Pompey's Cave, NY

The directions to the other big cave in Kingston run smoother, but the ladder entrance to this cave is completely iced over. Two Russian cavers get the idea to go to the other entrances they've seen on the map, which are still open. The skylight entrance looks down on a torrent of melt water. A third entrance is accessible, which the group climbs down into and plays around for a few minutes. The group's ready to head back, but the Russians still want to go down the skylight. It's a sheer drop down into an icy stream that's got to be two feet deep, and nonetheless they want to rig a rope ladder from my webbing. I'd be fine lending the webbing out, but for two cavers to have fun seven cavers have to shiver in their cars. I say no, and wish I didn't have to.

Cave Mountain Cave, WV

I'm not leading this trip, but since I got handed a copy of the map people think I'm leading it. The drive follows Allen Rush's directions fine; a farmer advises us to drive another half mile and save some walking. No one in our group has been here before, so the trail that we're following up the mountain doesn't look familiar, just steep. My brother's along for this West Virginia trip, but in this instance he's just another caver hauling up the mountain to find a cave. We overshoot, and end up on the ledge above the entrance. Another fifteen minutes of skidding gets us down to where we want to be. I go the entire trip without having to take my pack off for a squeeze, which is why I wanted to show my brother West Virginia caving in the first place.

Cliffside Cave, WV

I'm in cave Mountain, close enough to daylight to see it, but I take the entire group up a side passage in an attempt to do a through trip out the Cliffside Cave entrance. Four entrances are strung up above Cave Mountain, and three of them connect on the map. The whole group spends a good half hour in narrow high passages covered in mouse turds. There doesn't seem to be a passage that anything bigger than mouse turds could squeeze through. The group probably wouldn't have put up with this if the entrance wasn't thirty seconds away the whole time. Once out, I'm tempted to take an hour and run into all four entrances from their entrances, just to get them on my cave checklist. Other cavers are waiting for us at a restaurant, so it's in the best interest of the group to leave them for another day. Like the Pompey�s webbing plan, but with me canceling my own modest pipe dream.

Kees Cave, WV

Do I have to go caving? I've been to Kees Cave before, it's nice but nothing special, and there's a nice warm West Virginia cabin full of snacks, enjoyable dumb comedies and my brother waiting for me. But I'm here in the streambed by Kees after dinner on Saturday, tromping around the dumped garbage to find the entrance. There's a statistically negligible chance that I'll help to find this cave, since I was here in the daylight two years ago. Hey, it's started to rain; that always boosts my desire to change my clothes on the side of the road. The cave gets found after a few minutes, and we regroup to see who was still eager to do it. Enough passive-aggressive crap: I don't want to cave any more today, and I'm driving to the cabin. That is, if it doesn't inconvenience anyone. Anyone? Nope? All right then, I'm driving back. Old School and Dodgeball await.

Mill Run Cave, WV

There's a sheer cliff going up seventy or eighty feet, and somewhere in it is a cave. It's the day after Cave Mountain, and these are our distractions before driving back to New Jersey. Half the grotto charges up the cliff from the bottom left, slowly footing our way across a slope that could very well kill us with one wrong step. I don't want to so much as twitch without having a sturdy root to hang onto. Luckily the erosion of this cliff has made lots of the larger roots partially exposed. They get a lot more exposed as we go, skaing all loose dirt off them. The few actual trees pioneering on this slope are valued like water fountains in the Sahara. We find the cave, and crawl inside a very long passageway that's just as crumbly as the cliff. I sit with my brother high up on one spot, and my seat disappears. We scramble out of the way as a ton of rock crashes down 25 feet, luckily not blocking anyone's low road out of here. After that Jeff decides he�s got a one-cave-per-day limit --and will be sitting out Smoke Hole.

