That was the consensus driving to the first of four Pennsylvania caves Allen Rush had planned for us. We'd end up having a great day, but it looking like our trip was screwed as soon as we left Ed Sira's house.
Ed generously opened his doors to the whole trip, which ballooned from single digits up to 17. Good thing his house near Gettysburg hold a lot of people. We were mostly driving from New Jersey, so the first of seven carloads of people started coming late, and filed in later and later.
The cast was a mixture of NNJG members (Allen, me, Fran�ois, Bubbles, JoAnne, Tom, Ray, Andy), CNJG members (Allen, Rob, Theresa, Matt, Steve, Crystal, Rachelle, Alana) and Pennsylvania cavers (Allen, Amos, Nate). You might be able to tell Allen put this trip together.
Ed had just had the basement converted to a rec room. Some of us helped move the pool table in, and then set up the unassembled pinball machine/dart board. There's enough engineer blood in the average caver that any unassembled kit will be constructed, preferably without instructions. The machine might be jury-rigged to throw a dart at your head when you tilt the pinball table, but it'll be built.
We sat around talking unitl nearly 2 A.M. Some of us crawled away to a sleeping bag, but Ed and his wife kept talking up the conscious people.
Breakfast the next morning was at a local diner, which was converted from a one-room schoolhouse. The food was great, except for the pudding. This was a pork pudding, which Fran�ois ordered essentially because he had never seen it on a menu before. There's a reason for that. It looked, smelled, and tasted like cat puke.
After that, we ran in a downpour to the cars through a downpour, which we might be changing our clothes in eight times this day. If we had woken up in New Jersey, most of us would have stayed home this day.
Our seven-car parade drove to a farm where Goods Cave was. A muddy road stretch out before us, through now-empty farmland that looks like it grew corn, soybeans and clover.
Our cars muscled their way up the unpaved muddy road. Everyone fishtailed a little. If you had to fishtail, this was an OK spot for it: flat, nothing on either side but empty fields, and the bumper traffic around knew damn well not to get too close.
Each car picked its own route for when to follow the ruts of the road through puddles of indeterminate depth, and when to drive off the ruts and avoid them. I was riding in Tom Cavanaugh's sedan, which didn't have the highest clearance. We heard a few unfortunate scrapes as the car got over some of the rocks between the ruts.
Tom pulled his car over after a particularly bad spot. He didn't feel confident taking the car the rest of the way. Bubbles' Saturn Vue volunteered itself as an alternate means of transport the rest of the way. After lots of gear- and garbage-shuffling to get me, Tom, and Ray Engelberg in the car with our gear (and inadvertently trampling mud on Bubbles' cave maps - sorry, Bubbles), we drove maybe a hundred yards to where everyone else was parking.
The rain was dying down, so we'd be merely cold and miserable for the suiting ups, and not wet, cold and miserable. It didn't rain the rest of the day. Doctors say overheating is a main cause of infertility; the guys on the trip must be as fertile as the Nile Delta now.
This slanted cave went back a few thousand feet, and had about that many beer bottles in it. The locals knew exactly where this cave was. Some of them were shattered, but most were considerately off to a side. There were lots of fast food wrappers, too.
One peculiar bit of nastiness was the black and white fungi growing on the raccoon scat at certain locations. It grew straight up from the poo, to about four inches high. Each one looked like Don King.
After half an hour of getting all 17 people in the little opening, the first efforts were made to get all 17 people out the little opening. I was given a beer bottle to carry out. I should have taken my big pack in; then I could have taken out a case of bottles.
When I got to the surface I took out the garbage bag tucked in my helmet, and we began loading it. Beer bottles and fast food wrappers made the bag indistinguishable from anything found on a frat house lawn on garbage day.
For old time's sake, there was a seven-ounce pull-tab short can of Rolling Rock that was dropped at least thirty years ago. I went to work on the spent shotgun shells, and got at least thirty in the bag. Someone found a small skull outside the entrance that was debatably a raccoon, squirrel or skunk. I would not want to pledge this frat house.
Steve, Crystal and I shared a weird coincidence when we were gathering the garbage. They had gotten into caving based on a trip to Mammoth they took last August. They had seen people hauling bags of old wood out of the cave, and that sparked their idea of caves being more than tourist spots. I happened to be one of those wood haulers in Mammoth. So Goods wasn't the first cave trip we had done together.
Changing back into normal clothes was manageable, but still cold. It wasn't raining any more, but it was windy as Mt. Washington. Several drivers were putting towels and plastic bags on their seats, so they could hop right in their car in their gear. Only people with leather seats seems to like this idea. Tom did not have leather seats, so I just peeled off my coveralls and put my coat on over my polypros. I looked like a flasher.
All seven cars had enough mud spun up on their sides to star in their own offroad commercial. Crystal's blue Saturn Vue (yes, there were two Vues in this parade) went in reverse to head out of the farm. The wheels spun and spun backwards, and the car moved about 4 MPH. I swear the car was moonwalking.
