidden, Yvonne Droms.
 

It's so much fun to cave in TAG, you never know which state you're in and what time it actually is... After very little sleep, for a change, we met our "guide of the day" for breakfast in South Pittsburg, Tennessee. We were punctual and went by the local time, which made sense to us, but what we didn't know was that TAG cavers from Georgia ignore that fact because it becomes too confusing and always use Eastern time, therefore we were one hour late, and had not eaten yet. Not good... 

Luckily our guide Andy and his friend Paul were very laid back and super friendly and didn't seem too annoyed. We talked about water levels, it seemed to be a favorite subject that weekend, after all the rain the region got. Andy had previously suggested doing Will's Welsh Well, which includes the famous Nozzle, a five foot water-filled body sized tube followed by a tricky 15' downclimb. Somehow you would have to fight the current and stop yourself before plunging with the stream into the pit and all that sounded super exciting. But with the water levels being what they were, "the highest they've ever been" as we were assured for the nth time, it probably would end up being a one-way trip and we'd be stuck at the bottom until the next two-month dry spell.

So that great sounding cave was eliminated and Andy suggested another alternative: Guy's Cave, a succession of about 8 drops with more beautiful cave at the end. 476' of vertical difference, 273' of which would be on rope, the rest we'd be free climbing. The good part was that we'd be in the stream most of the time, therefore wet suit caving and waterfall climbs. Well that sounded like too much fun to pass up and we enthusiastically agreed to it. Off we went and soon we stopped on a dirt road and got ourselves ready for another typical "let's climb up to the top of this mountain so we can descend to the base of it underground" hike for a change. Couldn't TAG put a few more of their cave entrances nearer the road to accommodate us lazy northern folk???

Scrambling through the woods up crags avoiding brambles and low branches while carrying heavy packs and all the rope for more than half an hour was fun as usual. You even had to be careful not to fall into small pits, they were all over the place, under piles of dead leaves! The reward was a beautiful mountain stream tumbling into a rocky depression, with a side pit next to it, and yet one more pit nearby. Such a pretty setting. 

We put on our wet suits while some rigged the nearby 80 foot pit to be tackled after we came out of Guy's. Andy and Paul literally jumped into the cave, quickly rigging the first five drops with a 300 foot rope, clipping chunks of it into convenient bolts at the top of each pit. There was no natural rigging in that cave at all. The last two drops were rigged separately with a 100 ft and 85 ft rope respectively.

We went in around 12:30 pm. We followed the rope downwards, getting on and off rope over and over, while hearing echoes of "off rope" calls down the line. It was such a cool experience. In some of the pits you were in the full force of the waterfall, other pits were drier. Two required rope pads, which were velcroed onto the rope and needed to be added and removed each time someone came through.

At about the level of the seventh drop, we took a quick side trip to check out a flowstone and formations area called "the Gallery," then on we went downwards. After we finished descending all the pits, and slithering down some crevices here and there, we eventually left our vertical gear on a ledge and continued along the tumbling stream for another fifteen minutes of pretty caving. At the end, a low air passage stopped most of us. Carl went in for a little bit, but then decided against keeping his head under water for too long. So while Errol and Paul explored a lead up high, which rewarded them with another fifty feet of very decorated passage, the rest of us started heading back, free climbing our way back up to our packs. We ate and got geared up there. Since I only wore a farmer john wet suit, I got chilled each time I stopped, so it was time for me to start the trip back up all the various steps.

Every now and then I'd stop for a minute so I could fully enjoy the feeling of being in a glistening smooth wet world filled with the noise of rushing water. Vertical stream passage ranks the highest in my list of favorite cave features. The waterfalls were so beautiful, the powerful stream gushing over the lip, falling gracefully in a slight arc, then landing into a pool of foaming water, separating into millions of sparkling droplets along the way.

Looking up at the first one, the most powerful one of all, the thought crossed my mind that not being able to get up over the lip easily while struggling with my face in the full force of the stream would not be too pleasant, if not downright nasty or deadly, but I pushed those ugly thoughts away and went for it. Gotta do it... No other way out... I clipped my frog system onto the rope and started up, keeping my face down the entire time so I could breathe, water pounding on my helmet and shoulders. It really was kind of cool. No way to look up, to see how far the lip was. At the lip I pushed away from the wall and got my face out of the water. I struggled for a while to get my pack up through the strong current and onto the ledge. That's when Mark informed me that he had been standing in the stream bed diverting some of the water away from that part of the lip! As it was, the current was so strong I don't want to know what it was like without that help! Mark had had trouble there and was trying to make my life less miserable. What happened was that just as his head reached the lip his foot loop came off with the force of the current, so his face was in the stream and he couldn't find an air pocket to breathe in. He struggled to find the foot loop which he needed to ascend past the lip and in the process swallowed quite a bit of water, before finally getting himself out of that predicament. Later Andy assured him the water was safe to drink...

The ascents were never more than 66 feet long, and that suited me fine, since we were frogging it. After all the ropewalking (over 1000 feet) of the two previous days, it felt good to use a different set of muscles. Our group progressed nicely, climbing up through the different levels, staying separate so the rope was always free when we got to the next one. It was like caving completely alone, except that you knew people were around, and you could hear occasional "off rope" calls mixed in with the sound of the waterfalls.

We got out around 5:OO pm, still in daylight and able to enjoy the pretty scenery. I didn't feel like setting any vertical record for the weekend, so I passed up the 80 foot side pit while gung-ho Paul and Errol did it. What we had accomplished over the three days was plenty for me, and the Guy's trip was a perfect grand finale to a great TAG weekend.
 
 

When: February 7, 1998
Where: Walker County, Georgia
Who: Carl Heitmeyer, Mark Skove, Errol Glidden, Yvonne Droms and Dan Twilley
 

It's our second full day (and the first trip for me) in TAG and it
promises to be a day to remember. Carl has arranged to meet Dan Twilley,
a local caver and our guide for the day, for breakfast at the Cracker
Barrel in Chattanooga. 

After a hearty breakfast (knowing it will be the last real food we see
for quite a while) we head Southeast for the one hour drive to the cave. 
The parking area is next to a spring known as the Blue Hole and the water
that wells up in visible torrents is the resurgence of the stream at the
base level of Ellison's. Dan says he's never seen the water flow any
stronger than it was that morning. At first the significance of that
remark was lost on me. Later I found out that this was Dan's 140th trip
to Ellison's and it was going to be a wet one.

The first thing everyone who has ever been to Ellison's says to the
uninitiated is "The hike to the cave is murder." That's not much of an
exaggeration. I volunteered to carry the main rope (660' of 11mm) up
the mountain and in cave to the warm-up pit. I figured I would get my
share of rope toting out of the way early. It's a long walk all right,
almost an hour nonstop, and mostly uphill, although the trail is in good
shape and not terribly steep. The gain in elevation is something like
1400' and we were well into the snow line by the time we reached the
entrance.

We entered the cave at about noon. The entrance is in the bottom of a
small sink and the normally dry 4 foot diameter opening was shared with a
strong flowing stream of snow melt water. With a little finesse and a
lot of teamwork we managed to get ourselves and all our gear into the
main stream passage without getting totally soaked. From there it was a
pleasant 15 minutes of caving to the top of the warm-up pit.

The rigging was straight forward and soon we were on rappel. This drop
is 125' and was just outside the fall line of the stream we had followed
into the cave. Rappelling next to a roaring waterfall is very exciting
and made me wonder what was in store for us later.

After leaving the bottom of the 1st drop the next obstacle was an
annoying 25' up-climb into the attic area of the cave. This climb
proved to be a real nuisance due to the nature of the lip. Getting
cavers up was no big deal but it presented a challenge to get the main
rope up. After a bit of a struggle we all made it up and we were on the
move again.

The next stop was the attic. This is the high rig point for Fantastic
Pit. Rigging here gives you a 586' totally free drop into TAG Hall. 
Unfortunately, we had to pass this up due to the raging waterfall
entering the pit at about the 400' level. While in the attic we met a
caver who was in the process of replacing some bolts at the balcony rig
point some 80' below the attic. His modus operandi was to rappel down to
the balcony level, lock off his rack and swing his pack which was on a
20' tether over to the balcony in order to pull himself to the rigging
point. All this while hanging over 500 feet above the floor of the pit. 
All I can say is thank God for people like that! Did I mention he was
caving solo? When asked about that he said with typical Southern
equanimity "Well, you're here."

We made our way beyond the attic and began to look for the route that
would bring us to the Smokey area of the cave. Our guide had never been
to this part of the cave but we were armed with a good verbal description
and before long we were rigging the nuisance drop into the Smokey area. 
The purpose of going off the beaten path was that Smokey One Pit offered
a dry rappel into TAG hall in any weather condition. The disadvantage is
that an additional 150' rope is needed to reach the top of the pit. Carl
was the first down and called up that he was in a canyon with a pit at
either end. He decided to rappel Smokey Two Pit while he waited for the
rest of us to join him. Smokey Two eventually gets you to TAG Hall but
through a series of drops and climbs. The first part of the pit is a
279' drop to a ledge where Carl looked around and then came back up.

