1. Baker's Quarry. Allen Rush had five people in his car driving to the cars Saturday morning: him, me, JoAnne Beliveau, John Schwenk and Steve Millett I had seen John and Steve at lots of different events, but this was my first time caving with either of them.
All nine caves on our agenda that day were within a few miles of the camp site, a survivalist retreat with its own hydroelectric generator and bunker. The whole place is heated through that generator, and is several decades past the point of paying itself off. If I owned a mountain to build my own resevoir so guarantee a constant hydro source, I'm totally doing this.
We suited up and quickly crawled inside Baker's Quarry Cave, one of the popular caves to take scout trips. So this was a marble cave. Huh. It wasn�t dramamticaly different from limestone. There wouldn't be any fossils, since marble is a metamorphic rock, formed by getting baked by the Earth�s mantle. The various ingredients in the batter before getting baked is what gives marble its bandings and discolorations and, well, marbling. None of the stuff here is that gorgeous Italian Travertine marble that gets used (or simulted) in banks and nice office buildings. This was mostly monochromatic, but banded in parts. Good: the nicer the marble, the bigger the risk of quarrying.
2. Justin's Cave. This one is allegedly named so because you can lower your body "just in" a breakdown hole before it completely chokes off. You'd have to be pretty desperate to count it as a cave, much less something for your official cave checklist. I am that desperate. Waiting for our group to take its turn climbing in Justin's, I compared my helmet rig with John's. John had a rather industrial looking length of tubing holding his secondary flashlight in place. I used a hair tie I found in the street. I insisted mine was just as secure, even though I has lost a Mini-Mag in an identical rig just in Janaury when I brushed against a wall and knocked it into a pool.
John and Steve were joking about Porky living in this cave or that cave. I didn't know any wild pigs were in the area. Turns out Porky is short for porcupine, the local inhabitant of these caves. I've never seen a porcupine in the wild. I'm happy to say I still haven�t to this day.
3. Elephant's Den Cave. This cave has a loop after a few dozen feet, where you can go up and left or down and right. I crawled down and right, and froze after going two feet. I was looking at a puddle of water, and something was moving in it.
There was just enough plant debris, mammal poop and dead bugs in the water to explain any organism on Earth being in there. One plant had actualy sprouted roots. One of these roots were swaying in the current, until I realized that this puddle didn't have a feeder or an exit: there was no current. The root was actually a worm.
The worm was brown, unsegmented, about as thick as a guitar string, and upwards of a foot long. This was a horsetail worm, which at the time I didn't know existed. Back at the surface, I checked with people who thought this was indeed a horsetail worm, but who also thought horsetail worms only came in white. So the rest of the weekend was spent with me thinking I had found a new cave-only species. (This worm has nothing to do with the thousands of worms Allen found visiting Torys Cave the next day. This was just a worm-friendly weekend.)
4. Crevice Cave. Again, a pathetic excuse for a cave, made more so by me trying to plant my flag on it. This one is so buried that it's just an notch in a rock I could barely shove a boot into. Literally, I couldn't get past my knee in this. But I'm calling it a cave, nonetheless. And one that I've travelled every foot of. I didn't stay too long, however: it might be Porky's home.
5. Slime Hole Cave. I could actually fit myself in Slime Hole. This was a notch in the bottom of a rock wall just like in Crevice, but I could crawl into the notch. And it went a few body lengths. I wasn't all that eager to push into what I knew was an dead end, but I crawled a bit. Soon the thought of an angry porcupine got the best of me, so I backed out. Splash.
What went splash? And where was there water to splash in? I shimmied over to the far left (far being in this case all of a foot) and peered down a narrow crevice to a tiny stream passage. At the bottom was the Mini-Mag that I had strapped to my head.
So this was twice in a year that I've lost Mini-Mags to streams in caves no one but Allen Rush would ever lead trips to. Add to it the two LED lights that have snapped off my head and never been seen again, and I'm losing light sources like they were hotel towels. At least this time it was close enough to retrieve. Or so I thought. The clear water was illusory, and deeper than it looked. I could barely wedge my left arm down the crack, and it was still two feet short.
I crawled back out and got some sticks. I was going to chopstick it out. That plan went through several rounds of sticks, and only managed to push around the Mini Mag while never giving me the grip that a piece of General Tso's chicken has.
