For some people it's a tennis racket or a the first five pages of a novel. For me, it was my carbide generator.
I bought the Petzl Ariane generator as a package set with a Petzl Duo headlamp mounted on a new helmet. I also bought a paint can of carbide. I immediately started caving with the helmet, using just the Duo. I'd use the generator some other trip.
Part of my motivation was that I wanted to write a big report about what was sure to be a laborious cave trip, constantly stopping to adjust/repair this new technology I'd have strapped to my harness. Thus, I needed a routine cave trip, something where 1. I wouldn't hold up the trip and 2. nothing else of consequence would happen.
That took a couple years. I had a great opportunity with a Leigh scout trip earlier in the year, but I got there late and didn't want to slow down the always-slow Leigh trip. (Naturally, that was the one trips where the whole group got out by 2:30.)
The opportunity again came with the Haunted Cabin weekend, and this time I'd take advantage of it. Andrew Foord had put the weekend together, but would be too busy preparing fajitas and rigging Schoharie Cave with candles to do anything casual on Saturday. The rest of us were going to Clarksville.
I've been to Clarksville several times. Most of it's big passage, so all that carbide light won't go to waste. We had a mostly-experienced group, so there won't be too many stops because someone wasn't expecting to get dirty.
Andrew's son Conrad was also using carbide, but via a brass cap lamp. The rest of the crew was using electric. Most were full-on cavers, so they had more experience with my type of generator than I did.
With a lot of their help, I got a few hours� worth of carbide rocks in the bottom chamber, and a reasonable pace for the water dripping down from the top chamber. The tube plugged into the tip on my helmet, the flint swung down on it pivot and sparked, and I heard a satisfying hiss of acetylene burning. It felt weird to strap on my harness for a 100% horizontal trip, but my coveralls don't have belt loops.
There was something wrong with the tip, though. The flame was tilted backwards, so it burned right into the mirror. This soot wiped right off, but the whole point of the mirror was to reflect the flame and not block it.
Scott Sala and I were the de facto leaders for this, since we had faint memories of being in this cave before. The newly-built kiosk turned out to be a huge help, since it has an enormous map of the whole cave to study before you enter. Clarksville is mostly straightforward, so we didn't need to study the map too long.
There were other groups in Clarksville this day. I walked a little closer to them than I normally would, hoping they'd make a comment about the flaming magnificence on my head. They didn't.
The flame threw off a lot of light, but none of it went at my feet. I had to hunch over to get the flame to light my next step. That ain't good.
I was a little dismayed that, at the breaks, most of the electric cavers kept their lights on. You�d never catch me with my electric light on during a break, especially when there's a ceiling burner in the group. Didn't they realize I was a portable sun?
We hit the Lake Room, took another break, and turned around. Reversing our trip back, we stopped by the turnoff to the Thook. I had never done it before, but the map indicated it was crawl with few choices. One by one, we put our packs down and ventured inside. I wasn't looking to crawl on my first carbide day, but what the hell.
I was on the tail end of the crawl, trying to not get my helmet too close to Ray - for courtesy's sake, and for the sake of Ray's unscorched ass. I kept my head low, hoping I wasn't leaving a black char mark the whole length of the Thook.
Here's where my carbide began giving me problems. It was lying horizontal in the belly crawl passages, instead of hanging down vertically to let the water drip down. The light began popping out. It went right back on, but then right back out.
Just after that, my tube got yanked off my helmet. It wasn�t that hard to jam it back on the spigot, but a challenge to do in the dark. I had other light, but they wouldn't help me so long as I was keeping the helmet on my head, and taking your helmet off in a crawl is a pain at certain angles.
Just after that, I had a slightly embarrassing problem. I hadn't cinched my harness tight, since I wasn't putting my weight on it. It was getting loose in the crawls now, and was now working its way down my knees. The only thing holding up my harness was the gas tube.
One belt-tighening and a few minutes later, I was the last of the crew to crawl out the Thook entrance (named after the sound Thom Engel's pole made while ridge-walking for this alternate Clarksville entrance). I walked back through the woods carefully: one wrong step and I'd start a forest fire. Note to self: put out head before walking through woods on all future trips.