Now that we were sure the other pit was Smokey One we rigged to the
bolts, backed up to a BFR and dropped the rope. Wow, it really takes a
long time for the rope to fall 500 feet! I was first over and since this
was my longest in cave rappel to date I took my time and really enjoyed
the ride. The pit is about 50 feet in diameter and free all the way. As
promised, the pit was dry and mostly free of fog. It took quite a while
before I could see the bottom even with my very bright halogen light.

After we were all down Carl signed us into the register while the rest of
us walked over to the bottom of Fantastic. The water was thundering down
and the wind was howling. The pit was full of mist swirling around and
visibility was less than a hundred feet. Not the day to do this pit.

Once on the bottom the cave is very similar to other caves we've all been
to. Dan suggested we head into the main part of the cave in the general
direction of Incredible Pit. Along the way we passed some of the well
known points in Ellison's. One such place is known as the "carbide dump", a
large, grayish white inflow of granular material that gave the impression
of a massive carbide dumping ground. Other highlights were a long
sinuous passage called the "Camel Raceway" and an excellent example of
"slickensides" where massive slabs of rock slid against each other during
an earthquake generating so much heat that the first few inches on either
side of the fault melted and then crystallized while cooling. Eventually
we reached an area called the North Pole which featured some crystal
clear stalactites. Very pretty. Dan told us the story of a caver friend of
his whose ashes were interred directly below the North Pole formation. 
We respectfully gave a moment of silence for our fallen comrade and then
decided it was time to begin the long trek back to the surface. 

When we got back to the bottom of the pit we decided that in the interest of
time Dan and Errol and Yvonne and I would climb tandem. Then Carl would
solo up. It was a good plan taking the tandem climbers approximately 30
minutes to get off rope and Carl just over 20 minutes. Yvonne and I used
the technique where the first climber goes up for 50-75 feet and then
rests while the other climber catches up. This works great. You get
plenty of time to look around and enjoy where you are and you never
really get winded. I imagine one could climb all day using this method. 

About halfway up you begin to realize how insignificant you are inside
the bowels of Mother Earth. Carl's light seemed an eternity below me and
Dan and Errol's lights above seemed to be impossibly far away. The
unchanging sameness of the walls that passed by just out of my reach
added to my sense of floating in a space where time and distance didn't
fit my normal definition of reality. The spell was broken when Yvonne
called out "I'm at the lip!" and then a couple of minutes later "Off
rope." 

Next was the fun job of pulling up over 600 feet of rope and stuffing it
in the bag. Once that was done we began to spread out a little to avoid
bunching up at the bottom of the drops. This worked very well and kept
everyone from getting cold due to sitting too long. At the warm-up pit I
climbed first and dropped a second rope (actually the other half of the
300' rope we used there) so two could climb at once. This proved very
helpful as Dan came up on one rope while I hauled the big rope up the
other. He was able to help the rope past the ledges saving a lot of time
and aggravation.

Now the end was in sight. The water was still gushing at the entrance so
we got a nice wake up call for the hike back down off the mountain. We
exited at about 11:30pm tired and exhilarated and full of new memories. 
On the way down the hill we met a group on the way up. They were
sporting wetsuits and were planning to drop Fantastic in spite of the
water. They claimed experience in Ellison's and I haven't heard reports
of a rescue so I guess they made it.

Ellison's is considered the creme de la creme of TAG caving, a reputation
which is well deserved. For those with the equipment and experience to
take on this kind of vertical trip it's not to be missed. As for me, to
quote the irascible Arnold S. "I'll be back".
 
 

Where: Hurricane Ridge Cave, Hillsdale, Monroe County, WV
Who: Ed McCarthy, Phil Murray, Gary Vermillion, Dennis Melko, Tom Malabad, Frank Abbato and Yvonne Droms
When: Saturday morning 1/23 till Monday afternoon 1/25/99
 

We should have known better but people with our temperaments make a habit of taking chances when they shouldn't. Some day we'll learn. On Saturday morning, Jeff Bray and Kristen Matak, although somewhat reluctant due to the weather report calling for rain, agreed to lead Ed's photo crew into Hurricane Ridge Cave. Since we were only going to stay for six hours, and it takes four for the stream to rise under *normal* circumstances, we thought by monitoring the stream, we'd be out in time even if it started raining.

The entrance sinkhole was dry except for a small stream entering through its usual hole away from the entrance shaft. We proceeded through the entrance series of squeezes, downclimbs, duckunders and waterfall drops. The photo session started, down the water passages then up into the upper, dry parts of the cave, the Eye, then Cloud City. Jeff, feeling sick, left with Kristen and exited in dry conditions just as it started raining. The rain turned into a downpour of a few inches in a couple of hours, creating a flash flood and turning the entrance sinkhole into a whirlpool within an hour and a half.

When the seven of us came back to within earshot of the stream to check on it, we realized we were in trouble. The trickle of water had turned into a raging torrent and we had been in the cave for only 4 hours... We immediately attempted to exit but after only about ten minutes, Tom, who was one of the original explorers of the cave, realized by peeking at the passage ducking under a flowstone drapery that if the water was that close to the ceiling there, there was no way that we were later going to get through the first of the three entrance constrictions... Knowing that the water could still be rising and that we could easily be trapped in the very wet and windy entrance sequence, we decided to turn around. Since we would have to wait at least 8 to 12 hours for the water to recede, we went into the upper drier regions where we knew a flood pack had been stashed while the cave was being surveyed, for just such an eventuality.

The pack contained a foam pad, a tarp, a very large strong plastic bag, and an invaluable asset: a bag full of about 100 three-inch candles. We set up camp. Three people used their emergency plastic bags or survival blankets to create individual heat domes, and four fashioned a type of shallow tent out of the tarp. We used the pad as well as some of the wetsuits and coveralls for floor insulation, and candles inside for warmth. In the 18-inch tall tent, we hugged and rotated the outside people to the warmer inside positions whenever anyone got too cold. We stayed calm and kept our spirits up, knowing it was just a question of waiting it out until the water had gone down enough. The fact that everyone on the trip was very experienced and prepared made for a very calm, relaxed atmosphere. We all wore wetsuits, although I only had a farmer john, and we wore polypropylene or fleece balaclavas and neoprene gloves.

We climbed back down to the stream every couple of hours to monitor the water level, and after it peaked at 5 pm, then receded somewhat by 11 pm on Saturday eve, we gave it another shot. Our second push got us to the first constriction, which turned out to be passable if you got fully immersed, so only Tom and Frank went in to push ahead. They got stopped at the second constriction and had to turn around. We retreated to our tents again, knowing we were in for another long wait. Our checks of the water level continued, and we were extremely disappointed when the level started to rise again after a few hours, indicating more rain outside. By 2:30 am on Sunday morning, the water peaked again, and it had risen by more than a foot in less than two hours according to the rocks we strategically placed in the stream. Scary to know we could have been in between constrictions at a time like that.

That's when we started rationing food severely and fashioned the large plastic bag into a second tent holding three. We huddled together closely, wrapping arms around each other to generate warmth. The candles helped immensely, but they tended to burn holes into the ceiling when we dozed off while on candle duty... We talked and joked and dozed and planned, and some snored, making me oh so very jealous that they could sleep. No one complained of the cold or the hard ground or the hipbones killing us after lying in the same positions for 8 to 12 hours at a time. There was nothing to do but to conserve heat and energy, and lying down was the only option in the tents. Our fingers started looking like dried prunes and we were chafing badly in our wetsuits. Each trip to the bathroom involved removing a few top layers before getting to the wetsuit, but it gave us something to do, like checking the status of the water and warming up from the climb back up into the Eye from the stream level. As we got weaker from our lack of food, we had to be very careful with all the slippery climbs required to get to and from the stream. It could have become a true crisis if someone had gotten hurt.

Our drinking water became very low, so I produced my iodine pills and we filled all our bottles at a ceiling drip. Doesn't taste bad at all, surprisingly enough! We pooled all our food and rationed out one handful of peanuts or one half beef jerky each time, every nine hours or so, only allowing ourselves a bit more protein and sugar just before the push attempts.

