I did not have a case for it, something very important if I ever wanted to take it in a cave. I didn't have time to find anything sturdy, so I used the "case" it came in: two feet of bubble wrap.
I was petrified of shattering another camera. I had brought a disposable camera to my first Scott Hollow weekend. After taking two pictures, the film refused to advance. Cave mud had seen an opening, charged, and the cheapo camera was jammed. True to its name, I ended up disposing of it. I hadn't attempted cave photography since (although I was perfectly willing to assist other people when they were risking their own cameras).
The Mammoth trip was a week of restoration work, Monday through Friday, mostly along the tourist trails. I left the camera on my bunk that first day. I'd get a feeling for how much danger a camera would be before risking it underground.
The work was hauling grass sacks filled with creosoted wood to the surface. Later in the week we'd be filling more bags with wood freshly pulled from the muddy bridge, but for now we were hauling out the wood another work crew had bagged. The whole day was on lighted trails, with our packs neatly stacked away from tourists. I could have Fabrege eggs in there and they'd be fine.
Monday night I checked the batteries of my camera. They were completely dead. What I had on the camera were eight pictures taken at a movie theater before I left for Kentucky, and a dozen more of friends in Louisville who put me up for the night. These measly pictures ate up two whole AA batteries. I had heard digital cameras treated batteries like M&Ms, but didn't know just how carnivorous they truly were.
My younger brother gave me rechargeable batteries for Christmas last year, and I had usefully never taken them out of the package. I brought them with me to Kentucky. The camera could suck them dry during the day and I'd just recharge them at night. I opened their package, stuck two in my camera, and brought them along Tuesday morning.
Here's something I didn't know: the batteries don't come out of the package with a charge. My camera was as dead as disco. No sense in hauling a paperweight in the cave, so I left it in the car.
After work on Tuesday, we had our first side trip. The Parks Department frowns on calling them Reward Trips, so they were Education Trips. We were Educated on these trips instead of Rewarded, but it was a pure coincidence that every attendee had also been hauling wood and supplies out of Mammoth the past few days.
We were visiting two caves, neither of which connected with Mammoth: Dogwood and Atwell. (I spent the whole trip calling them Addwell and Dogwater.) I assumed that both caves did connect to Mammoth, just like every cave within 100 miles of Mammoth. If I was able to find one of those connections in the half hour I'd be in each, I'd be the hero who pushed Mammoth to 400 miles of passage.
Dogwood was first. We drove through the sprawling Mammoth complex to get there, which literally only has about ten roads for the whole National Park. A little over half the camp was coming along; the allure of showers and rest sidelined the other twenty cavers.
We pulled over at the side of the shaded road, and the six or seven cars in our caravan squeezed over to the side. There might be one car an hour on these roads, so people were changing shoes and dropping pants in the middle of the road without any fear of traffic.
My coveralls were back at the bunkhouse. I was wearing the unofficial uniform for the restoration camp: T-shirt, flannel and jeans. For this side trip, I slipped knee pads over the jeans. Most work was on clean commercial trails, so this uniform was fine. One or two people wore coveralls of some sort, but they put them on at the beginning of the day and drove with them. There's not much privacy for changing in the parking lot of on the biggest tourist attractions in the state.
Now we were going to real wild caves again. And we were going straight from them to the car, which wasn't even my car. I was getting a ride to the Mammoth entrance every day with Preston and Shari, two very nice people who I didn't want to leave with a mud buttprint souvenir. They were long time cavers, so they had a dedicated assortment of towels and dropcloths for upholstery protection. All the same, I was determined to keep myself as clean as possible. We went all of fifty feet before coming to the Dogwood entrance. It was a good sized hole, but camouflaged by moss and other vegetation surround it. I crab walked down carefully; there was more than enough mud to stain denim here.
When I had gotten out of natural light, I turned on my Petzl Tikka. This light had been a godsend in Mammoth for cheap bastards like me. You need light to get around, but since most of the trail's already lit, and the parts that aren't are huge, you don't need much light. I spent most of the time with either no light on, or my Tikka on. It was a weak blue light, but at the low setting I'd get 120 hours from a measly three AAA batteries. I thought a solid week of underground labor would cost me my body weight in AA batteries, but the Tikka was still brimming with power, and my AA-powered Duo was yet untouched.
In real wild caving, however, the Tikka light isn't enough. It doesn't reach more than a few feet, and makes even the path in front of you remarkably dim. It's fine for reading in a tent or as a backup, but for big new passage, I needed something more. My Duo's virginal status in Kentucky was breached, and that was my light for these caves.
Dogwood is a puny cave by Kentucky standards, but it's be something you'd drive five hours to get to in the Northeast. Huge ceilings, passages in multiple directions, and no litter. No one had a map, so we were just poking around, and following along whenever he heard an echo.
A small waterfall in a round chamber went straight down 30 or 40 feet, filled with power-washed rocks. The water went down so neatly you could walk the perimeter of this small room and not get wet, or even splashed. Preston and Shari's upholstery was still safe, so I climbed down into the room.
