The Fall MAR was held on the Peiper's Cave property. I was looking forward to this trip, since it was only a short drive, I hadn't done the caves in this area, and we�d have a decent cave to do Friday. This grotto does very little Pennsylvania caving.
I was also getting the chance to introduce an English caver to American caves. Hilary had just moved here for grad school at Rutgers, and had just come back from a month-long expedition checking monstrous unexplored pits in rural China. I tried not to oversell Pennsylvania-sized caves to any extent: the vertical drops of her most recent caves would add up to the total length of the average Pennsylvania cave.
We didn't get to the MAR site until 11:57 P.M. Friday. My car was having this unhealthy wobble that got worse the faster I drove. I had the engine completely checked up, and my mechanic couldn't find anything wrong. Yet the wobble continued. It did seem manageable at 60, so I went much slower than the speed of traffic, afraid nonetheless I'd be watching some molten engine component torpedo through my hood.
The Peiper's Cave property is right on I-81. Camping facilities are bumping up against the shoulder. Our tents were literally a few paces from six lanes of speeding traffic. You had to yell to hear the person next to you.
I was hoping to get in Peiper's Cave Friday. Do that and sleep Friday, cave hard Saturday, spend Saturday night in the debauchery of your choice, and cave hard Sunday before the trip home. I didn't figure on arriving at midnight, which dimmed my hopes. But in true NNJG fashion, the entire grotto was up at midnight, and had no intentions of sleeping any time soon.
I wasn't expecting anyone from the grotto, but half the group made it. Jeralin ditched her rock climbing when she heard how much rain we could be getting this weekend. She shared a ride with Shital, and Bob Cohen jumped in for good measure. Mark Skove drove his huge van down, although he had to leave early Sunday morning. Carl Heitmeyer would arrive Saturday with his son. Expatriots Todd and Jessica, as well as Fran�ois, all decided to skip the long drive to the VAR (the same weekend) and do the MAR. Jessica even brought her roommates.
We lost a few members within the hour. Todd had unfortunately left his electric car plugged in at home in West Virginia. Like an iron, if you leave it plugged in, it can overheat and burn your house down. Fran�ois drove Todd back to Todd's place.
I think it was Jeralin who began poking and prodding for a Peiper's visit, since we all were up. I was in favor, but figured it'd never get off the ground. Jeralin managed to get Skove, Bob and Hilary interested though, so we had a party of five.
We went on the hunt for Peipers at 1:30 in the morning. We found it at 1:31. It's visible from the tents during the daytime, especially since a forty foot climbing wall shaped like a castle is being built at the entrance.
Peiper's right passage was a short loop of nothing but squeezes, which we got out of the way quick. There used to be nice formations there, but vandals killed it all fifty years ago.
I wasn't leading this trip, and didn't find out it was a loop until I had already left my pack at the beginning of a nasty squeeze. As I struggled to get out of the final awkward body length of the loop, Hilary disappeared to retrieve my pack. By the time I wormed my way out of the crack, she was back with my pack in hand. She's definitely a keeper.
We checked out the canyon passages to the left after that, sticking mostly to the tall stuff. Dozens of side passages snake off, most of them leading back to a canyon. The map to Peiper's looks like a ball of rope.
I wasn't physically spent, but I was aware that I could just nod off in the cave if I wanted. There's burning the midnight oil, and then there's burning the 3:30 A.M. Petzl Duo battery.
I pushed one lead off a big canyon while everyone had gone their separate ways exploring. I began hearing the I-81 traffic. Hey, I found a second entrance! This was great! And it was big! Just as big as the first entrance! The same formations and everything! Oh wait ... never mind.
We crawled out after two hours. This was the first chance I've ever had to be in a sleeping bag two minutes after leaving a cave, and I took it. It was bliss, except for the trucks.
No one got much sleep that night. I got a few hours, but distinctly remember almost nodding off multiple times before a passing semi blasted me back into full consciousness. I can sleep through anything, but this was like camping on a runway.
Saturday morning was a sloth convention. No one did anything before noon beside eat. Sore muscles and no sleep will do that to you. Jessica and her roommates pulled up their stakes and left for home. Jess got zero sleep with the trucks, knew buckets of rain were on the way, knew another sleepless night was in front of her if she stayed, and had Todd and Cois itching for adventure back home.
We didn't get into Mark's van until almost 2:00 P.M. There was a chance Hershey-Coy Cave would be flooded, but we were trying it anyway. The Hershey entrance owner, a great guy, said he was positive it was flooded. The chances of a through trip were virtually none, but we were here, so let's try it out.
Hershey-Coy, from what I've heard, is normally a dry cave that's nothing but crawling. On this day it was soaking. It was wet hands and knees crawling, then wet belly crawling, then more wet hands and knees and then more wet belly. The few spots where we had a ceiling more than two feet high had water of an indeterminate depth we sidestepped around. It could have been waist deep.
After the usual heroic route finding mishaps, Jeri found the right path in a tiny passage off the main way. I looked in the tiny passage, and it was like a bowling ball return lane. Jeri pushed through, though, so I followed.
It wasn't that bad a crawl, but it came out into thigh deep water. I was crawling headfirst out into this lake, so the few parts of me not already baptized found religion real quick. Jeri was standing in waist deep water pointing her light at the murky water.
"Here's the passage! It's completely sumped!" This wasn't an ear dip, it was water a foot above the passage ceiling. We had nothing to do but turn around (and shout to Shital that he didn't have to take that plunge out of the crawl).
We backtracked to the entrance, where Bob regaled us with jokes he was embarassed to tell. Not because they were dirty, but because they weren't dirty enough. "These are the first dirty jokes you learn, when you're 12," he offered in his defense.