Our third attempt came around 8:30 pm on Sunday, about 22 hours after the last one. We thought for sure the water level had dropped enough, it was the lowest it had been, so we all "folded" camp and gathered all our stuff and left in a very optimistic mood. Back into the pretty stream we went, we were moving again and it felt good after the forced immobility in the tents. The stream passages in Hurricane Ridge are gorgeous, walls lined with chert and white water rushing by, trying to push us over. The current was strong! Little waterfalls to climb up, flowstone formations to crawl over, full of calm little rimstone pools oblivious of the crisis below. We got to the first then the second constriction, and by then we were fully wet again. We were approaching the last 50 feet of passage, which contains some convoluted squeezing and up-climbs and that's when we made a real fun discovery: the first of three plastic soda bottles bobbing around in an eddy! With a colorful cyalume stick in it, how cute! We were thrilled. We had to get a knife to get the message out, the cyalume and the Slim Jims and the candy coated raisins got in the way... 

We eagerly read the message, which luckily had the time and date on it (thanks forever for that, guys!) and we were overjoyed to read that it hadn't rained in more than 12 hours, and that no more rain was expected. But our joy was short lived, the entrance passage was not passable yet: "Do NOT come out, we will come and get you when feasible," it said, and that meant another exhausting push was for naught. Since we were already there, we decided to push on anyway and check it out, and Tom managed to get to about ten feet from the entrance and to make light contact with the group outside, although no voice contact was possible, due to the roar of the torrent. The vertical entrance shaft was an impossible chute of water, blocking the opening.

In a way we were exhilarated, because we knew that now since it wouldn't rain anymore, it was just a question of waiting for our friends outside to come to us when the entrance was passable. We knew we wouldn't try another thwarted draining attempt again. But in a way we were pretty discouraged at having to go back such a long way after being so close, and having again just spent so much energy for nothing (and we had pretty little energy left after 35 hours at that point) and at being fully soaked again. We immediately turned around before we became hypothermic, a very real possibility at that point because of the extremely cold conditions near the entrance. We thought of the survival pack that was probably being assembled for us right then, that would soon be shoved into the hole, but knew it was more important to immediately get warm instead. So we retreated as fast as we could back down all the difficult steps and back up to our little candle-light party. 

How many times in the next 13 hours of waiting did we hear goblin voices in the darkness... "They're coming, everyone quiet..." But it was just the hodags having fun again. I have no idea what we did during those last 13 hours, but our tents were getting old fast. Luckily I think we had become impervious to each other's smell. Two day old polypro, bathed in cow pasture flood water... I'm glad that it wasn't too much on our minds. Getting the old hipbone to be comfortable mattered a lot more, and stealing some of my neighbor's warmth too. We were certainly a bunch of very cuddly people! Gary won the award for "best able to fall asleep in mid-sentence and snore for the next couple of hours". I must have gotten the award for "most in demand to cuddle with" at least in the beginning until the ice broke between the guys too.

At noon on Monday, we suddenly heard voices, yes, real voices. Then a whistle. Kristen Matak was calling and scrambling up following our unmistakable super-highway of green survey tape. She brought Jef Faulkner, Mark Gagnon, Ben Mirabile, and Rachel Bosch. And a stove, and giggles, and canned tomato soup and we were deluged in hugs and candy bars and heat pads. Yes, the entrance is passable! We warmed up for a while, chatting excitedly and laughing it all off. Then we got ready to leave, and spaced ourselves 15 minutes apart in three groups of four with rescuers mixed into the groups. Along the way, we picked up all the ammo boxes full of Ed's photo equipment, which we had stashed way high in the stream passage. When we got to the entrance shaft, it was light out and easy to see where to go. The water was still pouring into the entrance in a big waterfall, but our helmets fanned out the water while we struggled up through the very tight shaft. I remember sticking my head out of the water and into the faces of a couple dozen people and a camera, and it was just so exhilarating! It was even sunny out! We were grabbed by the eager ladies of the rescue squad who threw a blanket over us, offered us hot barley soup and checked our oxygen-level and other vital signs. Nothing like a bit of pampering to finish off a nice little caving trip... of 52 hours.

Finishing thoughts: 

One: Without the 100 candles, of which we must have used about 70, we might have become severely hypothermic and would possibly not have recovered from our full immersion pushes. The tarp and large plastic and the pad were invaluable too. As usual, we carried emergency candles, plastic bags, extra balaclavas and glove liners and even some polypro, but it would never have been enough for over two days of waiting. We could not have relied on walking to stay warm, we could not have spared that kind of energy.

Two: The rescue operation went incredibly smoothly and the word did not spread outside the immediate region or to the media until an ambulance was put on stand-by on Monday morning, just in case one of us was hypothermic, and that is how the media found out. There were under thirty people there, I would say, and it was plenty sufficient. We are proud of Jeff and of Carroll Bassett to have kept it all under control so well. And thanks so much to everyone who dedicated themselves to the rescue, missing work, spending day and night on guard by the hole, making the attempt to dig a new entrance, and listening there for hours. 

Three: Our group stayed strong and cohesive and calm till the end. Weakened, yes, but in good spirits since we knew it was just a question of waiting it out. Our only concern, that it would start raining again and set us back yet another 18 hours, was eliminated when we found the bottles (thanks sooo much, guys, for that peace of mind!). And that happened at hour 34 or so, so the rest was a breeze.
 
 

The purpose of this article is to remind everyone of some of the basic
rules for safe and successful (defined as everyone got out and no one got
hurt) cave trips.  If you're the typical experienced caver, with many
uneventful trips under your helmet, you may have begun to take success
for granted and perhaps gotten a little sloppy about trip planning and
personal preparation.

First and foremost is to make sure that a responsible person knows where
you are going, when you plan to be out and when and what to do about it
if you're not.  Telling a friend in New Jersey that you're going caving
in West Virginia for the weekend simply isn't sufficient.  It must be
someone familiar with the area you plan to be in and they must know what
cave(s) you plan to visit.  You should have a prearranged time to check
in with this person.  They should know who to call in the event you don't
check in and have enough information to direct others to where you are. 

Should you find yourself in need of assistance there is major difference
between knowing there is someone who will begin the process of finding
you thus giving you the confidence that help is just a matter of time and
the hopelessness that would prevail in the same situation when you
realized that because of your lack of preparation no one will actually
miss you until sometime Tuesday morning. 

If you cave often and go on big trips sooner or later you'll find
yourself in a situation where you need to spend more time in cave than
you originally planned.  Carrying a few essentials with you can make an
unexpected delay a lot more bearable.  Always keep a plastic trash bag in
your helmet.  The large, heavy duty contractor cleanup bags available at
Home Depot work very well.  A second bag, carried in your pack, can be
used to cover your feet and legs, or to collect water from dripping dome
pit.  Non-carbide cavers should carry a candle and lighter to add heat to
your bagtent. 

When picking a spot to wait try and stay on the main route (assuming
you're not totally lost).  Sit on your knee pads and/or elbow pads to
insulate you from the heat sucking rock.  If your cave suit has a hood
put it on if not you should add a polypro hood to your list of basic
equipment.  Adequate food and water are essential elements in keeping
warm.  Don't allow yourself to become dehydrated or hungry as bone
chilling cold is sure to follow.

Following these simple but important rules will go a long way towards
preventing a bad situation from becoming much worse.  Remember, it could
happen to you. 
 
 

Where:  Simmons-Mingo Cave, Randolph County West Virginia
When:   March 21 and 22, 1998
Who:     Dave Hall, Heidi Stankavish, Bob Cohen, Yvonne Droms,
Bill Murray and Mark Skove

It was a dark and stormy night... no wait, that's another story.  It was
a beautiful early spring weekend in West Virginia.  The drive down from
New Jersey was uneventful and we pulled into the sheep meadow around
midnight.  The rest of the group showed up almost immediately and we
partied for a bit before going off to bed. 

Saturday morning we cooked breakfast in the relatively warm cave entrance
and decided how we would split up into two groups for a crossover trip
using the sheep meadow and Stan's blowing hole entrances.  Errol Glidden,
Drew Toth, Jessika Thomas, Mark Stover and Robert Monczka headed off to
Stan's in my van while we walked in to the sheep meadow entrance.  It had
been pretty wet all winter in West Virginia and we got a good soaking
right off but it didn't dampen our spirits.

I am quite familiar with the upper end of the cave and we made good
progress across the big entrance room, up to Clay Perry rock, down
through the Jar of Marbles and into the stream passage.  From there we
proceeded to the bottom of the cable ladder without much difficulty and
ascended to the middle level and the beginning of the march towards
Stan's.  Route finding on through trips can be tough and trying to do it
backwards can really play tricks with one's memory but so far we're not
doing too badly.  I have traveled the route from the cable ladder to RP1
in both directions so this leg goes pretty smoothly also.

The next major landmark is RP1 and the beginning of the stream passage. 
The water was high and fast and I couldn't help wondering what the
normally trickling waterfall ahead would be like.  We had expected to
meet the other group anytime now and sure enough they got to the bottom
of the waterfall just as we reached the top.  It looked very sporty all
right and I was glad to wait and watch the other team figure out the
right moves to get past this obstacle without being swept downstream.  As
is the case with most things, it looked worse than it was and after a
short visit with Mark Stover and company we were off.