I saw someone climbing out of a hole at the bottom, near where the water was hitting. He stayed dry. I contorted myself to get down there, and saw part of a pool hidden by the breakdown we were standing on. So there was the groundwater. Dang, no easy Mammoth connection there.
A passage went off with a high ceiling and lots of breakdown on the floor. It dead ended, but there seemed to be a small opening at the top. Johann went in to investigate. He came out two minutes later, not wearing his helmet. "It goes," he said, but everyone noticed he wasn't wearing his helmet. That signaled a lead for me and the other Northeastern cavers, but we were in Kentucky, and had bumped up our minimum requirements for "It goes." This was our vacation; we didn't come to Mammoth to take our helmets off. Even if that led to Mammoth.
Coming back out, we noticed the frogs. As you climbed up the breakdown, a frog you never noticed would jump from its perch a foot away from you. You figured there was just one frog that you didn't notice, thanks to mossy rock camouflage. You move another two feet, and another frog jumps. You scan all around you, see not a frog is sight - aside from those two that jumped before - take another step, and two more frogs jump. You could open a Cajun restaurant in this cave. (I think we didn't notice them coming in because we were making so much noise coming in we wouldn't have heard jackhammering.)
Our second cave, Atwell, was right by the Cave Research Foundation center, off the Mammoth property. I was expecting the CRF building to be like most professional cave buildings: something no one outside of cavers would ever think to inhabit. No heat, no running water, and - if you're lucky - a couch someone hauled from the dump.
The CRF site looks like Camp David. Two buildings, each with five doors, sat to the left of the road like a ski lodge or a motel. A small amount of gear was outside one of them. A palatial, air conditioned lodge was next to these, with a huge deck overlooking miles of gorgeous scenery. Wow, the CRF is much better funded than us bums in New Jersey. Any cave by here was bound to be a huge photo op.
At this point, I realized that I didn't need to only use the dead rechargeable batteries in my camera. I don't know why the thought didn't come to me earlier. I swapped two spare batteries from my pack in, the camera lit up, and I was finally a cave photographer.
Putting all my eggs in one basket, I stuffed my camera in my front pocket. It was in its lovely bubble wrap case, but still, one slip and I'd have a pocket full of junk.
I had rethought my pack as a place of safety. Anything inside there would rattle next to filthy webbing, a half-filled water bottle, small flashlights, and a Tupperware container full of snacks and extra batteries. I usually treat my pack like a rented mule, so all I needed was one moment of forgetfulness when I'd hurtle it ahead of me, and it'd be smashed. In my front pocket, it was at more risk, but I always always knew where it was. So I kept it in my pocket. It was also easier to pull out for photo opportunities.
The cave was a twenty minute walk away, through a grassy field. This was late afternoon, it was 85 degrees or so, and we had spent the whole day either in caves so long we were fearing the sun. This field was looking like the Gobi Desert.
A path led down through the high grass, which we followed down. Grasshoppers and other insects were scattering with every footfall. We made our way to a hill, then hung a right and climbed up in into a glorious patch of shade. This entrance was smaller, something you need to feel around with your feet to safely descend. No sliding on my butt, both for my camera's and my pants' sake. Atwell had a few multi-story formations to it. Flashes were routinely going off. I wasn't the only guy with a camera here. One location was so popular for photo shoots you'd think it was that forced perspective spot where you can hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I got my picture taken at the spot, just like I will as soon as I get to Italy.
One light that was not going off was on top of Mary's helmet. It was futzing out on her. It'd be a shame to miss out on a new cave just because of a little thing like perpetual darkness. I took the Tikka off my helmet (it was only secured with the head strap, and came off twelve times of its own accord during the week) and passed it to her. She wouldn't be able to make out much, but with all the flashes in here, she essentially had a strobe light in addition to the Tikka.
There was a huge stalagmite that just would not show up for a good picture. It was about 25 feet high, there was a ledge up top for someone to sit and wave, and a single flash could not possibly light the whole thing. I took three or four pictures of it, previewing and then deleting each one as soon as I saw how crummy it turned out. I saved my final exposure of it, not because it was good but just to show to cave photographers afterwards to commiserate with.
We had the same lousy hike back to the CRF center to go back to the bunks. One guy cut the diagonal and waded through the waist-high grass. Local cavers warned him to come back, because of chiggers and snakes in the grass just waiting for something bitable to wander through. He got through OK, though.
A big SUV was driving along the path. A few of the older cavers were riding inside. Two guys jumped on the rear bumper and grabbed the luggage rack up top. They rode the SUV up the hill like a chariot.
Damn, that looked fun. And here I was walking up the hill in the sun like a chump.
Then it came down for more passengers. I jumped on the rear bumper, held onto the luggage rack, and felt like Ben Hur as the chariot quickly took me to the top of the hill.
I checked my pictures on the way back to the bunks. Nothing too remarkable. It takes luck and skill to get good pictures, and I used up all my luck getting the camera back to the bunks in one piece.
Wednesday I risked the camera in the cave, down at the work site. Lots of great pictures (for me, at least), and the camera stayed intact. I took it again on Saturday, for the other big Rewar- uh, Education Trip to Albert's Domes inside Mammoth. Again, no pictures that the NSS News wants in its cover, but I was happy with them.