I have no idea of the usual format of these reports, or what people most like to hear about, so this is going to be a very off-the-cuff personal memoir. Well, so what did I think of my first real caving expedition? Being significantly claustrophobic, I approached the idea with some trepidation. But the country & accommodations sounded appealing, and I was ready for a little adventure. And, besides, they said that, since novices were expected, there would be no tiny passages or little nasty tight crawly places. They lied. I just followed along, in blind trust & ignorance, not knowing what was in store for me. I had done a small, easy cave years ago, but again, this was the first cavers' cave I had ever attempted. There were several other firsts for me as well; It was my 1st time doing rustic camping, albeit with a sturdy cabin, but still no power or plumbing. My 1st time using an outhouse, which teetered uncertainly in a downhill direction. Only later did I learn that one should check for poisonous spiders under the seat; it's a favored spot for them. But frankly, I'm not too keen on the idea of sticking my head thru a port hole of that sort. One can imagine all sorts of unpleasant accidents. My 1st time using an outdoor shower. There was no regular plumbing, but there was a spring with a hand-pump faucet connected to it. I didn't realize that all one had to do was simply lift the handle and very shortly the water gushed out. I thought you had to pump it continuously, and was somewhat annoyed that my vigorous efforts produced only a trickle of water. Also my 1st time getting a speeding ticket-from a very nasty West Virginia state policeman. A little extra adventure I had on the way back. I wasn't too keen on W VA to begin with, and after the policeman incident, all I could think of was, yes, I can make it to the border & escape. But, I digress.
Massive storm late Friday night, but otherwise wonderful weather all weekend, sunny & warm (which is just right if you've just finished icing all your delicate body parts in the shower). And a strikingly beautiful starlit sky Saturday night-bright with a diffuse glow, but still with innumerable stars gently sparkling. I could have lain in the grass in the balmy-cool night air looking up at it for hours. (Sigh.) Most folks arrived very late Friday. The entire group consisted of Keith Wheeland & yours truly from Centre County, Stephen Carter from Philly, Mike Hunter from Pitts., Scotty Jones from the Pitts. Area, Josh Rubinstein and Scott Wahlquist from Crozet, VA, Todd Merriman from Atlanta, GA, and Philip Judson from Harrogate, North Yorkshire in Britain. (We do try to be cosmopolitan.) The VA countryside was beautiful, all rolling hills and soft, grassy meadows. I was quite impressed with the facilities: an ample 19th-century log cabin with logs a foot thick, set in a little valley with a meadow. New this season apparently was a large deck wrapping around half of the house, with a counter for cooking. Great place for hanging out & recovering from expeditions.
I especially liked the outdoor shower (except for the water temperature). Now while the shower "faucet" itself was only a garden sprayer attached to a hose attached to the pump, the shower enclosure was quite impressive: set in the side of the hill, it was a semicircular mortarless stone enclosure with curving steps on the outside, leading down to the shower floor, and stone seats on the inside. From inside, one could look at the side of the mountain and the cliff face with the cave entrance at the bottom. Directly in front of you was the leafy bottom of the ravine. There's something very exhilarating, airy, & free about standing in the middle of the woods in one's all-in-all, feeling the balmy air. So I took lots of showers. Even though the water was cold enough to make my head numb by the time I finished shampooing. One must look one's best. You never know when someone might come along, you know. I was so disappointed though. I took several, and not once did anyone offer to help me out with those hard-to-reach places.
Not being a serious caver, I didn't have much in the way of equipment. Keith was kind enough to lend inner & outerwear & a helmet. It was rather warm outside, so the full gear was just too hot to put on until just before entering the cave. I was walking around carrying the top half of my overalls slung over my arm. Somehow, I felt like a debutante carrying around the excess of her ball gown. (I suppose I was a deb in a way, this being my major caving coming-out party, so to speak.) The coveralls were quite sturdy but didn't fit quite right-the waist and crotch were too low. (Although I remember at least one person making a comment about the fit being that way so there was enough room for my big balls. Who peeked!?) I felt like I was walking around with my pants around my knees. (Which I have done on many occasions, but in somewhat different circumstances.) I had to constantly hitch them up so I could spread my legs far enough (no comments please) so that I could climb over the often rough terrain of the cave.