Things began to go downhill a bit (figuratively not literally) at this
point.  We weren't having any particular route finding problems just a
general slowing down of the group.  This is a long trip, with many
physical obstacles to overcome in addition to route finding.  Each time
we came upon a climb it took a little longer and I kept revising my
estimate of when we would get out.

Eventually we reached City Blocks and I thought to myself, well it's
pretty straight forward from here so getting lost is no longer a factor. 
Wrong!  We had some trouble finding our way out of City Blocks and since
I was so sure I knew this end of the cave it should have been a clue of
things to come.  Once we got going again we made the next few landmarks
without much effort.  We passed base camp and then into the muddy walking
passage leading to the muddier crawling passage that leads to the mud
bridge down climb/up climb and the windy crawl.  Once out of the windy
crawl and back into walking passage the end was near.  And then out of
the black (there's no blue in a cave) we drew a collective blank.

I can't express the frustration of not being able to figure out what to
do next as you stand in a passage you know is right and also knowing
you're minutes from the Stan's ledge.  The only thing I can come up with
to explain this unexpected and total loss of memory is that going the
other way the route is fairly obvious but rather inconspicuous coming
from this direction.  Additionally, you would normally reach the spot we
were stumped in only a few minutes into a trip from the other entrance
and perhaps I hadn't been in "pay attention mode" yet on past trips
thinking that the way seemed so obvious.

In any case, we were now faced with a decision.  It was 2:00am Sunday and
we had been in cave since 11:30am Saturday.  Did we turn around and
retrace our steps (another 12 or so hours of fairly tough caving) or wait
until morning knowing our comrades would come looking for us.  I was
pretty sure only a couple of us had enough gas to retrace our steps and
even moving quickly would need 7 or 8 hours and maybe a lot more to get
to the sheep meadow.  That would make it close to noon before a return
party could get out.  I didn't like the idea of splitting up and in any
case the other group would have begun the job of coming after us long
before we could get out the way we came.  Setting up camp and settling in
to wait was the only logical choice.

Sitting in a cave for several hours is tough.  Not so much on a deeply
mental plane, we knew someone would come and that it wouldn't be all that
long, but there is a significant psychological aspect to being lost
underground.  Besides the general demoralization that comes with the
disappointment of realizing you're in trouble there's the cold.  First it
begins to seep into your arms and legs and you begin to shiver, then it
seems to seep into your very soul, its chilling effect dampening your
spirits from within while the rock sucks your heat wherever you touch it.
There's no place to hide, from the rock or yourself, and you can't help but
think about how you would feel if there wasn't someone coming for you
soon.

Not long after we decided the other group should be along soon we heard
their voices in the distance.  It was a welcome sound and sight as they
approached us bringing much needed food and water.  After a half hour or so
of eating, drinking and chasing the cold out of our joints we packed up
and headed for the door.  Sure enough, it was just around the corner, up
a crawlway I had looked at but was sure wasn't right.  Wrong again. 
You'd think I would get used to that after a while but it always catches
me by surprise. 

All's well that ends well.  It's been 26 hours since we first entered the
cave and everyone is finally out and into 2 inches of fresh snow.  It was
a beautiful sight.  Many thanks to Mark, Errol, Drew, Jessika and Robert.
Caving is a team sport and there's no better team around than this group
of cavers.
 
 

My trip to Horse Thief cave started out about the same as the rest of our trips at Bighorn… with an oil pan banging bounce, in a rented minivan, down one of the jeep roads that led from Arm Pit. Our group consisted of brother Dave (Hall), Walter Weglinski, Robert Monczka, Jeralin Molinaro, Andrew Foord, and myself. Our objective was to find and flag the way to the formations of the ‘Mind Bender Pools’ and then push on to the ‘Carpet Room’ beyond. 

When we reached the cave, we used the coolness of the entrance to get suited up. We had plenty of time, as Walter forgot his coveralls and had to make a quick trip back to Arm Pit to retrieve them. Once everyone was all geared up, we were off. The entrance was a large walking passage that led into the darkness. Once we got deep enough to loose the natural light from the entrance, we killed our lights and let our eyes adjust to the darkness. 

That done, we then lit up again and headed to what we had all been warned would be a long, tight, miserable, dusty crawl. ‘Denise’s Crystal Crawl’ was definitely dusty. Being forewarned, we all had dust masks, and I couldn’t imagine trying to negotiate it without one. The rest of the crawl’s reputation, however, had been overly exaggerated. The gate, believe it or not, was right in the crawl. Since I was last in line, I locked us in and off we went.

The end of the crawl was a down climb on ‘the Gypsum Wall’ to a small room where we dusted off and lost our masks. We then encountered a small route finding problem that forced us to prowl around and eventually cover the same ground several times before finally finding the way on. 

We then reached the beginning of a formation area that we assumed to be ‘Mind Bender’. We stopped for a bite to eat and to get our cameras out for the pretties to come.  As we moved on, however, we once again learned to never assume. While we did see formations, etc. (I was particularly impressed by some little white sand buddhas), we realized that we had not found our goal. Once again, we had a route finding dilemma and it took a lot of lead poking and a false start or two before we finally found the way on. 

When we reached the ‘Mind Bender Pools’, there was no mistaking it. The formations were indescribable. We passed right through the heart of the area on a narrow path marked off with flagging tape. There was so much to see that we needed to be extremely careful with every move. Straws and carrots were everywhere and one false move of a helmet could spell disaster. Fears of Walter being the proverbial ‘bull in a china shop’ were unfounded.

It’s hard to imagine from the desert above, but there was actually water in the ‘pools’. Rafts, pearls, lily pads… The pi?ce de r?sistance of the area was the ‘Tree of Time’. This massive tree is about 18 inches thick and stands about 30 feet high. It’s a truly impressive sight. One of the pictures I took of it is now on the main grotto web page.

After passing through the formation area, we rounded a huge red buddha and headed off for the ‘Carpet Room’. To get to this area of the cave, you must first pass through ‘The Crack Where the Water Comes Down’. This is a narrow vertical crack about 15 feet tall located at the top of a buddha. While Robert seemed to slip right up, it was tight and an awkward climb for the rest of the group who made it through. Dave and Walter remained behind preferring to nose around the passages on the entrance side of the pinch.

Once through and around the buddha, we entered a HUGE passage. Initially the floor was covered in large breakdown. This, however, quickly gave way to a floor of soft flowing sand with a soaring ceiling. We spread out four abreast across the expansive width of the passage to better light the area and marched along. In one spot, perched ominously between the walls above sat a single piece of breakdown the size of a doublewide trailer.

Another interesting feature of this remote part of the cave was the abundance of animal remains. Skeletons of larger birds and small mammals could be found scattered throughout the room. Many had rock rings around them for protection. This, however, gave them the air of some kind of sacrifice. With the Crow Indian reservation just a stone’s throw away, we discussed this as a possibility. I can only guess, based on the number of skeletons, that there must have been a way to the surface at some point from this part of the cave. 

In my admittedly limited caving experience, I’ve been in what I thought were some large passages, but this place just kept on going. Incredibly, a quick check of the map showed that the passage we were in was actually dwarfed by another further along the way. This, however, would have to wait for another day. We had left Dave and Walter a while ago, and to push on now would probably mean another two hours. It was time to pull the ripcord. 

By the time we squeezed back through ‘The Crack Where the Water Comes Down’, Dave and Walter were waiting. As we took a break and discussed the obstacle, we decided that no water had come down this crack in at least a few hundred thousand years. We decided that it must have gotten its name from someone who had gotten stuck in the pinch and wet their pants. It true or not, seemed the only logical explanation.

The good part of the trip back was that we had to pass through the ‘Mind Bender’ formation area again. This gave us an opportunity to burn up any film saved through the first pass. The trip out was also much faster as we didn’t have to spend an hour or two hunting for the correct route. The bad part was that we had to once again don our dust masks and get dusty in the crawl. This was a small price to pay for such a fabulous trip.

As we reached daylight, we were happy to see that our cooler of cold beer was still there. We used the coolness of the entrance to slough our gear and wash down the dust. Just another day in Arm pit… 
 
 

As sports go, my first (and still true) love is skiing. Caving, for me, is a relatively new mistress. There are, however, many parallels to be drawn between the two. For a few examples, consider that…

? Neither can be satisfactorily accomplished in the state of New Jersey.
? Both generally involve long road trips in a vehicle loaded with gear.
? You usually wear polypropylene underwear while doing either. 
? The number of vertical feet involved is important to both.
? When you’re finished either, you’re generally cold and wet.
? With any luck, there’s a cold beer and a hot tub waiting at the end of the day.

