5/13/00
The Gunbarrel is probably better known than Knox Cave itself, simply for its dimensions. About the shape of a cannon, about the diameter of a misshapen pizza, about the length of a bowling lane.
It's long, small and daunting. Bigger cavers can definitely not fit. It's not exactly walking passage for the smaller cavers, either.
There's plenty of cave behind the Gunbarrel. A bench is made from slate rock and can hold several tired cavers. Lots of explorations are made, with rooms still unmapped. Plus the legendary football room, rumored to be the length of a football field. (The rumor was slightly off. There is a football room, but it's the HEIGHT of a football.)
But to get to any of those rooms, you needed to pass through the barrel. And if you wanted to get out, you had to go through the barrel again.
Up until May 13, 2000, the Gunbarrel was a two way street. When a small road is being paved, they work on half at a time. A cop on one end holds the cars going south at a stop, while the northbound cars pass through. Another cop on the other side then stops the northbound cars so some of the south cars can get through. It's one lane going both ways, and a very inefficient way to travel. It's slow for everyone.
If that bypass hasn't been dug that day, the bottleneck from the NRO cavers would have reached a Cross Bronx level of traffic jam. The road nearby Knox was overflowing with beat up trucks with bat stickers. Some cavers decided to go through five and six at a time. So long as no one got stuck or freaked out, they'd be moving at great speed. If someone did get stuck, then there's a big mess.
The bypass itself runs the length of the Gunbarrel proper. Once the round section opens up to a regular belly crawl, there's the bypass to the left. Coming back, it's a hard right just before you go in the tube. Simple, short, effective.
For purely logistical reasons, this bypass is a great relief. Before, the Gunbarrel was like waiting in line at a very cold, very damp Great Adventure ride. Half the time, your side of the cave wouldn't be moving at all, just waiting for someone to come out of your Gunbarrel end.
For purely psychological reasons, this bypass is a great relief. There's a lot of thinking time inside the Gunbarrel, and the little that's not "How the hell can I do this entire thing?" is "How the hell can I do this entire thing AGAIN to get out?!"
For purely safety reasons, this bypass is a great relief. Someone stuck in the Gunbarrel, either through injury, exhaustion or mental crapout, presents a large rescue challenge. Unless there's someone in the cave's interior able to help with removal from that side, attempts to move someone out of the tube are pretty much getting a rope on a body part and hauling them out like an unwilling dog from the park. Anyone on the cave's interior is stuck until the human cork is removed from the wine bottle. There's stories of a tiny woman who was able to go over someone stuck in the passage, and help the rescue effort from the other side.
Still virgin and unbypassed after all these years is the Gunsights, an even smaller crawl that's shorter then the Gunbarrel proper, but much tighter. There1s no reason for a bypass, since the two ends are a simple walk from each other. It doesn1t take you anywhere, and there's no reason to do the Gunsights except to do it, so it's for masochists only.
Why I got the privilege to be one of the first people through the Gunbarrel bypass, I don't know. Pure dumb luck. I happened to be one of the first people to go in the Gunbarrel and not come out. I've been caving barely a year; this honor should be reserved for people who have at least one vertical trip under their coveralls.
Here's where I'm a bad journalist. There's a definite story behind the digging of the bypass. Something with Canadians starting the dig, putting most of the work in, and having some other guys finish it up and literally scooping the Canadian's booty. But I don't know the details, and didn't bother to find out while I in was Knox. I figured someone else would write up this momentous event (not me, since I already write half this damn newsletter every month) so I could coast through it and just cave. Griping aside, I don't know the full story, so don't even take my pathetic recap here as an accurate portrayal of facts. Find someone who knows what they're talking about and ask them.
I was eager to have done the Gunbarrel. I had the same thing with bungee jumping. When I went a few months ago to do it, I was just fine all through the pre-op parts. The other three people jumping were nervous and wondering how they would jump. I was fine. We went up the elevator. Their knees were shaking, mine weren't. I was absolutely fine until I put my toes over the edge of the platform, and realized that I would be plunging to certain death off this thing. Then I was in trouble.
Same scenario for the Gunbarrel. I had given very little thought to actually going through this soda straw. Having done it, it'd be cool to talk about the hell it would undoubtedly be. But the physical act of crawling through it, that I hadn't mapped out to any extent.
There's a scene in Aliens that's reminiscent of the Gunbarrel. Bishop (Lance Henrikson) cuts a hole in a pipe about a foot in diameter, to reach the outside half a mile away. He gets in and starts inchworming his way through. That's the Gunbarrel, more or less. It's only about 50 feet and there's no aliens to rip you in half if you're discovered, but it's much more uneven, and no one going through has an android's lack of emotion.
