When Jeralin and Bubbles put together in August to Salamander and Pompey's Caves, I jumped at it. Two new caves that weren't highly frequented by Met or the NNJG, close enough to be a day trip, and with enough variety between the two to feel reasonably satisfied after doing both.
Salamander is about as easy a cave to lead as you're going to get. A straight line for half a mile into a hump of rock. There's a quarry nearby, so you've got a couple hours of dirty exploring for the bother of suiting up. Pompey's is right underneath a dry stream bed. It's the most clear-cut example of an aboveground stream becoming a belowground stream you're going to find. You're never more than a couple hundred feet from a shaft of daylight.
Neither cave has landowner complications: just park and go inside them. I had maps to both. They were just two hours away. And when the fall NRO meeting was held in Rosendale, they'd be just ten minutes away. I had never led a cave trip before. I had bits and pieces of being the first one in the march through a passage, or glancing at the map, but I never assembled one together. It was always something other grotto people shouldered.
A lot of trip planning is just travel. Transporting people from their houses to a meeting spot, transporting people from the meeting spot to the caves, and figuring out your way once inside the caves. A Salamander/Pompey's trip during an NRO wipes out all of those. Everyone's tents are at the meeting spot, directions to the cave are right in the guidebook, and the caves are impossible to get lost in.
So I decided to lead my first trip. I found the Rosendale Mine Friday night of OTR, threw up my tent, and posted a sign up sheet. I figured there'd be other trips to those caves, but none were posted. I put a trip limit of ten, wondering if Salamander would even fit ten people.
I made a dozen photocopies of the Salamander/Pompey's maps, which had been conveniently placed on the same page by the 1991 NSS Convention Guidebook staff. I'd probably have eight of them left from this poorly attended trip. I checked my sheet before I went to sleep Friday night, and there were three names.
Saturday morning I woke up to ten more.
13 people. All total strangers. Most of them a good deal older than me. I asked if anyone had been in these caves, and one guy had been in Pompey's. The maps got snatched up like bottles of Sam Adams in a cooler full of Bud. Everyone had been caving before, and no one needed equipment, so that was a good sign.
As I was walking to the cars, I ran into Tom Cavanaugh, the Cal Ripkin of the NNJG's secretarial position. He said he was also coming. I was glad to have someone I knew on the trip. I gave him my last map. With his people, we were an even sixteen.
We loaded into four cars, four people per car. I had directions to the caves from the '91 Convention guidebook, but the NRO guidebook had directions specifically from the campsite. We used the NRO's instead, and they worked great. As an added bonus, every car could now get there themselves in case we separated en route.
I was in a car with a guy named Larry from Met Grotto who I hadn't met before. He needed up being very helpful, and an impromptu leader for this cattle herd.
Our four car parade wound through the road until the car I was in pulled into a Stewarts for water and supplies. Two cars followed us in, but the fourth kept on going. Whoops. We weren't even at the cave and already I lost four people.
A familiar Saturn Vue pulled in, and Bubbles popped out. She was wondering if she could join the trip. She was more than welcome. She had to go back to the campground, but she'd meet us inside Salamander. The shortened three car parade made it to Salamander parking area successfully, where the fourth car was waiting (thank you NRO guidebook).
Everyone was here. We suited up in the little gravel area, and I lent out all of my spare gear to various under-prepared people. I was hoping to get to know the people in my group, but I barely had time to pass out spare kneepads before the group was getting antsy to move. I led the big march down the street looking for the path through the woods. As I was coming to the end of the road, no path was evident, so I cut through a clear spot and found a steep hill. My huge group was scaling the hill behind me, like a platoon advancing up a hill.
At the top of the hill, nothing looked familiar. There should be a clear path that led left to the quarry and right to Salamander. I marched forward along the hill, the group following like a marching band. I realized this might take some time. I asked the group to hold tight, and I went running down the hill to see if I could get my bearings.
Five minutes of bad luck later, I stumbled out into the parking lot. I could understand how I missed a small cave opening, but missing a quarry pit the size of a football stadium? Bubbles had reached Salamander by this point, and she told me I was too far left. She was suiting up, but she'd meet us at the cave entrance.
I ran up the hill a second time to find the group. That second sprint up a 60% grade didn't do me any favors. I found the group sampling their various bottles of water, and I led them to the right. Soon a sunny clearing was visible through the trees. This looked just like the quarry. I ran ahead, several of the group following. I got closer and closer, and then walked out ... onto railroad tracks. Where in the hell did these come from?