With these similarities in mind, my idea of what a ‘Cave’ trip was all about was colored by my prior experience on ‘Ski’ trips. For me, ‘Ski’ trips have always meant one thing… skiing. Ski! Ski! Ski! Get up early, catch the first chair, ski all day, drink beer in the hot tub, and sleep if time permits. While I haven’t been on very many ‘Cave’ trips, the ones I have attended have mostly followed this same general itinerary.

I was, therefor, very surprised when, in the midst of my ‘Cave’ trip to the Bighorn Mountains of Montana and Wyoming, something entirely different began to occur. Days didn’t start with caving, they started with a shooting session or a hike, or a scenic drive! Caving, when it happened, didn’t start until around lunchtime when the heat of the desert drove us under ground. After caving, there was more shooting or a trip to the Bighorn Canyon to watch the sun set. Maybe it was a drive to Natural Trap (an open pit who’s bottom is littered with the fossils of all the unwary creatures who’ve accidentally reached its 90 foot depths over the eons).

How could this be? Wasn’t I supposed to be on a ‘Cave’ trip? What was happening? Yes, the caving was fantastic, but so was everything else! The high desert of Arm Pit was an arid paradise where civilization was just a twinkle of lights in the valley after a magnificent sunset. In reality, it was only 17 miles away down a bumpy jeep rode, but in the mind it was a foreign concept. The snowcapped Tetons made a dramatic vista from the flaps of my tent’s door.  So close, you could almost reach out and touch them. The geysers, hot springs, and sulfur smells of Yellowstone gave it an unearthly landscape. When I stopped to ponder these developments, I could come to only one conclusion. I wasn’t on a ‘Cave’ trip at all… I was on a vacation! 

The significance of this realization made me stop and consider the implications. Was I being cheated of valuable cave time? Was it time to stop and smell the flowers? Yes, it was! The beauty of this trip was that on one day they were wild flowers in a sub-alpine meadow and on another they were gypsum flowers in the dark recesses of a cave.
 
 

The weekend of the 12th and 13th was supposed to be the Dig, but that was canceled
somewhat last minute because the owner of the property wanted to get a crop of hay in,
and guys blowing the hell out of his land tends to make for a bad crop.  A substitute trip
was planned for just the 13th of Surprise Cave.  I wanted to do the Dig, but I had plans
for the 12th.  But I was free on the 13th, so at 7:30, I was getting ready to go.
     Technically this wasn't my first time caving.  As a Weblos I went in two little caves in
Pennsylvania, but neither one was any sort of challenge, or else why would anyone
attempt to drag a dozen fifth graders through it? Andrew Foord also lives in Jersey City, 
so he was going to be my ride and primary source for equipment.  I was tempted to blow 
a couple hundred bucks on brand new gear, but I also wanted to buy a trombone during 
that brief period in fourth grade I played trombone.  Better to borrow this first time, to 
make sure this would be worth it.  Lucky for me the grotto's generous with their 
equipment, and were all too happy to let me use it.
     I came prepared to Andrew's house with three light sources: a cigarette lighter from a 
tattoo parlor (I don't smoke or have any tattoos; how I got the lighter, I don't know), an 
Indiglo watch, and a light saber.  I thought of bringing Wintergreen LifeSafers to crunch 
and make that green spark, but that seemed like a stupid light source. Andrew saw my 
sources, refrained from saying anything, and quickly got me hooked up with a decent 
carbide lamp and helmet.  He also got me some gloves.  I had thought ahead to wear old 
clothes, but not far ahead to realize I'd need a second set of clothes to wear when I came 
out of the cave.  Mark Stover lent me one of his old coveralls when we got to the site, 
which did the job pretty well.  Although I wasn't doing his washer any favors when I 
gave it back to him.
 
 

The foul disqusting creatures known as cave pigs on the trip were: Ed
McCarthy, Mark Stover, Robert Monczka, Bobby Back, Yvonne Droms, Errol
Glidden, Drew Toth, Mark Whittemore, and Wayne Orndorff

Saturday morning arrives after the late night festivities and the sun is shining brightly. It almost seems like too nice of a day to be underground. As usual I have a balloon head from too much fun the night before. People prepare their gear and eat breakfast while we wait for Cliff Lindsay and the water for Hotsy to arrive. Cliff arrives around 9:30 and all the release forms are signed for the cave. The water for Hotsy arrives at about the same time and all the days business is taken care of before caving. We leave the fieldstation around 10am to begin our underground adventure of slipping and sliding on mud covered slopes and breakdown.
We arrive at Geraldine Freeman’s house, and the sinkhole next to the house with the giant tree is one of the first things we see. Geraldine is out in the yard and we have a little chat with one of the nicest landowners in Greenbrier County. We prepare ourselves for the trip making sure that no last minute details are missed. Once everyone is ready we make our way down the short slope to the base of the sinkhole.  The entrance is a nice hole in the side of the sinkhole about eight feet high by 10 feet wide. The darkness inside beckons us to enter and we have to give in to our curiosity.
Once the group of 9 is inside we make our way down the McClungs mainstream canyon passage. The initial dimensions of the passage are rather large with ceiling heights reaching 25 feet and widths as much as 40 feet. About 250 feet into the cave the passage changes character. The passage becomes a narrow fissure for a while and then climbing is needed to negotiate a multi-level area with some breakdown. This only lasts for a short while and then we are back into large trunk passage again. After negotiating some slippery breakdown, we arrive at what is known as the canyon hop. The passageway changes character here again. It is a large trunk passage that is shaped like a Y. Either side of the passage is made up of large sloping mud banks which lead down to a narrow fissure in the floor. The ceiling reaches heights over 50 feet in places. Steps have been cut into the mud slopes to negotiate the initial section of the canyon. At times we were traversing the top of the mud banks 30 feet above the mouth of the fissure below. The steps descend to the lip of the fissure that is 15 feet deep in places. The canyon hopping begins and we jump back and forth across the top of the fissure, walking on slippery footholds, as we proceed downstream. The group begins to spread out a bit so I stop at a nice flat area to wait for everyone to catch up.
The whole group is together again and a short breather is taken. It always helps to be in the front of the group because you get the longest rest. Stragglers beware! We bolt down the last section of the canyon and finally arrive at first breakdown. We are now approximately 2500 feet from the entrance and making really good time. I point out a passage up the breakdown slope which leads to the G-survey section of the cave and a few people take a look at the old rusty gate found at its entrance. From here we go under first breakdown and the passage is a small clean washed fissure that requires stooping and walking in knee-deep pools. Once we emerge on the other side, we continue downstream to the junction of batbone crawl.
Batbone crawl is an obscure passage high on the wall and requires climbing a 20-foot mud slope to gain access too. I make the ascent and the rest of the group follows. I have a 50-foot piece of webbing in my pack and it is requested for use as a belay or handline by some. Batbone crawl is a connection passage that will pop out into another large passage known as Freeman Avenue. Freeman Avenue is a trunk passage that parallels the mainstream passage in the cave. This is our current objective as we make our way down batbone crawl. Not long into the passage I realize that I missed a turn and we go back to find the unobvious hole that we missed on the way in. Crawling and stoopwalking is in order for a while until we finally break out into walking passage.  We arrive at a small formation room and something doesn’t seem right to me again. I push a small side lead for a while and determine that we have made another wrong turn. Backtracking we find the passage and almost immediately we find ourselves in another large trunk passage.  Freeman Avenue.
Downstream Freeman we go and the passage is very slippery. More time is focused on where to put your feet, than to look around at the passage.  We arrive at the junction of 7 fingers and a short discussion takes place whether or not to visit the 2.5 miles of passage up the fingers lead. It is decided to save some energy for tomorrows trip, so we push downstream over large breakdown and mud slopes towards Tuffa Trail.  Slip, plod, trudge, slip.....down Freeman we go. I believe that everyone fell at least once in the slippery cave mud. During all the slipping and sliding I keep my eyes peeled for the connection to Tuffa Trail. Soon I realize that we are at the connection which leads back to McClungs mainstream and we have passed Tuffa Trail. We head back up Freeman Avenue and it isn’t long before the climb to Tuffa is found. Up we go into on of the most incredible passages in the system. The entire floor of the passage is lined with rimstone pools. Unfortunately there is no water flowing at this time of the year and the pools are dry. 800 feet later we are still walking in rimstone pools but now they are full of water. Wall to wall water. We reach our objective, which is a nice formation area towards the upper end of the passage near the Lightner entrance. After everyone is finished admiring the formations we head back to the connection which will lead us to the mainstream passage.
The connection passage is a crawl/stoopway with a soft clay floor that continues for about 800 feet and brings us out at the top of second breakdown in the mainstream passage. We wait at the top of second breakdown for the group to reassemble and take a short rest. Here we are approximately a mile from the entrance. When everyone is ready, we climb down the slope of breakdown and regain the McClungs mainstream passage.  Up stream we go towards the entrance with only one last obscure passage ahead, the bypass. If you miss the bypass you would end up crawling in a low wet passage....fun....fun...fun! We wait at the bypass connection for everyone to catch up. Over the slab and into the little crawlway we go which will bypasses the wet fun fun place. Emerging on the other side we ramble upstream, passing batbone crawl, back under first breakdown, renegotiating the canyon hop, and emerge at the entrance completing an inner cave loop in 5 hours. Not too bad of a trip for covering around 2 to 3 miles of cave. Slowly but surely, all the brown nasty cave pigs transform into people and make their way back to the fieldstation to indulge in mass quantities of beer, food and Hotsy.
 