To fit better inside, I took my helmet off and pushed it in front of me. I'd be guaranteed to bonk my head on something now, but my head would be a smaller fit, and I could push the helmet in front of me.
I led with my right elbow, lying on my right side. I'd plant it, then drag my body a bit, then continue. I could plant my hand flat in certain spots, along the way including one filled with muddy cold water. Beats an elbow any day.
The halfway part was 'the tight spot', which is like saying the part of the sewer that really smells bad. At this spot, I just couldn't move. It seemed possible to flip on my back and go, but I was afraid that would just get me more jammed. Backing up was not a pleasant idea. But since I couldn't go through sideways, I tried my back, and it worked.
From my arm's angle, the only thing to grab on my helmet was the battery pack. I picked it up, threw it a foot or so, wriggled forward a few inches, then threw it again. I was getting paranoid that the battery pack would pop open, AAs would roll beyond my limited reach, and I'd have to do the rest blind. Thank God I left my pack behind.
Looking at the end of the tunnel is not a good idea, since it'll just make you want to spend the night in the tunnel to rest up for the remainder of your horrifically long trip.
It felt like an hour in the barrel. In actuality, it was ten minutes or so. Pretty long for a Gunbarrel trip, but it was my first time and most people who do it are smaller than me.
My watch got real scraped up from my left hand dragging across rock for the length of a bowling lane. But that was OK, since I got a cheap watch with a canvas strap just for caving, and it was still annoyingly pristine.
At last, I was out of the tube. Into another belly crawl. As far as rewards go, this bit the big one. I saw two lights, one ahead of me and one to the lower left. I didn't know this at the time, but the lower left light was from a bypasser, whose tunnel was the size of a dinner plate at present.
I conferred with John Bataglino on the trip. We agreed on one fundamental point: it sucked.
Neither one of us knew about the bypass when we went into the Gunbarrel; by now, it was being shouted across the tube with great glee. It was a prayer answered; we would be the first people ever to not have to return via the Gunbarrel.
As more and more of our group came through, we stayed stupidly in the belly crawl. Just past it was lovely standing passage, with an honest to God bench, but we stayed in the crawl and lost body heat to the ground for much longer than we really should have.
Someone wised up and went into the room with the bench, and the rest of us followed. In our old room, there wasn't even room to sit, just an awkward laying down.
We spent enough time on the bench to lose even more body heat, and then decided to head back. With the bypass in place and widening by the minute, leaving should be a much quicker affair.
Nope. Even as a one way street, the Gunbarrel was still a traffic jam. We had to go through the non-tube portion of it to reach the bypass, and we couldn't do that as a group until the Gunbarrel was clear of people popping out. And cavers were coming out of there like a tennis ball machine.
I lost count after a dozen, but several grottoes had representatives in the small chamber. Why we stayed there so long, I don't know, but after a solid half hour of new people coming through the Gunbarrel, we finally got a break in traffic.
We let the diggers through first (they had climbed through the bypass and were literally chilling with us); they definitely earned it. Then we went, the historic fifty foot journey.
I was fifth in line. I slid down, head first on my back, into an inch of cold water. Water on the back is never refreshing in a cave. But I could do something about it in this bypass. I could turn around in here. I could kneel. Wow. Just being able to move with my helmet on was a pleasure.
Crawling through, I passed several muddier than average people by big blue slop trays. Some of them had Canadian accents, some of them didn't. I assisted the effort by taking a solid pound of mud down the back of my coveralls. Even if no more work was done on it since that day, the sheer number of people who used it would insure the widening of the passage. It's probably four lanes by now.
Nothing could top our Gunbarrel experience, so we decided to leave there and take a quick visit to Schoharie. The slow trickle of water outside Knox, thanks to the explosive lightning storm the night before, was gushing with water, enough to be called a legitimate waterfall. We all took turns sticking muddy body parts in it, and washing off as much as possible before frostbite began to set in.
It was a momentous occasion, something that'll change caving in the area. People who shop at big and tall stores can now see what's beyond the Gunbarrel, as can chickens of all sizes.
It's too soon to call, but I think the Gunbarrel will turn into the standard entrance for the rest of Knox. You come out the bypass, but going in everyone will want to do the Gunbarrel. You can do the bypass both ways, but doing Knox and not doing the Gunbarrel is like owning every U2 CD except the Joshua Tree.