When: February 20, 2000
This was my first time in J-4, and I was looking forward to caving day trips, trips you don't have to plan around holiday weekends. It was still four hours there (would have been three and a half, but I took a frustrating wrong turn scant feet from where I was supposed to park).
I was holding up the group ready to go in, so I tried to get ready as quickly as possible. I needed batteries and water. A quick trip to a convenience store got me some cheap batteries (in both senses of the word; luckily there were three carbide cavers to leech light off of when my light faded). There wasn't a hose or source of water nearby, so I tried filling my bottle with snow. It melts to about a ninth of its volume, but a ninth of a bottle of water is better than going it dry. We were parked nearby an elementary school, so I avoided any snow that wasn't pristine white.
Gerry and Dawn had been to the entrance, and said you needed a harness because of all the ice on the ledge. Someone had left an old rope across we could attach to. I hadn't done any rope work at this point, so I didn't have a harness. Diane had an extra one, but being Diane's, it was a small. It was like putting on those size 28 jeans from high school. It took three of us, but we got it secured.
This was my first time in J-4, so I had no idea what the entrance looked like. There were a couple hills to walk down into the quarry, with narrow trails covered with ice and snow. Sliding down was the safest way to go, so down we went, butt first. I hadn't washed my suit since Sharps Cave, so I left a very visible mud trail for everyone to follow. Also cleaned my suit a bit.
Up a slant towards a massive rock wall, and there was an end of the rope. It disappeared up and out of view by a gentle curve of iced-over rock. As people latched on the rope, they noted how old and ragged it was. Probably best to rely on handholds, and have the rope just as a precaution. But everyone held onto it.
I was fourth to go across. I could make it across without the rope as a crutch, no problem. The ledge you follow narrows into a two inch section for a couple feet. Or so I heard. From my singular experience, it was a completely slicked over ice coat. And so were the hand holds. I didn't want to hold onto the rope, but with nothing else to do, I wrapped my arm around it and moved across. A little slip, and I'm down two inches. Hunh. Without the rope I'd be a quarry stain.
The rope became the one means of movement. Pride in rock climbing dropped from us pretty quick as we clung to it. Everyone who had been there before said it was the worst they'd ever seen. How did the first guy manage to get over there to attach the rope? When I pulled my way to the other end of the rope, there were two guys from another grotto in a snowy alcove. I saw the rope was connected to a big pipe sticking out of the rock. I looked around for the cave entrance like a moron. Somehow, I hadn't heard that it was the pipe.
Crawling through it was a tremendous pain. It's only the diameter of a pizza, and not even a big pizza. You get half your body in, and then you dangle. Your legs can't reach anything to push you in, your arms have no leverage, and there's no holds in the pipe itself. Plus, my harness was getting snagged by the lip of the pipe (everyone else had taken theirs off after their rope trip, but I wasn't going to go through putting that corset on again).
As if to measure my exact peak of desperation, the guys coming out told me that this was good practice for the second pipe immediately after. "There's a second pipe?!" I yelled. That�s it; I could wait in the car. But he gave me a much needed boost to get my feet through, and I saw the second pipe was a four footer slanted down, so I slid down it no problem.
I stood up, walked twenty feet or so to find the group, and got dizzy. This was no good. I had never been dizzy in a cave before. The one time I distinctly remembered getting this feeling was when I was ten, after sitting outside in the sun too long. I went blind for half an hour. Sun stroke. I guess the physical/mental exhaustion levels are the same whether you get suddenly diminished through sunlight or an icy ledge and a pipe.
It took fifteen more minutes from the rest of the party to go through the pipe, so I sat down where I was and tried to get back my composure. I took out my water, but it was just snow, slowly hardening to one solid ice block. I ate a granola bar and sat. If this continued, I'd have to go back. I drove four hours to be here, but I'd have to err on the side of caution.
Todd and Billy came through, pointing a big silver tube at me. A small red light blinked from one end of it. They had wrapped a camcorder in plastic bags and duct tape. This was going to air for a bunch of schoolchildren. I think I managed a wave.
Feeling like woozy crap is one thing, but publicly announcing it was another. It'd be the safe thing to do, but also the chicken thing. I stood up to tell them, and I felt OK. Not great, but well enough to walk a bit. Maybe the rest helped. Maybe I could go the whole trip and not have a relapse. I never did, so I'm glad I went on and made something of the day.
This was a leading trip with a lot of people who hadn't been in the cave, so every spot that fit all six of us, the maps came out. Mine was in my velcroed front pocket, and by the time I had taken off my gloves, undone the velcro, fished it out and unfolded it, everyone else's were folding back up. I learned to just look over a shoulder.