Gary Burns crawled up next to me. "Dude, you lost a Mini Mag in there? Let me see if I can get it." Gary treats his body like a rented car, so I shouldn�t have been surprised to see Gary crawl past me to where the stream got wide, take off his helmet, and wedge his way in the stream back toward the flashlight. There wasn't much air space at the top, so Gary's head and right shoulder were the only things above the waterline. He felt around the bottom. "Dude, I don�t feel anything. Let me go deeper." Gary then began sinking, the water lapping its way up his face. He was looking straight up now, feeling blindly as his hand went deeper and deeper in the crack. The water went over his ears, threatening to spill into his mouth. Only Gary could find an ear dip in a 12-foot cave. Comon sense finally got the best of Gary risking his life for a $10 light that wasn't even his, so he pulled up. "It's too deep. There's a second ledge down there." I thanked him for trying, and he said "No problem; it was fun."
There were only five caves to visit in that suiting up, and it was barely noon. This was shaping up to be a good day, the tragic $10 loss notwithstanding.
6. Found Cave. We drove a mile to the next marble cave cluster, and suited up a second time. There was Found Cave here, andd two caves nearby that went nowhere. Their entrances were half-buried in Porky poop. I looked down into them warily, expecting to see glinting eyes and a charging mass of quills. Both of these petered out to the point where you'd question why you'd want to sully your suit up in the first place. I didn't go in. Dammit, I could have had an 12-cave weekend if I did. I'll have to settle for the 10.
Found Cave has the worst porcupine poop of them all; it was also the biggest cave of the three, so this was the one we entered. We crawled through several body lengths of nonstop poop. Imagine every box of Cocoa Puffs in the supermarket dumped in a small cave passage, and then crawling through it while trying not to touch a single Cocoa Puff.
At the far end of the cave, Steve tried really hard to access Found's second entrance (which had been dug open but since lost the battle to erosion). If I had dynamite, I would have tried my luck at that through trip. Not having that through-trip meant we had to return through Scat Street.
We got back to the cars and ate whatever bars/trail mix/sports beverages we had for lunch. Every single person was as dainty as possible about only touching the wrappers and never the food; we were as clean as sewer workers after a double shift.
7. Coffin Cave. This was our third suiting up. The phyical shock of putting on a cold wet suit is matched by the psychological knowledge of putting on clothes that most people would throw straight in a bonfire. We had the usual miserable hike through the woods to find the cave. Why are these caves always on uphills? (Answer: because it�d be much much worse to crawl out of a cave spent and then have a mile of uphill cimbing to attend to. Better to get it out of the way before you the caving.)
A good 30% of Coffin Cave is taken up with two marble chutes, polished by the water enough so you can slide from the top a good twenty of thirty feet to the bottom. A rope is permanently rigged to help you up one of the slopes, when that polishing works against you.
8. Coon Hollow Cave. This cave was the obstacle course of the group. To get to the back you need to navigate the Shark�s Teeth (ridges that have been worn clean of their mud by lots of travelers), the Canyon (which I don�t remember), the Meat Grinder (which I definitely remember: a nasty crawl with a hairpin turn at just the wrong spot) and some slopes and muddy terrain that hasn't been given death-trap names yet. One of the bigger caves in the neighborhood.
9. Dolo Cave. This cave starts with the "Toilet Bowl," which I thought accurately described Found Cave. Dolo�s Toilet Bowl is a round room with yellowish marble all around the edges and a hole smack dab in the middle, just like its namesake. It's about twelve feet across, so no problems getting through the hole in the middle.
Steve was insistant that there was very cool cave at the end of Dolo. Allen and I reluctantly hauled our carcasses back there. It was nice, but there might have been a bit of trickery on Steve's part in describing stuff nice enough to warrant the trip.
On the way back I got stuck for fifteen minutes. I had crawled in head-first, and so thought scooting out feet-first would work just as well. I scooted myself into a tapered region below where I came in, at an awkward angle. I had plenty of contact with the rock, but nothing was quite good enough to push off of and free myself.
That was the last cave of the day. We got back to camp, I washed my hands for an hour, and then demolished a couple meatball subs.
10. Bentley's Cave. This cave is on the New York side of the border, and is bigger than any other marble cave in the area. We hit it on Sunday, before heading back home. It's big enough I thought it was limestone at first. The cave has a lot of mazey connections down in its bowels, made all the more fun by mostly not being on the map.
I tried for an eleventh by searching with Steve for the Dry Valley entrance, which has so far foiled most people who have tried to find it. It foiled us, too. We think it's a poor topo map that got drafted. Or we've got porcupine poop for brains.
I was hoping to hit Torys and some other caves on the way back, but I had a time crunch and couldn't make the complete trip with everyone else. But I've got the guidebooks, and wouldn't mind a return trip to do double digit quantities of caves in a day. And if I get wedged a second time, I'll bring a chisel so I can carve my own tombstone.