My thoughts on the cave interior are a little disjointed. We went back and forth thru so many rooms and passages that I can't remember the sequence or the names of the rooms. I was too busy gawking and trying to keep up; no time to take notes. We only saw one little bat, all fat & dewy, near the bottom of the entrance tube. The first space I remember was a large curving room (Sand Canyon) which looked like it had a stream along the outer edge, but was dry. Lots of streams elsewhere though. We got to step over them, in them around them; crawl thru them, climb up them, wade into them. There was an ample supply of water. For a while we were able to keep our feet dry, but the water got deeper & deeper. Also lots of nice thick deep sticky mud in places as well. Waterproof boots aren't much help when all the water is on the inside. I tried lifting my legs (which elicited no interest at all) & draining them. Silly me. All that did was saturate my previously dry butt. But no matter. We all got soaked up to the waist eventually anyway.
Again, we went thru what to me was a bewildering sequence of rooms, at a very brisk pace. The pace was such that I was overdressed & had to shed a layer of clothing to stay cool enough. I gather I should have tried to remember landmarks, but we were going too fast for me to do that, what with me constantly having to hitch up my droopy drawers. I found it hard to take it all in. (Although I usually don't have trouble taking it all in hard.) We were rarely in one spot long enough for me to just be there & experience the space. Most of the times we did stop we were in little tiny claustrophobic passageways, which produced experiences of the type I was not looking for. Of course, when we did stop a while for lunch & my body temperature seemed to drop 20 degrees, I realized the need to keep moving. Anyone have some extra electric socks?
Knowing caves mostly thru places like Penns Cave (or is it now Penis Cove?-as someone had rewritten it on a local billboard). I suppose I was subconsciously expecting grand rooms choked with formations illuminated with colored lights. Nevertheless, I wasn't disappointed. I have always been attracted to impressive architectural spaces, whether manmade or natural. All those "cavernous" rooms were quite remarkable. Time for me to wax poetic: I was captivated by the great, grand vaulted spaces twisting up into the darkness, the shaped and folded rock expanding and contracting, winding and plunging into the mountainside like some great serpent or dragon bounding ahead of us into the darkness. All in all, quite memorable when you give your mind a chance to fully experience your surroundings.
Coming back to earth, I saw the giant Hanging Dong, a very, very large stalactite, much larger that any other single formation in the cave (and much too big for me). And to switch (from the top to the bottom) or to the other side of the body, err..., I mean coin, there was the keyhole-like formation, the Eye of the Needle. I'm afraid I was too modest to perform the supposed requisite initiation act. It was a trifle chilly anyway, & I would not have put my best "foot" forward, so to speak. Someone said something about "fluffers," but no one stepped forward. Oh well.
Being a nearly virgin caver, I was enticed into this activity by a promise of no teeny claustrophobic passages, being quite susceptible to that particular affliction myself. Well,... so much for truth in advertising. Now deep into the cave, god knows where from my point of view, we crawled along a long passage that became progressively smaller and smaller, becoming a hand & knees crawl (and no one wearing see-thru spandex to keep it interesting). We stopped for a long time while the person leading at that point wavered about whether this was the right way to go and whether he could get thru. It is not comforting to one of the claustrophobic persuasion when an experienced caver is having panic attacks trying to get thru a passage. And you want me to do what?! As long as we kept moving & seemed to know where we were going, it was OK. But the not knowing & the not moving when in a very confined space is more than a little spooky. And why does everyone choose that time to tell all their caving horror stories. Oh will you just shut up, please, why don't you! I could have just hit someone.
The small passage apparently contracted to a tiny passage know as "Pants-Off Crawl." As it turned out, none of us who got thru had to be quite that revealing of our persons, although personally I thought we should have been anyway, just out of respect to the name and all. The passage was so small that we had to turn our heads sideways to fit thru, and then twist our bodies into all sorts of unnatural positions to wiggle thru. Of course we were all every good at that. I don't think I could have gotten thru (at least not without having some massive panic attack) without the continual pep talks from Scott (Walquist). I have to admit, he seemed a bit goofy when I first met him, but he is amazing inside a cave, absolutely centered and on target. He's someone I would want to have on any caving expedition I was part of.