Getting the cars back was every bit as treacherous as getting them to the cave site (well, except for Tom, who parked before coming to the real nasty part). All the cars made it across without losing mufflers, so that was one cave down, three to go.
There was a hand line strung through a lot of Welsh Run, right at the beginning. Amos held it up like a jump rope for everyone to step over or go under. "It's hard to see on the round," he said, saving the trip from many hilarious but painful stumbles.
The hand line was tied to a formation column, but had been there a while, since the line had cut into the formation for a few inches all around. It was like a piece of wire through a block of clay. Couldn't the installer have brought a bolt?
Steve came out of a narrow canyon by the belted formation, and said there were a couple people exploring the other side. I went in the canyon, which quickly narrowed until I could barely squeeze my rib cage through. I brushed my helmet against the right wall, which knocked a purple Mini Maglite off my helmet. It clattered down the canyon, bouncing four or five times and splashing into a little pool.
The pool was about four feet down from my spot, with only the canyon to brace against to get over to flat ground. Three people were crawling on that ground, and none of them had chattering teeth, so they all made it across dry.
I shuffled myself out over the water, and the canyon walls were narrow enough to traverse securely. (I didn't know that everyone else had come through a non-treacherous crawl, and that I was the only person addled enough to try this route.)
I lowered myself until I could get a foot in the pool. I couldn't see how deep it was, and wanted to check. My foot went down all the way, and could not find the bottom. I pulled my foot up, and the water had washed it clean to the knee.
I tried a second attempt to feel the bottom, this time going knee deep and not having any luck. All the rain from this morning had swelled this little channel to its current mighty size. If this was summer, it'd be no big deal to jump into what could be thigh deep water, fish out the light, and then warm up outside. But this was January.
I shimmeyed over to the easy ground and contemplated my options. It was an eight-dollar Mini Maglite with half-dead batteries, but if I didn't give this a bigger effort, I'd regret it. And it wasn�t like anyone else would be crazy enough to dive in here to get a crummy Maglite...
"Bubbles?"
It was a small cave, so she heard my page and crawled over within a minute or two. "What's up?"
"Would you do something demeaning for no personal gain?"
"What?"
"I dropped my Maglite in the pool, and I don't know how deep it is. It's yours, if you can get it."
"I don't want to take your Maglite from you. What color is it?"
"Purple."
"That's an ugly one." She lowered herself down in there anyway. "Whoa! Where's the bottom?"
"I don't know. That's the problem."
Bubbles stopped just before she got waist deep. She likes water, but tastes change when it's January.
Time to suck it up and do this myself. I wedged myself over the now-churned up water, and lowered my leg down to mid-thigh. I could feel the walls widening. I shuffled my leg back up to brace me. As my leg rose about my waist, all the water from that leg flowed down into my underwear. I'd never have to worry about infertility again (assumed my sperm dethawed).
I didn't mean to hit the point of no return, but I was there, so I might as well use it. I took off my right boot, passed it to Amos, lowered to waist level, and began feeling around on the bottom with my Aqua sock-clad foot. Thanks to my abnormally long toes, I might even be able to pick up the Maglite if I found it this way.
My foot did not touch bottom. I lowered again, to mid-chest. No bottom. I lowered again, to shoulder level. No bottom. I really should have stayed at Ed's house.
Whoever in China had my light was welcome to it. I climbed out, and carefully put my boot back on. If I dropped it in the water, it was going to the first one-legged size 12 in China. On the plus side, my suit was now clean and orange. On the minus side, the crawlway to the main passage was so clogged with mud my suit gained ten pounds.
My teeth were chattering as I stripped the suit off, puled my coat around me, and jumped in the car to get out of the wind. Tom climbed into the driver's seat with his kneepads on. One knee slid against the bottom of the steering column, and a thick coat of orange mud was slathered on. This trip might have been sponsored by a car wash.
For Niswander we parked by humps of fertilizer the size of beached whales. Take a guess how that smelled.
I was freezing in my clammy suit, and the wind was picking up. I don't know what was worse about that wind, the heat loss or the odor. Walking to the cave wasn�t fast enough, so I ran.
I reached a shallow pit full of garbage, rocks, more garbage, weeds, more garbage, and discarded rolls of old fence (which might be tallied in the "garbage" column). The pit didn't offer much relief from the wind or the smell, so I went straight inside the cave. There was only a 10 degree difference, but getting out of the wind gave me another ten degrees, and let me build up body heat again.
This cave went in straight line back, probably directly underneath the cars and the fertilizer. After a couple hundred feet, I ran in to JoAnne at the water's edge. The map didn't mention water. Another beautiful waterway thanks to the morning rain.
She was testing the depth with a rotten board, and coming up with six inches. She had no problems finding a rotten board in this part of the cave, since there was more garbage in here. Styrafoam chunks, bleach bottles, mysterious unlabeled aerosol tubes and soggy paper.
I wasn't going in that water: I already had my bath today. I had warmed up a bit, and wasn't looking for another brush with hypothermia. Once I saw other people slogging through the water, I had to follow along. Plus, it was only ankle high.
