Allen Rush drove Joe Levinson, Steve Sanbeg and me in his car, and Becky Cerbone drove Bubbles in her car. We went due west until we hit a Sheetz in central Pennsylvania. We met Kevin Dunleavy from York Grotto there, and proceeded to spend the next half hour hanging out. I was late because I ate breakfast: everyone else skipped it, and made up for it with breakfast sandwiches and other bits of Sheetz goodness.
We'd be doing the P-Caves first, a bunch of little caves in a patch of woods. After that we�d hopefully have enough time to try the Hersey-Coy through trip. I love hitting a bunch of little caves. It really beefs up your Caves I've Done list. Before this day, my Pennsylvania list was at a paltry one cave: J4. Now I could add a respectable number to it. And I wouldn't even have to change clothes for some of them. Our first stop was not the P-Caves, however, it was Baker's Caverns. This was a former commercial cave with an entrance in the basement of a house. No one knew how to contact the owner of the house, but we'd be driving right by it.
We pulled into the house and knocked on the front door. The Mennonite woman who rented the house didn't have a key to the side basement steps (the cave steps are separate from the rest of the basement) but she gave us the owner's phone number. A quick call was made, and the owner said he'd swing by in an hour.
A local map said that Baker's Cave #2 and #3 were both within walking distance and tiny, so we could find and do both in that hour. So we hunted through the woods, which were skinny trees all growing straight up. They were so regularly spaced, it felt like they were scrawny support columns for some tent. Brambles and thorns and other pointy stuff grew between some of the trees, so going through sideways kept the spikes just on people's clothes.
Baker's Cave #2 was a small hollow that tunneled off in two directions. To the left, it went fifteen feet before ending at a open hole. No light was necessary to do this part of it. Someone put a thick piece of carpet on the ground in the left tunnel. No doubt what it's there for. To the right, lights had to be turned on, although once you did you realized you were at the end of the cave.
We got in the cars and drove half a mile to get a better leaving point for Baker's Cave #3. It was a steep entrance pit of dead leaves, dirt and broken pottery. Lots of shards from beer bottles and broken plates littered it, and accompanied us as we slid down the slope. It sounded like the recycling truck. Inside was one room and a tiny bit of stream that led to more rooms. It'd require some crawling and feet-splashing, two things no one wants to do in their street clothes, so that was enough Baker's Cave #3 for us. We tried to avoid needing a tetanus shot as we climbed back out.
The owner of Baker's Caverns came right when he said he would, on a tractor pulling what looked like an ice fishing hut. He had his son with him, both in camouflage hunting jackets. They had some deer hunting after this to do. He had some manner of 1,000,000 candlepower flashlight with him, and he popped the lock to the side basement door.
My normal show cave attire is jeans and a t-shirt, and I get just a wee bit cold. I had my full length coat on, so I wore that inside. Before I even climbed down the stairs, I knew it was going to get hot. The temperature was probably only the low 50s, but the humidity made it a sauna. The coat only lasted a minute or two before I had to take it off and carry it. This might be the reason Baker's Caverns is named that. Baker's Caverns only took ten or fifteen minutes, since we blew right through it. Without the tour guide commentary or the senior citizens anchoring the group, it's just a very pretty cave with every manner of obstacle removed or dug out. It hadn't been a show cave since 1953, but the concrete steps and hand rails and wiring were all still in place (although there were no light bulbs in the sockets). Barrier bars let us knew which formations (and there were a lot of them) were not to be touched. Kevin had never been in Baker's, so it was nice to think that the NNJG helped a local get to see the big legendary cave in his own backyard.
We piled back in the cars, drove all of a mile, and pulled over at an empty field. The P-caves were right in the woods. We suited up. It was cold, but dry with no wind. The polypros and coveralls provided excellent heat retention without wind, so hiking-caving in January became almost comfortable.
I had new equipment from Christmas to try out: aqua socks and some knee and elbow pads designed for skateboarders. The aqua socks worked great, although the drought really helped to keep me away from water this trip. My regular knee pads still worked fine, so I used those and didn't bother with the hard plastic ones.
I had a ripped up pair of foam pads in the bottom of the tub, and I mentioned that I wished I had coveralls with velcro knee pockets so I could stick the foam in and not have to worry about knee pads protecting my upper shins. Bubbles asked if I had Lost Creek coveralls. I did. She said Lost Creek coveralls should have those pockets. I checked, and sure enough, velcro pockets, ignored for 18 months now. I would have put that spare foam in the pockets right then, if it wasn't colder than a Siberian prison out. As it was, I left my old kneepads on and left both new and ripped ones still in the tub.
Kevin led the way through the woods, to where he ran across different P-Caves through the day. The first one he found was a filled in sinkhole. A tiny hole was in a corner, but as Kevin climbed in it, he noticed it wasn't big enough for anyone to go through. This was Possible Cave, he said.
A few feet away was a pit with a wooden frame around it. Python Pit. As Kevin and Allen lifted the pallet off the frame to go in it, the end foot of the pallet broke off. Steve kicked a wooden crossbeam, and it broke as well. This was not good wood.
Kevin and Allen descended it nonetheless, with the rest of us chickens staring down the hole. Allen left his pack up top, and ***censored*** decided to stuff a rock in Allen's pack to see how long he�d go without noticing. There was a legend of someone who went a very long trip without knowing their pack was being stuff with more and more rocks. For some reason Allen always becomes the focus of abuse, especially when he's putting together the trips. Subtlety wasn't the goal for this prank, as a loaf of bread-sized rock was used. Allen immediately noticed it, and spent the rest of the day trying to weed out if Bubbles or Joe had more of a hand in it. Everyone spent the rest of the trip guarding their packs against a second strike. At least three auxiliary and retaliatory strikes were made that day.