Several folks couldn't get thru Pants-Off Crawl. They and our erstwhile leader Keith (who knew the cave backwards & forwards) were going to go around another way and meet up with those of us who went thru. The passage on the other side of Pants-Off wasn't much bigger than the one we just left. Our new leader (Mike) kind-of remembered the way, from when he had last been thru there-8 or 9 years ago. I was confident. The passage flattened out into an 18 inch crawl. Not certain this was the correct way (oh dear), Scotty (Jones) went ahead to do reconnaissance, and the rest of us halted again waiting (for an eternity) for him to come back. Now we've gone from spooky to creepy. And more cave horror stories! I mean, honestly. But I have to say, thru the entire expedition, everyone was great and helpful. (At some point, for reasons I can't remember, someone even helped me with that extra "baggage" in my coveralls that they had commented on earlier. They were just too kind.) Scotty was especially good about checking in with me to be sure I wasn't losing it (my mind, not my pants). He even lent me a brighter light (I had a rather dim bulb-I'll leave the puns on that one to the reader), which he fastened with liberal amounts of duct tape-never be without it. I'm actually surprised that I didn't have any panic attacks at those various nasty spots, although recalling them that evening on the veranda did give me the heebie-jeebies. I think we were all immensely relieved when the two parties reconnected.
Climbing up the waterfall in the Sixth of July Room was great. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to find enough secure footholds and handholds to get up over that, especially for someone like me, who isn't exactly overburdened with muscles. I remember a mudslide passage that was fun. Oh, let's go back and do it again, can we? Please! Please! Did my first bit of rope climbing up a slope that was too muddy and slippery for most of us to manage otherwise, although I think Scott did somehow get up there to tie the rope. I was surprised that it was so easy. All in all, I did all sorts of things I didn't think I could do, although I don't think I could have done most of them without the rest of the folks guiding me along. Again, I can't say enough nice things about the people on this trip, and many thanks to all of them for making this a great experience.
Somewhere along the latter part of the trip, we went thru a series of tall, narrow, very heavily water-sculpted passages. They reminded me of the wind-eroded slot canyons of Utah (e.g. the Zion Narrows), with the same wavy striated walls, only these striations were much sharper-edged. We walked thru these passages sometimes one foot on each side on the stone ledges, with the passageway continuing below us down to the stream bed.
In the last segment of the trip, there was lots of water. Of course by this time, we were so wet & muddy that you would think it didn't matter. Personally, I like splashing in the water, but when it's up to your waist, it's a bit much. Keith said the water level was the highest he had ever seen. We all have to wade thru several pools that were at least crotch deep. The deepest was Dave's Lake, where the water reached my waist (I'm 5' 10"). I've never heard so many high-pitched noises from a group of men. Brave & hardy souls we were. Perhaps we were trying to talk to the bats.
Now, having been on such a major adventure, I wanted a memento or two - a few pebbles from the stream beds. So along the last leg of the trip, I picked up a little rock here and there (no formations please) and put them in my coveralls. I especially liked a large white one that I decided was my dinosaur egg. In retrospect, when you're a bit pooped out at the end of the day, climbing mostly uphill, and your coveralls seem to be perpetually sliding down to your knees, filling your pants with rocks is perhaps not the brightest thing to do. But I wanted my "egg". And every time I stopped to pick up something shiny, everyone else was moving ahead. Where did they all go? I'm not panicking. But I hustled my butt & caught up with them, quite breathless (just from the grandeur of the experience, of course.) I was about to give up and ask for a breather, when the heavenly light appeared from above. By that point, most of us had had quite enough cave, and the overly warm topside air was quite welcome. Whatever color clothing we had been wearing, everything was now a uniform shade of brown. Now to go back to that lovely shower & wash off all this mud.
Modestly yours,
Aaron Rottner
State College, PA
28 June 2004 1