The passage cut itself in half to duck walking, and slowly descended. We were bent over at the waist wading through water that rose past the ankle point to mid-calf. More bleach bottles floated around, and we kicked them out of our way.
We could see a good distance ahead, and no raise in the ceiling was in sight. The slightest stumble will mean a dunking in this liquid landfill. I cut bait and headed for higher ground. Allen soldiered on.
Allen said he eventually made it to standing passage again. Uh huh. With some formations. Uh huh. And a hot chocolate stand run by Heidi Klum. Uh huh.
The return trip out by this point was routine. Run as fast as you can to the car, peel your soggy coveralls off, and jump into the car in your underwear before you freeze on the spot like Robert Patrick in Termanator 2.
Even with those car doors sealed shut, there was no escaping the manure smell. We had to drive a few miles to shake that out of the car's vents - and our nostrils.
Our last cave was also our longest - hence its name. It was all in a straight line, so there were no side trips. You went straight back, or you went out.
We parked in the driveway of a landowner, who Allen said was very nice on the phone. So nice, in fact, that he set flagging tape every twenty feet of the path leading to the cave. It helped, but give us a little bit of credit here. When you can see seven bits of tape in a row, you don't need those bits in the middle.
In every cave there was a reshuffling of which members of what group you were caving with. I got to travel alongside most of the 17 people this trip, but for the last cave, I was with Amos, Fran�ois, Rachelle, and her daughter Alana.
I had caved with teenagers a few times in the past year, but most of them were 16-year-old boys, who find nothing inthe world interesting except the little jokes they tell each other. Alana, on the other hand, was actively into seeing the cave's selling points. Especially the bats.
Most grizzled reactions to finding a bat in a cave are "Yep. Another bat." It's not a novelty to people who have caved regularly. To Alana, though, they were new.
"Oh, he's so cute!"
"Look, I can see his ears!"
"I can see his little face! I want one!"
We had to be careful not to wake the bats. That meant to not even look at them, since pointing your head in their direction meant your headlamp was on them like a spotlight. Waking bats during hibernation causes them to lose a lot of stored energy, possibly enough so they won't make it to the spring OK.
After an hour of checking out the bats and some really pristine fossils, some of the other groups began turning home. Some guys were tired. We got notes from them about what was ahead. There was the usual assortment of bizarre formations, then a big cluster of sleeping bats, and eventually an exposed passage that was the turnaround point for some of the group before us (now behind us).
That first group must have been loud. We were climbing into chambers with bats flying all around. It was cool to climb around with them fluttering around, but I knew this didn�t bode well for the winged mammals.
I didn't want to tell Alana I said that we should keep quiet to keep the bats sleeping, and that it's "not good" to wake them in the winter. But I didn't say just why it's "not good."
Amos had a different tack. He didn't sugar coat it. The bats were screwed, and if you asked him, he told you.
This tact worked to the bats� advantage for at least one little guy. He had let go of his perch, and was lying sprawled on a dirt ledge. The surface was sapping away his heat. My reaction was to inwardly wince, then cave on past him. Amos saw him, picked his up, and stuck him back on a wall. Bat feet will instintively grab onto anything you stick them on.
(Weird coincidence #2. Amos has been leading Scout trips to Pennsylvania caves for over 20 years. My first cave trip was as a Weblos when I was living in Pennsylvania, to caves Amos frequently went to. So he most likely led me on my first cave trip. But maybe this and the Mammoth thing are just indications that the caving community is a small world.)
We passed the formations, then the cluster of a dozen bats, and ffiteen minutes later the exposed passage. Going across it would mean having to do it all over again in a few minutes when we turned back, so we made that our turnaround point, too.
A couple years ago, I was on a Clarksville trip that screwed Ray Engleberg over. He rode up with me, and then he went with one group, and everyone else in my car went off by ourselves. I showed everyone in that group where I was stashing the key, but forgot to tell Ray. Guess whose trip ended an hour before mine, freezing and with no access to his clothes.
I was hoping Ray wouldn't have to go through that again. He was with Tom, who had the keys, but all the same they couldn't leave without me. So I didn't dawdle in the cave. Full speed ahead.
Our group of five made very good time. There was no route finding, just push ahead as quickly as possible. We kept Alana between a combination of Cois, Amos and me, to make sure she got across any gaps without incident. She did fine, along with her mom.
We came out in total darkness, and then had to remember our way out of the woods. It was only a couple thousand feet, but it took a few minutes to find one piece of flagging tape. I take back what I said about not needing the tape.
We made it back to the cars, and found out the other group had only beaten us there by fifteen or twenty minutes. They had taken their sweet time coming out, and had a bigger number of slower cavers.
We all got four good caves under our belt, and had a great time exploring all four. Big thanks to Allen for putting the trip together, Ed for putting up with cavers tracking mud on the brand new carpet, and Tom and the other drivers for subjecting their cars to a mud bath.
It was definitely preferable to staying in New Jersey. Whether it was better than playing pool at Ed's all day - that's debatable.