I was tempted to go down the hole solely so I could claim to have been in Python. But Python had a second entrance, which we went to as soon as Kevin and Allen got out of the pit, so I still get Python for my list.
Deep in the bottom of Python was a thin stream passage, with a short rope leading down to it. I always fall for the rope trap: when rope is present, I assume the climb/drop is impossible without it, while in actuality it usually makes the climb/drop harder. Coming back up, I hung off the rope uselessly, until I ignored it, grabbed a handhold, and got up just fine.
To the other side of the stream passage was a long stretch of canyon passage, some of my favorite stuff to cave through. The beginning of this (and end, when you turn around and go back out) had a rock cluster built up right at the butt level of most people. You could climb up and over it, or slide on through if you're not Sir Mix a Lot worthy. I thought I'd make it, but got plum stuck at the halfway point. It couldn't be my butt. I have a nice butt. I backed up and tried again. Again, dead stop. It wasn't my butt; a tiny tear in the seam of my coveralls got hooked, just enough to stop me from squeezing through. I did a 180 and pointed the butt in the other direction, and went through just fine. Two other party members who shall remain nameless had to scale the wall.
At the far end of the passage, my light just twitched off. I didn�t bump it, and the batteries were fresh: it just winked off. Bubbles shined her light on my helmet, and I couldn't see anything wrong with any of the electrical connections. I took off my pack with my extra sources of light before I went in the canyon (hidden from rock stuffers), so I couldn't just dig out a Maglite. It'd be easier to deal with on the surface, so I stuck close to Bubbles and used her light as my primary source. I�m a flagrant light leech, so I probably would have done this even if I had a working light. Halfway out, my light winked back on, still with no reason why. I looked on the surface, and there still wasn't any obvious cause. It didn't give me any more problems the whole day.
The Platter-Persistence system was next closest, and we found the Platter entrance first. It was here that the northeast�s drought became apparent. The slimy, wet crawls I'm used to were replaced by dry crawls. They were so dry they were dusty. It's a surprise to blow your nose at the end of the day and see brown.
Allen led the group through the crawls to a suspicious looking tunnel. There was a lot of animal waste in it, and for some reason Allen didn't want to crawl through rodent crap. We took a vote, and it was 6-1 to have Allen crawl through it. I guess Allen doesn't believe in democracy, since he declined the honor.
A u-turn, more crawling, and a good long break later, we hit the entrance to Persistence, which has no mystery about how it got its name. It's a tight toaster slot at a 25 degree angle, that goes up thirty or forty feet with very little holds. Allen went up first, and sent down some webbing to haul up people�s packs. Only two at a time could go up, since the crack was so small any more would get tangled every three feet.
I climbed up fourth. It was tight enough so any arm, leg or torso movement would effectively lock you in place. The challenge wasn't holding your position, it was getting any sort of handhold to push yourself up.
Halfway home I passed a big brick-like gray rock climbing up. I hit it with an elbow, and it came rushing down to the remaining people. The slot made everything Flatland, so all I had to do was put a foot under the rock and I caught it. People cleared from underneath, I tipped my foot and the rock boomed on the ground.
There was just a little bit of light left in the day when I crawled out of Persistence. After the last person made it out safely, we did a little more cave hunting. Some hole in the ground was found, which Allen thought might be Woodchuck. Someone didn't get the memo about how the P-Caves were named. I followed him down, and within a few feet we were at a 15-foot drop that required a rope to do. We popped back to the surface, checked the local cave descriptions, and found out it was Woodchuck Pit instead.
Changing back to street clothes was cold, but we were all dry and it still wasn't windy, so it could have been far worse.
It was dinner time, and we were waffling between a sit down dinner and something quick on the go. If we wanted to do Hersey-Coy, we should definitely make it quick. Allen said that a true mid-caving meal had to be done at either the King, the Clown or the Girl, so we stopped by Wendy's. "Do you want to stop here?" Allen asked Becky through the walkie-talkie.
"We'll discuss it inside," Becky radioed back. We all ate there except for Bubbles, who ran across the plaza to get a veggie sub from Subway she proceeded to not even unwrap. We didn't know it then, but we were two days away from Dave Thomas's death. You will be missed with every Frosty that is served, Dave.
Hersey-Coy was proposed for a final cave, but by the time we were finished with our quick meal and at a landowner's house, it was about 7:00 and long past sunset. We went to both landowners� houses, and both of them were exceedingly friendly, but both wanted to wait up to make sure we'd get safely out of the cave, and that'd mean we'd be keeping them up until midnight, assuming we didn't get lost inside.
A judgment call was made, and we decided we had enough caving for the day. Becky had a busy day ahead of her so she drove back to New Jersey, while the rest of us went to a bar Allen knew of in Shippensburg. Bubbles had to sit bitch in Allen's car coming back, but it put her right in the center of any conversation the car had.
Six caves in a day in a pretty good haul. My PA caving list is now at seven, almost respectable for a state that only looks cave-rich compared to New Jersey. And there's still Hersey-Coy, Quarry Hill and some little stuff left to do. Plenty of spots left for another full day of Pennsylvania caving.