 

An Asia Dome/McFail’s Cave Epic with:
Andrew Foord, "That trip spanked me red."
Bobby Back, "I’ll never go there again. Screw it."
Josh Holden, "That was my definition of forever."
Mark Skove, "First time I was ever worried about being the anchor."
Mark Stover, "12 hours in a wetsuit. I peed a lot--I think I filled both boots."
Peter Welles, "It’s really nice to cave with people who know how to cave."

When: July 10, 1999
Where: Schoharie, New York
Grim-ometer rating: 5

Allen Rush had the trots so he bailed out early. It was very sad because
he’d arranged the trip, but he wasn’t really missed. He actually made it
into the cave and down the rope to the bottom of Coeyman’s Dome. But then
faced with the reality of a full day in a wetsuit and no way to wipe, he
got a little uppity and said that our Grotto sucked and that we were all
off the trip and then he was gone, up the rope and muttering to himself. We
later discovered he spent the day caving in the entrance room of the
Schoharie cabin outhouse.

Well, I’d been to McFail’s only once before, and all I remembered was a
whole lot of walking in water. The cave hadn’t changed much, but my memory
needs work because it wasn’t simply walking passage. I mean it was kind of
interesting. The canyon was tighter, and longer than I’d remembered. There
were nice formations and high ceilings, some good looking rocks, and a
couple of short drops for which we brought cable ladders. Lots and lots of
cold, splashy water, though. That hadn’t changed. 

Some of the passage was what Andrew called "Star Wars," which is not "Star
Trek" passage where the rocks look like cheap styrofoam props and you
expect aliens. This passage had lots of wide flat rocks that jut out from
the walls and made you feel, if you sort of worked at it a while, like
you’re flying through space. It’s a little like Rip Snort Canyon in Flower
Pot Cave, only this stuff you can get through without bleeding.

So it went on like this for a couple of miles, and a couple of hours, down
nice stream passage with a few breakdown sections and a couple of side
passages.  Confidence was high and there were lots of jokes and some story
telling too. I guess we talked about the usual stuff: sex, food, cross
dressing, vertical gear, farm animals, previous cave trips, and of course,
people who weren’t there.

Then we were at the Junction Room. Downstream from here is the main sump
where most trips turn back, and where the scuba people keep on going. But
we took the side passage called the "Northwest Passage." 

This Northwest Passage was very nice stuff for most of the way, really
enjoyable caving, very much like West Virginia. There was some crawling and
a few tea bag water spots, and a really cool formation called "The Breast
of the Northwest" and you didn’t need to be Einstein to figure out why. So
about an hour more of this West Virginia caving and we’re all having lots
of fun, but now in retrospect I realize there was a dreamy feeling of dread
that hung over the group.

This feeling coalesced into a heavy fog when we reached the Northwest Dome
and the business end of the trip. There’s an old tent sitting on a shelf of
rock, a warming tent from the days of the survey work. It’s a grisly little
tent, the kind the Boy Scouts don’t even like to use anymore. I think it
was once a bright green color, but who really knows because it’s slimy now
with mold, like an old rotting casket from Tales From the Crypt. I stuck my
head in the door and, with difficulty, managed to decipher the remnants of
a note that asked nicely about leaving the supplies there for real
emergencies. I was thinking I’d have a secondary emergency on top of my
real emergency if I actually tried to use any of that icky stuff. Then I’d
have to take a fungicide bath when I got back home.

Anyway, it was no time for fooling around, and the others had started to
gear up for real. Rather than wearing his wetsuit, Skove had packed it in
to this point, which was kind of a pain to him in the stream passage where
the extra pack frequently snagged on the "Star Wars" rocks and probably
ruined the outer space effect for him, but his knees were still fresh while
ours were halfway to rubber. Josh asked how far it was to Asia Dome and
Peter said, "From here on out, distance is relative." Then Josh looked at
me and said, "You’re wearing your balaclava now?" I looked at Peter, who
was bundled up and appeared to be going into a trance, and said, "Well, the
only guy who’s been here before has got his on, so…yes." Everybody put on
everything they had.

A very rough guestimate is that it took us three hours to cover the first
three miles of McFail’s and then another three hours to cover the last 3000
feet. It was a fiesta of tight, squeezy stuff and cold, cold water.
Different sections of passage had nice names like Amundson Alley, The
Pretzel Connection, The Bering Sea, Alaska Dome. They were sensible names.

We spent the better part of two hours in breakdown that offered little
relief. These rocks were full of tricks and always up to no good. At one
point, Bobby went over a flat table top kind of rock to the other side and
down a slot, otter-style, in a sort of frictionless slide that really made
it look like the rock swallowed him whole without so much as a belch. I
waited a minute and then followed him, but when I got half my body over the
crack, I stopped my slide by jamming my arm into the opposite wall, because
there was nowhere to go. I was hanging upside down in a slot that Bobby had
just disappeared into and I couldn’t see anywhere to go. Bobby had been
gobbled up by the rocks, eaten alive without salt. He’d vanished.

There were a couple of small cracks, a whole lot of mud and some small
boulders and a storm cloud of fog from all the heavy breathing going on. It
was very perplexing indeed and my arm was starting to hurt. To reverse the
force of gravity, I was faced with one of those muscleman moves that you
just know is going to live on in painful memory for a few days at least.
Then one of the boulders shifted slightly. It moved again and then began to
sink all on it’s own further into the slot. I thought it was time to say my
prayers, but no, it just was Bobby’s big, mud covered ass two feet in front
of my face and totally blocking up the passage. He wasn’t stuck, only
resting and waiting his turn while someone in front of him negotiated
something even more demanding.

Ugh. Well, it was about an hour and a half of this kind of thing. Squeeze,
pinch, bitch & moan. Fiddling around with a carbide lamp, ordinarily such a
delightful experience, suddenly wasn’t as much fun as usual. Before too
long my flame was low and my reflector coated in mud, and I was in bad need
of water. Bobby was in the same boat and we both came to relief at a
stagnant pool that turned out to be called Carl’s Swamp.

We were at the front of the group and it seemed we had come to yet another
sort of dead end, by this pool of still water to the right and about three
feet down under a shelf. My flame was just a shadow of it’s former self and
Bobby’s was equally pathetic. My maglight was covered with mud of course,
and so were my gloves and my hands were filthy too. Bobby wasn’t any
cleaner, but his electric light was partially mud-free and this gave us a
meager glow as we slid on our bellies down to the water’s edge, in almost
total dark, like a couple of crocodiles on a river bank at night. Peter
came crawling along and saw our feet sticking up in the air and cheerily
announced that we were at Carl’s Swamp, whatever that was, and that we
could just go right on ahead. It was after all, only a brief helmet-off,
ear dipping amphibious maneuver to the other side. Or so he said. 

We didn’t trust him, so we deferred to his superior experience and also
pretended that we needed to putter with our carbide lamps for a few minutes
more. This double subterfuge worked and Peter went first.

Intimate contact with cold water was a good thing after so much torture in
the breakdown piles. But it was cold, really really cold. Carl’s Swamp
wasn’t too tough, but the Bering Sea was much longer and more swimmy and
the way through required a paddle/crawl technique with your left arm in
deep water while the right wasn’t deep enough and it was head tilted to the
side with the inconsistent threat of ear dipping, and once or twice it got
a little scary, but I made it through with my flame and a teeth-chattering,
arctic feeling in my bones. At the third water crawl, the Baffin Ear Dip, I
lost my flame when I dipped more than just my ear.

So we consolidated on the far side of all that water and kept right on
caving through breakdown and some stoop walking and crawlways. In one of
these crawlways I came first to a breakdown pile with a hole in the
ceiling. I climbed up through that to a kind of awkward staircase of gloppy
mud and found a nasty little room high up, filled with nothing but misery.
I thought I’d gone the wrong way, and I said to myself, "Well, golly gee,
not the first time, won’t be the last." Then I saw some plastic bags,
containers, and a rope….could this be the place? The famous Asia Dome?
There was nowhere to sit and a bad selection of standing room. Impossible!
I was just about to head back down to the crawlway when I heard the others
coming up and I realized it was the place indeed.

