This was the first time I rode down in Mark Skove's big blue van. Mats and sleeping bags are set down on the floor, gear is by the back doors, and a TV/VCR is bungeed into a corner. Bubbles, Steve Sanbeg and I lay on mats for eight hours watching videos. (The particular videos were Joe Dirt, A Knight's Tale, Memento, and half of Animal House. The other half was played on the way back, along with the Blues Brothers and the South Park movie.)
Tied securely to the roof were three aluminum ladders. Mark was donating them to the Scott Hollow effort. That would be our Sunday cave. Saturday was both ends of Bone-Norman.
Our motel room was much better than what I was expecting. For $12.50 a night per person, everyone had their own bed, there was a kitchenette, and the TV had full cable access with HBO.
In other rooms of the hotel were Jeralin, Wayne Russell, Julie R., Tattoo Wayne, Steve O. , Jeralin, and several of Jeralin's friends. We met up in the morning, saw the pathetic 'continental breakfast' and went to Shoney's.
We'd be going in Bone first, checking out Devil's Pinch, then backtrakcing out and doing Norman. A through trip would have been nice, but logstically tough enough to work out the existing schedule with the huge number of people doing it. (Not that I'm claiming any of the organizational credit; that's Jeralin and Mark). It was hot in Bone, and dry. Every step brought up a small cloud of dust. At a rest half the group took off their polypros. I kept mine on: I was hot now, but the cave would conduct everyone's body heat off.
Terry Byland, a Scott Hollow caver, had two big advantages: a carbine ceiling burner, and a boombox in his pack. I usually get one song stuck in my head the whole trip. I've never caved with a full on soundtrack before. Some techno, some Pink Floyd. If he's on a trip, you have free light and music. All he needed was a vending machine.
The Pinch got its normal reverence, and then the people cramming through. Steve Sanbeg was the first one to make it. Two years ago I had someone in front of me and someone behind me working to get me through, and I didn't even feel where the pinch was supposed to be. This year, I noticed it, but I got a foot on a good pushoff point, and slid through the tough part. I didn't even have to bother with exhaling my lungs.
Steve and I had a long wait for a third person to make it. Since we weren't doing the through trip, the pressure to get through wasn't there, and the desire to do it twice didn't help matters. Bubbles tried her luck for a few minutes, before declaring "I can definitely make this. Can I go back now?"
Steve was stuck in front of me with no polypro, just his coveralls. The worst part of the Pinch is the hundreds of feet of unexciting crawl afterward, and we were lying in the first thirty feet of it. There was no room to even sit up, so Steve was lying on his side, getting colder and colder, and telling everyone to hurry the hell up.
Five people made it through the Pinch, ending with Mark Skove. There was nothing to see, so we turned around and Steve led the way back out (and back to Steve's polypros). I went second, and expected to slide out like a bobsled. I hit the Pinch and came to a dead stop. This wasn't a matter of being tired or taking the wrong route: it was a solid wedge.
I tried five times to squeze through, but it felt like a different pinch. I got through with virtually no effort coming in, so maybe it was different going feet first. I'd have to back out (along with the three people behind me) and make a u-turn, but it would give me a reasonable chance to get out. I gave the hump one last try before that, and it seemed to shrink two inches. I slid right out, no fancy breathing required.
Mark Skove came out last, and also got trapped at the Pinch. It felt a little reassuring that an expert caver got in the exact same unexplained jam as me. Like me, Mark tried the Pinch five different times, and getting absolutely nowhere. He said something kept catching his suit on his left side. I tried pulling him through, but the problem wasn't a strength one, it was a size one. Eventually he backed up a few feet and took off his coveralls. Changing clothes in an area where you couldn't even lift your head was an experience for him. He passed the coveralls out, and slid right through in his polypros.
There's a small hollow in the ceiling immediately over the bump. I think that if you angle yourself right, you use that ceiling space to by proxy reduce the effect of the bump. Crawling into the Pinch, you're led right into the hollow. But coming back, it's harder to find.