About this time someone in the group good-naturedly complained that he didn't sign on for a hiking trip. I said this was good exercise, and it helped to make a tiny cave trip seem like an all-day affair. Plus most Americans needed exercise, so this was a way to sneak it on them.
To the right of the train tracks I found the lip of the quarry, and we went around and finally got inside it. All I could remember from my guided tour here was that cement from here went to constructing the Brooklyn Bridge, and any fossils found here could be taken home. A kid in fifth grade began scouring gravel chips for fossils. Some of us looked for Tree Cave (unsuccessfully, since we were in the wrong quarry pit). People got bored fast, so we left and did the short hike up to Salamander (me promising that there was actually a cave at the end of this hike).
I was last to the Salamander entrance, since there was a spot of shallow footing on the trail and I wanted to make sure no one hit it wrong. Four people had already crawled inside. I followed them in, taking three others with me. That was eight cavers, half the group: Bubbles would lead the other half in. My first bit of leadership triumph came when I showed the early group they had completely missed the Indian Dome to the side.
Our group got to the 1864 room in ten or fifteen minutes. There was a dug out crawl leading to the final bit of cave. This was tight enough to freak even me out going through it. The crawl's problem is that it starts small, then funnels smaller, then gets even smaller. Coming back is relatively easy, since there's an immediate pinch which widens and widens, but newcomers have no idea how tight this passage will get.
A couple people in the group wanted to see the final room, so I led the way through. I knew Larry was following me, but I was surprised to see George coming afterward. George was having trouble getting through the tightest bit. It was a straight line into the room where we were, so just staying in visual contact would be a psychological boost. He was mentally fine, though, just physically jammed up. He backed up a foot, took a big flashlight and some other accessories out of his pocket, and that gave him the chest clearance to fit through.
After George came more people. I stayed right by the squeeze, making sure everyone got through OK. Tom Cavanaugh came through with his sizable cave bag: he wanted practice moving it through crawls, in case there was a serious need for it. I wanted to check out the final room, but every time I thought the group was tapped out, out popped another head. It was like watching your dog give birth.
When the ninth person came through, I realized that this was more than my group of eight. Bubbles' groups had entered the cave and reached this spot, and brave souls from her were crawling through. Bubbles shouted through that the torrent was done, and people could come crawling out now.
That final room was packed liked a church on Christmas Eve. 10 people out of a 16 person trip. I was impressed. Most of them had been cramped in there going on half an hour, so they were happy to turn back around. I took up the rear, pointing people to the correct insanely small crawl, and not the insanely small crawl to its left that dead-ended (also known as a 'hole'). Tom went out feet first, again practicing for a dire day. (Tom does not recommend feet first coming out of that crawl.)
There were a group of three cavers in army navy surplus looking to go through after the ten of us crawled out. Tom and I politely figured out who would haul their butt back in the crawl for a third and fourth time to escort them, and I eventually went with them. Ten feet later, we all backed out. "The air was disappearing" around the first person in line.
The entire group if sixteen, seventeen with Bubbles, got outside Salamander and stood around gulping water. My jumbo two-liter Nalgene bottle was appreciated by the crowd. We wandered back to the quarry pit and looked some more for Tree (which, since we weren't in the right pit, we still didn't find). The fifth grader came up to me every other minute with "Is this a fossil?" which it never was. Tom informed me that "the natives are getting restless," and I realized that they were waiting for me to lead the charge out of here. Oh yeah, that's what leaders do.
We hit a small ice cream shop for lunch. Two or three kind senior citizens worked there, and tried not to be overwhelmed by seventeen dirty customers dropping out of the sky. One of them worked in the Rosendale mine, fifty years ago.
Our caravan made it to Pompey's intact. We'd go in the ladder entrance, splash around there, then return up the ladder and check out the Fallen Slab side of it. I was really looking forward to sitting around Pompey's with a small group, getting to know them, but we were way too big for that. I didn't even recognize half my group's faces, let alone know all their names.
I tried to count heads as people were climbing down the ladder, but it became pointless. No one would stand still, and no one spot in Pompey's fit the whole group. Someone came up to me and said he had to leave, and wanted to let me know so I wouldn't think I was a person short. He wasn't one of the seventeen, though: he jumped on the trip after the ice cream shop. So he was number 18.