Suddenly I understood. It was a joke. It was some kind of twisted Met
Grotto joke. The worst kind. The kind that’s only funny to the person who’s
telling it. Reminded me of the time my grandfather told me that Wheeling,
West Virginia was a hard job. He laughed and I didn’t.

So one by one the tired and tempest-tossed struggled up the slope to Asia
Dome. They were all equally unimpressed. I’m sure we each thought about
complaining, but didn’t want to waste the energy. It was high time for
food. Mark Skove had the foresight to bring along some newfangled
self-heating meals—high tech army surplus stuff—the k-rations of the
future, or something like that. So we a sat for a while and changed
batteries and carbide and Peter told us of the old days of exploration and
survey work. But before long I was standing on popcicles instead of feet.
Everything was wet, everything was muddy and disgusting, and there weren’t
any happy faces in the group, except for Peter, who seemed to be having a
quiet fit of nostalgia. 

It was time to move it on out and dangle imaginary beers in front of our
helmets like carrots. I made it through the Baffin Ear Dip and the Bering
Sea with my carbide lamp still lit, but I slipped and kicked up some water
and lost my flame coming up the slope out of Carl’s Swamp. Typical. I had a
lighter in my pack, but that didn’t seem right. Proper penance was to sit
in the dark or worse, suffer with electric light and wait until Andrew
brought the flame through the water. Which of course he did, and relit my
lamp with much sympathy. 

So it was hours and miles more of the same kind of stuff I’ve already
described, because the way in is also the way out. By the time I got to
Coeyman’s Dome and the rope, the soft kiss of neoprene on skin had long
since become sharp, tooth-sucking hickey’s. Frogging had always been so
easy, but now general fatigue and the unbendability of rubber-coated limbs
made me go very slowly and spend a lot of time looking around and down at
the other guys who were putting on their vertical gear in what seemed to be
slow motion. All of this was very nice until Peter later noticed, after he
had climbed and was unrigging, that the main bolt was loose and pulled out
easily with a wiggle-wiggle-twist, pop. Oh well, another souvenir for the
Grotto museum.
 
 

We geared up in the tall grass of an old field at the edge of the woods
next to a falling down barn by the side of the road in West Virginia. Same
as always, but this would be a special trip. There were blue skies above
and no threat of rain, but Culverson Creek floods to the tops of its very
tall ceilings, and the knowledge of this kept the Grim-ometer steady at
about a two. Besides that, none of us Yellow Shirts had been here before.

So after some dirty jokes and making fun of people who weren’t there, we
stepped into the woods and crawled into the SSS Entrance, which was named
because, according to a well-connected local source, "it might’ve been
discovered by three people whose last names start with ‘S’ but some people
say that’s just bullshit, so I guess nobody really knows for sure." The
entrance is a short gravel covered crawlway that opens into several hundred
feet of large, dry walking passage. A long gently sloping down climb leads
to a lower level and the junction with the Fuller Stream passage. 1500 feet
upstream from here is the Fuller entrance, but we were going downtown.

We followed the stream passage for a long, long time. Eddie told us it
would take about an hour to reach the vertical section and he was right,
and that cold, cold water passage especially seemed to go on forever. It
was all knee-deep plunge pools and little waterfalls, some wading sections,
and the rest of that kind of stuff. I’d forgotten my neoprene socks and my
toes were voting to move the Grim-ometer up to a three, but they were
over-ruled.

We got to the tops of the series of four drops and put on our vertical gear
and zipped to the bottom, splish-splashing all the way. When we were all
down, it was more of that plunging stream passage and a bit of nice walking
too, and then came the tough stuff. The stream passage was suddenly full of
breakdown of great dimension, the kind that tries to make you feel small on
purpose, and usually succeeds. 

The way forward was not clear, but Eddie had some tips and went to scout
ahead while we all sat around so he wouldn’t be too distracted in his work.
Soon the call came back down the conga line of stalled cavers that Eddie
had found the way, and thus began a bit of caving that was entirely new to
me. These breakdown blocks had been eating steroids for a really long time
and had covered themselves with some really thick disgusting mud. The only
way through the maze was by slopping our way up and over some of the blocks
and then low and under others. At times we were dancing along the thin
peaks of mud dunes, trying hard to stay happy with nothing on either side
but slippery slopes straight down into stagnant brown pools of unknown
depth. It was like trying to get through the jaws of some really big
monster who hadn’t brushed his teeth in a while.

It all ended much too soon and we were back into walking stream passage
that suddenly was joined by another stream of significantly warmer water.
Eddie explained that this was the Culverson Stream, and it had been warmed
by the surface, while the Fuller Stream had been underground a while. The
confluence creates steam which rises up and up and up into the Dragon’s
Breath Room! Wow, this place was cool. I thought I was just standing in the
two streams next to a breakdown pile, but the breakdown keeps going up and
up into blackness. The Culverson Stream runs along the side of the room,
which is hundreds of feet across and too high to see the ceiling. We
climbed up and up to the top of the breakdown, which was covered with the
same sticky mud as the stuff in the stream passage. I went down the other
side and about fifty feet up a smaller pile, which I suppose was against
the wall, and kicked a flat spot into the mud so I could sit and enjoy the
view of flickering lights in the distance. It was like being outside. 

After a while we’d had all the open space we wanted and we took off towards
the entrance in two groups in order to avoid a logjam at the ropes. The
knowledge that the ropes were free gave extra umph to tired muscles and
hastened our progress up the stream passage and through the gauntlet of mud
and rock. 

When the first half of the group made it to the top of the ropes, we headed
out, this time following the Fuller Stream all the way to the Fuller
Entrance. This was a winding passage that was mostly a narrow walking
canyon 1500 feet long (although it felt like much more.) But soon enough we
were at the bottom of the entrance sink hole with it’s ancient car hanging
upside down, straight out of Planet of the Apes and the Forbidden Zone. The
only things missing were the monkeys and the talking doll. It didn’t look
like they were going to make an appearance, so we climbed up out of the
sink and marched on down the hill in search of beer, with Andrew chanting,
"I-want-dry-socks, I-want-Birkenstocks, I-want-dry-socks,
I-want-Birkenstocks…"
 
 

When: April 25, 1999
Where: Greenbrier County, WV
Who: Yvonne (I love water caves) Droms, Carl (I’d rather be pedaling)
Droms, Phil (these guys are cave hungry) Murray, Errol ( I should have gone
with you guys yesterday) Glidden, Drew (snap my picture) Toth, Vanessa
(these guys are strange), Jonny (we’re going to get how wet?) Slumpff, Mark
(wow, this cave delivers) Stover, Robert (these WVACS guys are cool) Monczka

After a great cave trip on Saturday to McClung’s Cave, Phil Murray led us
on a trip to Piercey’s Mills. That’s Phil Murray, not Bill Murray whom we
all know and love. This guy’s got a big WVACS reputation in the caving
world, he’s a somebody not like the rest of us caving hackers. It was a
beautiful spring day nice and sunny. The entrance is at the bottom of a
mountain with white water pounding down over rocks into a large meandering
stream flowing past you. With predictions of getting wet up to our waist
from our guide, our caving souls were excited.

After everyone was suited and ready for attack we approached the large
entrance. Right away you’re up to your chest in water to a sandy embankment
and right back in up to your chest to another sandy embankment and the
worst is over. Really cool large stream passage with stories of Barclay and
Daryl popping their rubber raft in this cave. It was such a rush to finally
be here. Large rimstone dams flowing with water is the huge attraction.
There are two sets of dams, a lower and an upper section. We all carefully
moved our way around the lower dams to stand in awe of these ancient pools
of crystal clear water.

Getting to these dams was no easy matter. The trail takes you up a large
mound of mud and rocks very steep in some sections and very slippery
especially when you’re toward the back of the line and everyone is dripping
wet because we just got wet up to our chests. It was like potter’s wheel
quality mud. If I lived in California I’d build a house on top of something
like this just to watch it slide down someday. From there it was down the
other side and you’re at the rimstone section and everyone ooohed and
aaahed at the deep pools. A little bit more of the slip slide and you’re at
the upper section of the dams. Some of these pools were very deep. If you
climb up to your right you can overlook the whole room and with 8 to 10
cavers down below lighting it up the view is outstanding.

After milling around for about 20 minutes and a short stop to a pretty area
there was a decision to be made: out the same way we came or out the sewer.
The sewer has a reputation of being wetter than the way we came in. Mark,
Jonny, Vanessa and I went back the same way we came in. Mark had a camera
stuffed in his pocket and didn’t want to risk a Jacques Cousteau episode
with it. Once again up to your chest in water to the embankment and once
more and you’re in beautiful West Virginia sunlight. I played around in the
stream in front of the entrance for a little while to wash the mud off my
clothes and fell into a pool over my head, pulled myself out and rested on
a rock high and dry when all of a sudden Jonny pops out of the entrance
headed right for me. Jonny NOOOOO! too late he was up to his neck in water.
I tried to warn him so I helped him to a rock perch and we meandered our
way back to the cars and changed. This cave delivers, it’s one of those Wow
caves. But it’s sunny and beautiful out and we have travelling on our
minds. How I hate to leave the peacefulness of West Virginia. It’s like
leaving Eden to live with the bureaucratic devil-yes sir, no sir, three
bags full sir. And so we were off to 64, 81, 78 to the Holiday Inn. Shake
hands great trip and all that kind of stuff and see you at the hot tub
painting party and we drove our separate ways.
 