Back outside, we changed and prepared for the Norman entrance. Tattoo Wayne accidentally hit a dog driving to Norman, but the dog ran away before Wayne could check on him, so hopefully the dog was OK.
Ten of us went up the hill into Norman, down the huge slope below the entrance, and worked over to the Totem Pole room. I hadn't been there before, and it blew me away. Acres of formations, some of then ten fet long and bigger, and ridiculously close to the entrance. How this hasn't been vandalized, I don't know.
Seven of us went down to the stream passage. I went with Jeralin and Terry to check out the Great White Way, a quarter mile stretch of gypsum passage just off the main stream passage. I've been there before, and it's hard to find. I thought we were on the right trail of it, but our route just put us back in the water further downstream. Where we proceeded to go downstream. We went so far in Norman, we practicaly hit Devil's Pinch from the other side. We were doing a through trip after all.
Coming back was no fun for me. The difference between slogging downstream and slogging upstream became very obvious. As did watching your footing in the water so you don't trip and fall up to your chest. Just once I'd like to leave Norman without a ribbon of mucus hanging off my nose.
Dinner was a couple overcooked steaks at Applebee's for Mark and Steve, veggie quesadillas for Bubbles, and a skillet of New Orleans stuff for me. I accidentally made a scale model of Scott Hollow with my first glass of lemonade. It was loaded with ice, I was thirsty and there were free refills, so I sucked the glass dry in two pulls. The ice and lemon slices had made a jar of marbles in the cup, with the bottom inch of the glass being a hollow. The straw ran through the whole construction.
I was looking forward to the hot tub at the motel, but due to everyone's overejoyment of the hot tub yesterday night, there was to be no hot tub for us tonight. At least the beds were comfortable.
Sunday was a long comfortable breakfast at Tudor's Biscuit World, and then a visit to Scott Hollow. Most of my repeat visit caves have been S caves for some reason (Schoharie, Sharps, Simmons-Mingo, Sloans Valley, Surprise). Scott Hollow fits in well.
We got the ladders off Mark's van and lowered them piece by piece down the big pipe, with two or three people in the tube at a time to guide them down. The ladders weren't heavy, just unwieldy.
Two of the ladders were broken into their components, and the third was kept whole. Mark took the heavy dual ladder, and everyone else grabbed a half. We were going to the Junction Room.
I lost use of an arm carrying the ladder, but I was able to use it as a walking stick. It also worked to be a handhold, a crutch, an anchor, and in one instance coming down some breakdown, its prescribed use as a ladder.
My crummy Zoom only lit up my immediate space, so I followed a 'clear' path down under a shelf. The main route was ten feet over my head, and apparent to anyone who bothered to look. As it was, I took my ladder down into a small crevice that led to a tight jumble of rocks, and almost wedged my ladder in five spots. Steve followed me down. I aborted an attempt to push it through a side passage, figuring the ten minutes to work it through was harder than the two minutes of carrying it out and around the shelf.
An open side passage got the ladders around the particularly tight squeeze that led to the Junction Room. We left them in a heap, and headed home. At a breakdown pile, I saw lights to both the left and right up top. Left was the pipe, right was a new discovery.
Mark and Terry were crawling through a tiny crack, hoping it connected with a section of cave that only a five hour trip could access before. Tattoo Wayne was working on opening up the passage. A huge rock blocked all but a couple inches of passage, and Wayne had a big prybar.
Wanye manned the prybar most of the time, while I cleared away whatever loose rocks I could. We got the rock moving downwards, but to where it blocked even more of the passage. Mark and Terry probably wouldn't like a five-hour return trip. It was our guarantee that we'd finish our rock job.
Mark and Terry crawled back and saw the big boulder in their way. Terry had great leverage to push the rock with his legs, however, and kicked the slab out onto the breakdown pile within a minute. The passage was now almost hands and knees. More importantly, it's only two minutes from the pipe.
This weekend was like a caving sampler platter. There was dry caving, wet caving, recreational, exploratory, beginner trips, advanced stuff, big passages and tight passages. I normally get bugged when I don't get any new caves under my belt, but this time I didn't care.