Pompey's was a zoo inside, and not just because of us. Cave crickets abounded. Spiders hung in corners with their egg sacs the size of jawbreakers. A catfish was in the water, big as a burrito, who must have been washed underground by a storm. And there was the frog.
A sizable green frog was perched on a rock, right in the stream leading to the sump. We made a circle around him, watching him sit, unmoving, unblinking. Someone got the idea this might be a rubber frog, and we were standing around a dog's chew toy, but no one wanted to poke him to find out. It was settled when the frog dove into the water of his own accord. He must have gotten washed into the cave by the same storm that got the catfish.
Near the sump we ran into Peter Welles and two of his kids. They were here on their own, so no need to bump the trip up to a blackjack-winning 21. They also noticed the frog, and we figured amphibians and cold caves don't go too well together. It was time for a frog rescue.
Picking the frog up was rather easy. There's nowhere to hide in a streambed eroded out of rock, so he had no escape routes. He was amazingly docile, but still squirmed when I picked him up. I ran to the ladder, went up one handed, and let him swim away in a surface puddle with at least two other frogs in it. A catfish was also moved out of a rocky puddle and into the deeper downstream water.
My big group went back out of the ladder and headed up the dry stream bed. The other Pompey's entrances were up there. One of them was on private property, and the owner discouraged people from his entrance by sometimes dumping a deer carcass in the entrance. It was before hunting season, so he probably didn't have a carcass there now, but it was still a good story worth telling the group. We weren't going in that entrance, so no harm done.
Then I found out we WERE going in that entrance. The entrance was corpse-free, luckily, so the herd dutifully began filing in. Quietly, since we were technically trespassing. I held the thorns out of people's way, and also used the opportunity to finally get an accurate headcount. I was expecting 14 people, since Bubbles and a few others were going in the Fallen Slab entrance. But I was counting 15. I was fearful of people suddenly disappearing from my trip (even in dinky caves like these), but suddenly appearing wasn't quite so bad a problem. At least if someone went missing we'd have a substitute person to give to the family.
Coming in last again, I realized most of the group had already wandered out of earshot. The stream I was in went left and right. I wasn't positive which entrance on the map we had just gone through, so I didn't know which way we should go, in addition to where the group actually ended up going. This was one of those times I wanted to sit down for a minute with the map, but there's no free time when your trip's big enough to make two whole baseball teams.
Most people went right, so I met them up there at another left-right junction. A second catfish was found by the left passage. Was this Catfish Junction? I couldn't tell from the map, no one among the cadre of people had ever been there before. Half the group was already going right, but one guy was adamant about going left down an ugly passage. I went with the solo guy, so he wouldn't go alone. If I read the map right, both passages met up in two minutes.
Our passage got small and miserable to crawl through, then led to a choice between two miserable crawls. Then another choice of two miserable crawls. Then we came out into light. No one was around. Hey, we reached the Fallen Slab before the main group. Rock on.
We sat in the light for two minutes, waiting for the herd. They sure were taking their time. Then the other guy poked his head out the entrance. "This is where we came in." I looked up, and there were the brambles I held up for 15 people. Aw crap. I led us in a circle. I'm the leader of the group, and I manage to take one guy and get lost.
Larry found us soon afterward, and led us to the very short trip to the Fallen Slab entrance, where the population of a large city seemed to be jammed into. After losing a car at Stewarts and marching them through the woods to railroad tracks, getting lost in-cave was just par for the course.
We got back to the cars fine, and I made sure that every car had all its members. I figured that was more reliable than a headcount.
I can really appreciate the effort and sacrifice it takes to lead a trip now. You miss out on the fun of exploration to become a tour guide. You need to be at the head of the group; there's a reason dog leashes don't attach to the tail. Prepare all you want, but something will always go wrong. But it feels good to have some responsibility, however much you bungle it up.
I see how six or eight is the ideal size for a cave trip. That's small enough to not be unwieldy, but big enough so there's no lapse in conversation. Having my first trip be 16-18 (and I'm suspecting 19 at some points) would be a problem even if I was leading them through the park. But no one got hurt, a bunch of people saw local caves, and the NRO had a trip available for just about everyone who wanted one. Plus my group got a hiking trip, however involuntary.