The pack went down a muddy slope you couldn't get to from the mud bridge. No one had a rope with them, so they had to leave the pack. Walter had a brand new light in the pack; you never lose a pack when it's full of spent carbide and Powerbar wrappers.
After the group came out, I talked with Walter about the pack. I joked that he could fish it out with a magnet if there was metal in the pack. There was some metal in the pack, Walter said. He began thinking of ways he could build a portable magnet, and then sherpa it into Simmons-Mingo. It was a ridiculous idea, but it involved fishing, which was always a plus for Walter.
Unfortunately, Walter never got to test out the magnetic fishing pole. (He was smart enough to build one, if he wanted.) He died in a boating accident a few weeks later.
At his funeral, dozens of grotto members put on the yellow NNJG shirt that Walter had sold from the grotto store.
It was almost an unstated assumption that a cave trip needed to be held in his honor.
As far as we knew, Walter didn't have a favorite cave. Well, maybe Hosterman's Pit. That had been closed for years, however, with a metal plate welded on the entrance. Plans have been theorized to get in Hosterman's, but most of them involved ski masks, timed welding, and waiting for a moonless night.
Walter did have property left in a cave, however. Treasure from the Pirate. Simmons-Mingo quickly became the cave to do.
The trip would be during OTR 2003, a year after Walter lost the pack. I was hoping it would be sooner, but the whole grotto would be at OTR, something you couldn't say about any other caving event. This wasn't the trip to leave anyone out of.
Simmons-Mingo happened to be site of my most miserable cave experience, a brutal 11-hour through trip. Many other asses have also been kicked by Simmons-Mingo, a two mile stretch of stream passage, boulders, and crawlways that burrows under a West Virginia mountain. It was only my second cave, I had no water, I was woefully unprepared, and the trip lasted hours longer than promised.
I've been in Simmons-Mingo every OTR, but I've never tried the through trip again. It was the only trip I stayed away from: give me a little more time, and then I'll be able to handle it.
Going in for non-through trips was fine, though. Walter's pack retrieval fit the bill perfectly. That would be OTR 2003, and the through trip could be pushed until 2004. (Unless I could think of something else neat to do in the cave, in which case I could postpone the through trip to 2005, or even later.)
Jeralin was organizing the trip with Errol Glidden, someone who knew Simmons-Mingo as well as anyone this side of Mark Skove. She promised Errol a small five person trip, with no anchors.
We ended up twice as big, with ten people. People clambered on this trip because it was Walter. Just try to stop Dave Hall, Walter's best friend, from doing this trip. To our credit, though, there were no anchors.
I personally wouldn't have minded a group that just dipped in, did the vertical pit, and left. But the group was going whole hog: get the pack, then do the victorious through trip with the pack in hand.
Nine of us ventured into the cave from Dry Branch Road. (Barclay had to leave due to mechanical problems.) Some were Errol's caving compadres, but more than half were the Pirate Treasure Recovery Team.
The pit was only a few minutes� journey from the entrance. It turns out the pit is not vertical-only. You can get down there without rope, you just can't jump straight down from the mud bridge. (Well, you can, but it really hurts.) If only Walter knew back then.
A few hardy souls ventured down into the pit where his pack was last seen.
I was not among the hardy souls. I was preparing for another 11-hour obstacle course, and so was saving my energy in every way possible. It also seemed appropriate that the people who knew Walter best were the ones to venture down there.
Mark Skove led the exploration at the bottom. It was exceptionally muddy, and sloped downward. No sign of the pack.
Chances were, the pack was long gone. It was visible to people making the through trip, and the first guy who knew how to get down to the pit could just take it. All we needed was one guy to come through Simmons-Mingo in the past year.
The Pirate Treasure had, appropriately enough, been plundered. There was an off-chance that rain washed the pack down the slope. As the pit sloped down, it got muddier. Mark said it felt like a deathtrap. If you slipped, you slid down an unknown slope into an unknown depth of mud, with the mud making it impossible to climb out on your own power. The pack might still be there, although it'd be buried in feet of mud.
For most of this searching, I stood still. Movement cost me energy. I felt fine, but I knew I had to save my reserves. The pack was a bust, but we still had a tough through trip to accomplish.
With both Mark and Errol knowing the cave, we went through without a single wrong turn. That was a huge boon. My initial Simmons-Mingo trip would have been seven hours if we knew where we were going. After an hour, we came to a gap in the passage of about four feet. We'd be jumping this. I've been caving for about five years, and this was the only time I've had to do an Evel Knievel jump.
I hadn't done this the first time. A lot of Simmons-Mingo passage looks unremarkable, but I'd certainly remember a move I've only done playing a Mario game.
It wasn't mandatory to do this jump. You could always backtrack down to the floor, work your way around the hump of rock we were standing on, and squeeze through the canyon we were going to jump over. You could do it, but it'd take ten minutes. If there was no way across aside from this jump, we'd probably give the jump some contemplation. With the alternative as just being a pain in the butt, we began jumping without thought.
I was in the middle of the queue. The first people across stood as rear guards for the rest of the jumpers (you could overjump and fall off the other end of the hump). I made it across without incident, and got to spot the rest of the group.
I kept as close to Mark and Errol as possible. This is how you survive a tough trip. The people up front reach a good break spot and sit down. The rest of the trip reaches that spot in time, but don't get as much rest as the leaders. By the time the caboose reaches that spot, the leaders are well rested and ready to get back on the move.
It's like the wealth gap. The rich get richer, and the head of the cave trip get further ahead. The poor get poorer, and the caboose is always struggling to catch up. The easiest way to get ahead is to start ahead.
Simmons-Mingo is a virtual straight line for most of its length. At times I was a few feet ahead of Mark or Errol, so I was technically leading the group. I sure wasn't expecting to do that. This cave wasn't so bad.
We reached the cable ladder, went down it quick, and within a few minutes were at the Rectum (which has several synonyms, the same synonyms that rectums have). We climbed up the narrow passage, up a huge expanse of diagonal breakdown, and then I saw daylight.
We made it through in five and a half hours. All nine of us, including the extended break to look for Pirate Treasure, made it through like cheetahs. It was literally half the time of my last through trip.
Thanks, Walter.
The next day, Errol led the NNJG on a trip of Windy Run Cave. Errol might be the only person on Earth who can find this cave easily. Drive into the woods several miles. Park, walk another mile or so, then turn off the trail at a wholly unremarkable spot until you reach a featureless molehill in the middle of nowhere. That�s where the cave is.
It starts off horizontal, but after 800 feet it turns vertical. A 17 foot nuisance drop, and then the big 106 footer. There's a bit of water that follows you down. The way the NNJG rigged the rope, it was out of the water, but if you fidgeted on rope, you'd swing right into the spray. Naturally, I was soaked by the time I got three feet up the rope.
On the way out, Dave found some booty. It was an old rusty pocketknife, right at the entrance. You couldn't cut butter with it, although Walter could probably fix an outboard motor with it. It wasn't as glamorous as Walter's pack, but it was something.
Next year, maybe we ought to get the chloroform and rubber bullets ready, and try for Hosterman's. Walter would probably approve, I think.