 

Who: Brent Biely, Francois Errandonea, Andy Mellon, Veronica Pochmursky, Gordon    Hicks 
Where:  Lusk Cavern, Gatineau Park, Ottawa, CANADA

Lusk Cavern is located in Gatineau Park which is just northwest of Ottawa, Canada.  The cave lies about ½ km away from the end of an oblong lake and it is about 10km from the maintained road.  This being the cold season in Gatineau, we had two choices for reaching the cave: showshoe or XC ski.  Since we had spent the day before doing the XC thing, we chose to snowshoe.  As we discovered once we got to the park, this was the correct economical choice since no fee is required if you enter via snowshoe.  We did not come to Ottawa planning to cave, and therefore had not brought helmets.  We did have one light apiece, though, and if you count lights that other people have as your backups, then there were plenty of lights.  We knew we would be dressed warm for the cold, so as the saying goes, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad!
So, off we went.  The trail we started on eventually circumnavigates the lake, and we had planned to follow this trail to the far end of the lake, do the cave, and continue on the trail to complete the loop.  I had waited until we all got to the edge of the trail to put my snowshoes on so the others had a bit of a jump on me.  No matter, since I quickly caught up to them.  I soon discovered why as I watched the Canadians in our group, using tennis-racket like snowshoes, attempting to climb a steep, small hill.  Unfortunately for them, their tennis rackets did not have any kind of crampon whatsoever. They were literally falling all over themselves and muttering things in French like “C’est sucks” and “Ow my oui oui”.  I don’t speak or understand French, but I took these to be curse words.  One day I’ll have to confirm this with Swah.  OK, back to the story....  Fortunately for all of us, the lake itself was not far in off of this trail, and we reached it fairly quickly.  Since the lake surface was frozen, and had about 2 inches of fresh virgin powder on it, we decided to hike on the lake instead of the trail.  This enabled us to make a beeline right for the far end of the lake. Once out of the woods, the brilliant blue sky was only more evident and the sun was actually a bit warming.  I busied myself making large crop-circle-like designs in the powder with my snowshoe tracks and this eventually left me a good distance behind the group.  But hey, some art is priceless, right?  After a little more than an hour’s hike we had reached the end of the lake and from there it was only a 10 minute snowshoe hike to the cave.
The main entrance is a large depression in the ground which exposes the stream which runs through the entire length of the cave.  A permanent map is affixed to a stand outside the cave but it bears little resemblance to the maps we’re all accustomed to looking at.  Climbing down into the depression, you can either go upstream or downstream.  Our first push was into the upstream passage.  The ice on top of the stream at the mouth of the passage was frozen but you could hear the water flowing underneath.  I made a few false starts on my hands and knees and retreated when the ice started cracking under my weight.  Obviously, being a good distance away from any kind of warmth, I had no desire to get even the least bit wet.  At this point we decided to send the lightweight in the group, Andy, across the ice to test it.  He was very willing and showed us that it was indeed passable if you spread your weight out.  The whole group filed in, one by one, the ice cracking a little more each time.  Once inside, Andy and I spent some time looking at the ice formations and then decided to follow a passage up towards the surface.  The others had continued upstream.  We slithered up what looked like a round flowstone formation, but it was 100 percent ice.  The only thing that kept us from sliding down into the main passage was a powdery residue of dirt on top of the ice, which provided just enough traction.  At the top of this formation, the passage turned right abruptly and, after a 1 ft high horizontal slot, opened up into a wider slanting passageway.  There were holes along the side of the passageway through which you could see the stream passage.  We followed this for about 15 meters until we came to another entrance.  The climb out of this entrance was a bit difficult due to the snow and ice, and once on the surface you could see other holes which went down into the stream passage at very steep angles.  I noticed at this point that Andy’s flashlight, borrowed from Gordon, required squeezing in order to light.  Not wanting to be without the use of one hand, Andy decided to use his teeth to provide the necessary pressure.  I found this to be interesting and comical at the same time.  Andy and I knew we weren’t far from the main entrance, and quickly found our way there.  We were greeted by Veronica and some interesting news:
Veronica, Swah, and Gordon had explored for a bit upstream, and then turned back.  It turns out that on his way out of the main passage, Swah’s large corporate butt had impacted the ice near the entrance and the ice just couldn’t take it.  It gave way and Swah was promptly soaked up to the waist.  I wasn’t too concerned since I had brought extra clothes, which I offered to give to Swah.  Veronica said “Oh, he’ll be macho and he won’t take them”, to which I replied, “Well then, let him freeze his butt off.”  She just shook her head.  It didn’t matter much to me if he wound up with a frozen Oscar Meyer, although Veronica might not have been too happy.
Swah eventually reappeared and stated that he was fine, so we decided to explore the downstream passage also.  Gordon rigged the rope he had so kindly packed in, to aid our descent into the downstream passage.  Some French speaking folk were having a spot of lunch right in the middle of the entrance to this passage.  Swah spoke with them briefly and bridged the international gap, and we were able to run the rope over their heads, across a rock ledge.  For about 7 meters, the floor of the downstream passage was flat, slick ice.  Even though the floor was solid, you could hear the stream flowing underneath the ice, close to the right-hand wall.   The trick to getting in was to wrap the rope around your arm (in a sort of half hasty pasty style) and just slide on your butt till you reached the far wall at the bend of the passage.  The passage eventually turned left and the ice became a series of small waterfalls with a cumulative drop of about 3 meters.  The stream was flowing out from under the ice at this point so the general area was a bit slick.  From this point, one could cross the waterfalls and work down to the stream.  We stopped to admire the ice formations once we were across the falls.  These particular formations looked just like cave bacon except they were much clearer and consisted of solid ice.  We followed the stream beyond these formations for a bit but quickly reached a point where getting wet would have been required.  This was a disappointment since we could clearly see where the cave went on, and it was just starting to get interesting.  I went to the furthest point I could and checked out a small water inlet which was just a hole that went nowhere.  I shut my light off and just chilled out for a bit, and eventually Andy caught up with me.  There was not much else to do at this point except turn back.  On the way out, I noticed a high passage which I had completely missed on the way in.  I yelled to Andy that I intended to explore this, and he said he’d wait.  This passage looked like another possible entrance since it meandered towards the surface.  I went on for a bit but then turned back to get Andy since I only had one light and we were out of voice contact.  We both poked around and found yet another entrance in about 5 minutes, which was located approximately 6 meters from the main entrance.
Since it was getting late, and since we felt that we had done just about as much of the cave as possible, we decided to pack it up for the day.  After a quick snack we headed back out to the lake, where a lovely winter wind greeted us.  We trudged on into the wind, towards the parking lot in the fading light, and reached the car just after dusk, tired but happy.  Speaking with Swah later revealed that his Oscar Meyer was indeed very cold on the return trip and he stated that he thought it might fall off.  I would not have wanted to see that!
 
 

When: January 16, 1999
Where: Sinnett-Thorn, Pendleton County, WV
Who:  Miles Drake, Rick Royer, Bobby Back, Krista McGuire, Garrett, François Errandonea, Brent Biely, Yvonne Droms

It was getting dark as our large group of twenty-two people scrambled up the very icy slope and dived through the heavy gate guarding the entrance to Sinnett-Thorn. We spread out a bit, then divided into a lower and a higher line. We met up again a bit later in order to squeeze under the rock into the passage going to the waterfall. Miles Drake had offered to show us a part of the cave unknown to most people, the upper passages beyond the Sinnett waterfall. 

It took a while to figure out how to get up into that area after we got to the waterfall but Miles persevered, checking out lots of leads. He put on an incredible display of acrobatics on an exposed ledge, getting himself into very interesting positions. I remember asking myself "how is he going to get himself out of that predicament" a few times. No problem, just reverse the moves, ha. Easy for him to do. We decided "no way!" and forced him to come back down, flatly refusing to follow him up *that* crazy climb. 

After some more searching, he found us a more reasonable way. That means it looked reasonable to him, even though I had found it first but rejected it thinking "are you crazy, we won't fit through there!" But I was wrong and after I showed it to him, he said "that's it" and slithered right on into the 9 or 10 inch tall and 30 foot long passage, fully expecting us to follow him. I let a couple more guinea pigs go through ahead of me just to see if they'd get stuck but they didn't so I was convinced and wi