I managed to go a good four hours without leading. I was enjoying just going through the cave. My ideal caving balance would be a day trip once or twice a month, and a massive West Virginia-sized trip a few times a year. So far I had just done the massive trips, and felt stupid that I was driving 500 miles for a cave when one was much closer that I hadn't gone in yet.
The J-4 map is one of the easier ones to read, since there's not much overlapping of the passages except one part in the beginning. This was a good cave to start to learn leading. Everyone else was having a grand time figuring out locations, so I was happy to follow along.
Despite not leading, I was learning about leading. You don't need to memorize the entire cave, just the turns and junction areas. A cave like J-4 only has a dozen or so points; the rest are relative straight-aways with no turns. Remembering your location and constructing a mental map also really helps; with a good mental map, you can go a long time without needing to consult the paper map, especially on the way out.
At the edge of Judy's Frustration, which wasn't as tight as anyone thought it would be, we ran into 'spelunkers'. Not a hard hat or cave suit among them. Three high school kids with flashlights, looking around in wonder. They were pretty far in for not having a map. We donated a map to them, so we wouldn't have to be called back a day or two later to drag three corpses out the pipe.
The steparound scared exactly half our group, and was a surprisingly small deal for the other half. If you were 5'6" or under, this was the hole to Hell. If you were over 5'6", it was an easy although daunting step. It was hard to do for either height with a big silver tube, so Todd and Billy hid their camera in a nook. (A bunch of coats were stolen from J-4 on a previous trip, so we knew thieves had the run of the place.)
As we were going through the second mud room, Diane said that last time she was here, she got her entire trip lost. It's a right angle turn in an otherwise featureless room, so it sounded weird. But any cave looks different when you're going the other way.
Diane had drawn the Onion Room onto our maps, which for some reason wasn't marked. It's the size of Epcot Center; you'd think it would be mapworthy. "OK, Sean hasn't led yet, so he'll lead out." Damn, I was found out. So long as I was leading, I might as well do it fully, so I took the trip from the Onion Room to the Formation Climb, and after Billy's turn (she was the other person not to lead yet) I'd jump back on point and lead the way out.
I checked the map on how to get to the Formation Climb. Pretty simple trip. Go straight to the second mud room, then a left turn, left turn at the first mud room, straight line and you're there. Just a U.
I crawled back through the Onion Room entrance, followed by everyone else. I was in charge. It felt OK. With a decent map, it was nowhere near as daunting as it seemed before.
Of course, I walked right through the second mud room without noticing. Exact same mistake Diane said she made. It�s surprising how well a giant hole in the wall can hide itself.
I passed through the first mud room and made the turn towards the Climb. Straight line, shouldn't be a problem. Of course there was. The passage split into two small crawls, a left and a right. The right seemed too tight for humans, so I tried the left. Eight feet later, rock.
"Follow the elephant tracks," Diane said. Sure enough, half the passage was well worm from cavers' boots, while my half was untouched and muddy. I stuck my head out the left crawl, my helmet just barely fitting through. The rest of the group was gathering in the passage. I squoze out (assuming squoze is a real word) and tried the right passage. It opened and beelined to the Formation Climb.
We were on the top of it, looking down at thirty or forty feet of dragon's teeth stalagmites, all real wet and slippery. With the drive we had back and relative level of experience among us, we decided not to do the climb. Had a good long look down, though.
Billy led us back from the Formation. One area with an overhanging slimy rock lip was very tough. Virtually no handholds, not even much of a place to leverage an arm from, and right below the slimy overhang is a big leg-breaking pit.
Todd, having been bitten by a radioactive spider, had no problems getting up the slick rock. To further the Spider-Man analogy, he then brought out a big roll of webbing. He tied it around a hold up by him, and like the rope outside, it became our primary handhold. Our primary foothold became Gerry's shoulder, who effectively blocked off the entire pit below. Big team effort to get up.
I led the way out, and went head first out of the cave. I could see moonlight on the rocks outside. My legs could push off of some rock coming out, so I got my head out pretty quick. My upper body dangled over the alcove, which was covered in a fresh coat of snow. I felt alive. I grabbed the rope as a hand hold, pulled one leg out of the pipe, then planted it and got the other one out. Escaping the pipe felt like a prison break. A scream of exhilaration was in order.
I got to be the first going back across the ledge on the rope. Once again, it was a literal lifesaver. Saved everyone else's life, too. Despite the night clouds, the moonlight shone of the cliff brightly, much more than my drained Petzl was giving. The look was so perfect, it felt like the set for a mountain climbing movie. Wish I brought a camera.