Smoke Hole Cave, WV

A giant's staircase leads up to Smoke Hole Cave. It goes hundreds of feet up, segmented in vertical fifteen and twenty foot installments. I feel like Jack up the beanstalk trying to climb on things not meant for people of my size. The stairs themselves are concave and filled with leaves � and just enough sharp branches to stop you from cannonballing in the leaves. My goal is the exposed rock with three visible entrances, just like the Smoke Hole map shows. I reach the entrances first, but all three dead end. What are the chances that a cluster of three entrances and my three dead ends co-exist? Not very good, it turns out. One entrance is in the ceiling of the left passage, where I hadn�t checked. The second's in the leaf-choked hole on the right I assume dead-ended. The third is ten feet above my head, leading into the leaf-choked hole. And a fourth entrance is up a slope to my left, but at least that one's not in my line of sight. Maybe I should be sitting this one out, too.

Leigh Cave, NJ

The Boy Scouts went though the cave like Marines through an obstacle course, so Francois, Steve Sanbeg and I had them all out within four hours. There was no rush to get the key back, so I looked around the cave and saw two bats lying on a shelf off the canyon passage, losing body heat. They looked dead, but when I picked one up with my glove, it squeaked and hissed. It squirmed out of my hand and fell to the ground. Cois came over, and we each began trying to move these two bats to a spot they could hang from. They were climbing over our gloves and refusing to let go when we put their feet by rock overhangs. One got free of Cois's grip, and disappeared. We spent a nervous minute searching the ground around us, like someone dropped a contact lens. Cois's got some rips in his suit, so he feared that the bat�s gone inside it. It's found on the outside of his suit, climbing Cois's back like it was a rock wall. We eventually got both bats on an overhang, where they'll hopefully be able to fly away and pester future Boy Scout tours through Leigh.

Ford Dennis Cave, NJ

This is just a talus formation off of Lou Martucci's backyard, so I don't know if this counts as a real cave or not. We�re here after a grotto meeting at Lou's house. The rock covers enough of the eroded channel to protect from rain, but doesn't go back far enough to block sunlight. I'm a little concerned that voles and snakes are nestled in the leaves I'm crunching, or that in my crouched position I'll get violated by a raccoon. I climb out and pick a different area to descend into. My only light source is a Mini Maglite I got from my car. Wait, I've got my cell phone. I take it from my pocket, wake it up, and a bright light illuminates the hard rock. Phew, it hasn't been broken. And, for the first time in my life, I'm looking at five bars on the phone while I'm in the cave. I think who I could call that would appreciate this moment. I call Andrew Foord, who's standing all of thirty feet away, but his phone's turned off. I don't leave a message; I just shout to Andrew to turn his phone on.

Surprise Cave, NY

The cable ladder only gets set up for Surprise when there's a capacity crowd, and it got it during the NRO. There's room for thousands of people in Surprise, but everyone'll get jammed up trying to ascend that ladder. There's a state "request" (a specific word notable for not being an "order," so who knows if it's legally binding) to not use the Bypass, since some rocks are unstable. So I have the group wait for their turn to climb the ladder. After 45 minutes, maybe five people have climbed it. Someone climbs down from her midpoint position because she feels she just doesn't have the arm strength to complete the climb. So in this case the Bypass would be the safer choice. And how about the safety choice of freezing to death when you're five minutes from the entrance, and doing so just out of bureaucratic politeness? Most of us go through the Bypass. This same thing happened the other time I've been in Surprise and the cable ladder was set up: I have yet to climb up the damn thing.

Rhodes Cave, NY

Some of the Rensselaer students we caved Surprise with had a pickup, so we piled out dirty selves in it and rode the mile or so to the Rhodes parking lot. For a tiny little cave no one bothers to visit when they hit Surprise, Rhodes is a nightmare labyrinth. Even with a map and flagging tape, we got embarrassingly lost three minutes from the entrance. Most of us managed to find our way back out the Fossil entrance that we entered, but a few found the pit entrance, which is essentially unclimbable without a handline. One or two of the tallest cavers made it out unaided, and they then strung down webbing so the shorter people could get out. The two girls in the party jumped in the cold stream and washed the mud off their coveralls. The guys all valued their warmth more than their cleanliness.