Back at the cabin, I found out I had mounted the carbide tip wrong. When it was tilted the right way, it lit up my feet just fine, and didn't soot up the mirror. So that problem's solved.
The carbide was still generating gas for hours after the trip, so I used it to take a look at Andrew and Barclay's Schoharie lighting. It was done by tea candles, which my helmet beat the crap out of light-wise. The few times I blew out my light to look just by tea candles, I was essentially blind. Those tea candles put out about as much light as a Wint-o-Green Certs.
Sunday�s trip was a second inauguration of new caving gear: my wetsuit. We were going to the wet side of Gage's.
Most people I know have a three-mil or a five-mil suit, with or without sleeves. The thicker the suit, the warmer, but also the harder it is to move.
My suit was a thick seven mil pair of Farmer John overalls, with a matching seven-mil jacket. That was 14 millimeters of constriction from shoulders to knees (the jacket reaches down to mid-thigh). I bought it used from a dive shop for $40 bucks. It�s going to get ripped up anyway, so might as well buy a ripped one and save 90% of the cost of a new one.
I was also bringing my carbide. Gage's was cold cold cold, so the heat source would be very welcome.
You need to rig the Gage�s entrance vertically, even though there's a ladder. Since I had the harness on as a belt for my carbide, I took my rack along and went down on rope. Never pass up a chance for a vertical trip, even if it's just 50 feet.
At the bottom of the ladder, the passage slants down a few yards until the split. Crawl left for the dry side, crawl right for the wet side. Six of us ventured to the right, including the ABCs of the Foord family (Andrew, Barclay, Conrad).
I didn�t expect how quick the passage went wet, or how otherwise easy it was. Within 15 feet the crawl turned to stooping passage with a foot of water, and within another 15 feet it was full on walking passage, with five feet of water.
At this point I thanked whatever combination of God, fate and dumb luck had me buy such a thick suit. I was hearing screams of cold from the five wetsuit-clad people around me, but none were coming from me. From my shoulders to my knees, I was toasty. My hands and feet were numb, but the water just didn�t have a chance to worm its way to my torso.
That five-foot level was the deepest the water got. It dropped to three feet at a rimstone pool, and alternated between ankle-deep and waist deep as we vaulted over a series of gorgeous rimstone dams.
We climbed out of the water to a dry room, where five people shook off the cold and I just gloated over my lovely 14 mils. I'd have to ditch one of the pieces if I was doing a cave with any vertical potential, but for now I could probably have people sign over their houses to me to borrow the jacket.
On the far end of this dry room is the most infamous place in Gage's, the Lost Passage. I had been prepping myself for this. It was a small horizontal tube near-submerged. There�s a small groove up top, though, which is enough to stick your head in. By floating backwards through this passage, you can make it to a room at the back.
Andrew dropped down into the pool here, and fit him legs into the tube like a human torpedo. He slid himself in, floated in until his head was about to disappear from view, and then came back out.
The water level was higher than usual. When Andrew had done it before, the water let his whole head rise above the water. In those times, the tightest spot came a body length or so after starting, when the air space necessitates an ear dip (which is a real psychological nails-on-the-chalkboard ooky feeling).
Right now, that beginning passage was an ear dip. It was almost an eye dip. "I was pressing my face to the top, and the water was brimming on my eyelids," Andrew said. If it was eyelip-level at the beginning, the tight spot was probably a full-on sump.
So we didn't do the Lost Passage. Everyone had to pop into that pool, however, just to check out the situation for themselves. We all screamed something akin to "Holy crap!" Mine might have been "Sweet Lord!"
We waded/swam back through the water, and checked out the big passages on the dry side. My suit handled pretty well in the breakdown scrambling. I wasn't doing anything strenuous, but it was reassuring to know that the wetsuit in a dry cave isn't instantaneous death.
Midway through this trip, my carbide gave out completely. It got totally flooded with cave water, and saturated my carbide. I'll need to tighten the hell out of it next time I use it. I don't think that'll be every time, but it'll certainly be a regular feature of my caving now.
Apologies to Duracell for all the future lost revenue.