Mark Skove was too smart to follow us in Hershey. He found a Little Caeser's and carried us back a pizza right to the cave entrance. We need to erect a statue of Mark some time.
Rain was promised for the whole weekend, and the sun was setting on Saturday with nary a drop. We inhaled the dinner that the MAR staff cooked up, and noticed ominous clouds gathering like hyenas.
The MAR's entertainment was a slideshow on the area cave history, shouted by someone trying to outloud the traffic. It was wrapping up when God turned on the showerhead. Rain came down in barrels. The sauna wasn't quite running yet, and you can bet your carbide it became an immediate priority.
Non-sauna technicians huddled under the MAR tarps, discussing how cave events end up being rain dances. With the NRO getting five inches of snow last spring, I think it's draws extreme weather of all sorts. I'm pulling for tornados and some aurora borealis next year.
I knew I'd be sleeping in a puddle, since my tent's drop cloth might as well be a fishnet. But I had the option to ditch the tent and sleep in my car if it got too bad. I'd be uncomfortable, but I'd be dry, and that was enough to mentally get me through my soggy night in the tent. There was also the option of sleeping in Peiper's, but I forgot about that until Sunday morning.
Sunday morning was another sloth convention. It was cold, stil drizzling occasionally, and all the roads were two inches of mud. A tractor was helping early risers get their stuck cars off the camp site (and these were 4WD trucks and SUVs stuck, not just Geo Metros).
Our slowness ended up working well, since the sun came out after 9:00. It slowly dried our gear and tents, enough so we could pack them dry. After all that rain, I had dry polypros and coveralls to slip into for Sunday caving. And the roads were dry enough for my paltry Toyota Camry to make it out unaided.
The Sunday caves were Frustration Pit and Corker's (right next to Frustration). The few people who had been there before didn't remember much about it, but we had directions in the guidebook. We pulled into the gravel road by the orchard. It should lead straight to an oil tank, which the caves were by. But there was a four way split.
Carl picked a middle path, and Shital and I followed in our non-4WD sedans. Somehow we both came out without our oil pans punctured. The road had muddy pits and jutting rocks and downed branches. It was straight out of a Land Rover commerical. The only thing that kept us going forward was knowing we would never survive backtracking in reverse.
We popped out onto a paved road, which Shital and I practically kissed. We took the paved road around the orchard back to the fork, let Carl route-find the right way, and got the OK from him that our cars could make it. I left mine at a halfway point just to be sure. I didn't want my wobble to be compounded by a missing muffler.
I wasted a solid hour crawling through underbrush looking for Frustration. Carl found it, I looked at it, then I got lost for an hour trying to find it again. At least the cave suit protects against thorns pretty well.
Carl rigged a handline for our Frustration entrance, a thin vertical shaft. Coming down the shaft made you feel like a kidney stone. You were going through an area you weren't meant to fit into, but you were, albeit with pain. There was a second entrance we couldn't find from the surface, but we'd find it down below. Damned if we were coming back up this way.
The second entrance wasn't too far away, travel-wise. I found it up top of a rise, and half our group skedaddled up it. By the time I finished my quick glance at all the cave's big room, Bob, Shital and I were the only ones left.
This entrance was another vertical crack, but with more holds. The problem was at the end (or beginning), after your head was out in the sunshine and the traffic noise. The walls jammed you not at your chest, but at your thighs, and gave you virtually no flexibility. I heard Bob grunting and cursing to get through for twenty minutes, showers of dirt coming down on Shital below him. Then I saw Shital's feet as he grunted for twenty minutes, showers of dirt coming down on me. Bob sent a rope down around one of Shital's feet, but that still took another five minutes to reel him up those last few feet.
I had plenty of time to gauge the situation, so after a minute of marveling over how precisely this cave trapped my thighs, I just walked my way up. By 'walking', I mean moving my thighs this way and that so I'd gain half an inch, then another half an inch. It took time, but I got out intact. How does nature create so many perfectly proportioned squeezeboxes?
The second entrance was all of forty feet from the first one, at the other end of the same clearing. Carl had rigged a handline to this one, too. I knew Hilary and Jeralin were already changed back at the cars, but I couldn't pass up a pre-rigged pit.
The cave was a muddy diagnol shaft going down eighty feet, that split to the left and right and met up down below. I slid down the right passage, crawled through the connecting passage, and scrambled up the left entrance fast as I could.
Then I saw the biggest salamander I've ever seen in my life. He was black with speckles, and thick as my middle finger. He was in my way, so I nudged him. He moved an inch. I nudged again, he moved another inch. I tried picking him up in my muddy gloves and he wriggled down a foot or two. This guy was just not getting the message. It took a few more unsuccessful pickup attempts before he scampered out of range.
Shital was also down here (never pass up a free cave) and we made it up of the muddy Sarlacc Pit intact. Carl's rope had a very distinct line between pristine white and Hershey Highway brown.
I thought my adventures on the Hershey Highway were done, but it had one more jolt in store. We changed our muddy gear (mine must have weighed ten pounds extra with the mud) and took off for home. Five minutes passed, and I blow my right front tire. I never had to change a tire on this car before, and was surprised to see a full-sized spare. Good to know, since tire shops were closed at 7:00 Sunday night.
When I pulled back onto the road with the spare, my wobble was gone. The problem had been the tire all along. Hilary and I made great time going home. I've never had such a beneficial consequence to part of my car exploding.
I'll always be up for Pennsylvania caving trips. They're close, they beat New Jersey caves, and I have hundreds I haven't done yet. I'll just bring earplugs the next time I camp out.