Rebecca Cerbone had driven to Jersey City to meet the rest of us and load up her trunk. Scott Sala and Seth Perlman from Met were taking the PATH over, and were carrying their gear over. We all made an effort to pack light, so it was pretty much just gear and sleeping bags. A sleeping bag got brought in the back seat, but everything else fit in the trunk.
The ride down to Sinnett-Thorn was probably my best WV haul yet. Becky has a great CD collection. Naturally, there was the complete stop in Pennsylvania for close to an hour. But that backup�s been there so long it's mentioned in Civil War histories. This was only a seven hour trip. It's a big time difference between this place and Elkins. We got there at 12:30. There's an unfortunate misery that sets in when it's 3 A.M. and you're STILL in the car.
I took over driving in Virginia, just before crossing the mountains. I can understand the desire to not drive these roads, since the sharps turns mean vehicular death if you take them too fast. But damn, it�s fun. Plus I got to regale the passengers with how I smashed up my old car on a WV trip.
Bill Murray, Mark Skove and Mark's son had pulled into the cabin five minutes before us. The cabins were very large bunkhouses, with enough bunks for Scott and Seth to not have to use their tent (they didn't reserve bunks). I picked a top bunk, since I hadn't been in a bunk bed since college.
There was talk of a late night drunken stumble through McCoy's Mill Cave Saturday night, but half an hour after pulling in, an immediate trip was worked out. I don't think anyone got more than one beer in them. Available lights got dug out of packs and passed around until everyone had one, and then we marched to the entrances wearing street clothes. I had worn an old coat because I assumed my coat would get dirty somehow, and crawling through McCoy definitely qualified. My jeans got the worst of it, thanks to one or two patches of mud I crawled through. We went in the ground entrance and out the upper ledge entrance for the through trip. (Any cave with two entrances can be a through trip in my book. Leigh Cave is a through trip, dammit.)
Saturday morning proceeded at a refreshingly quick pace. It's normally like an Italian train schedule, but half the crew was up by 7 for breakfast, and the other half was able to pack gear for a takeoff time before 10:00 A.M.
I wasn't doing vertical, but some of the group was going to attempt the Sinnett-Thorn through trip, which meant a vertical climb out of Thorn Pit. So we went for a casual stroll up the hill to rig the pit.
'Casual' is close to 'cardiac death' in the dictionary. This wasn't a hill, it was a 45 degree death hike. I was going at the rate I took up the hill to Surprise Cave, which gets me a little winded but doesn't slow down my pace any. This was not the Surprise hill. I was surprised that there was enough dirt left in West Virginia to pave the roads after God made this hill. It started with a few hundred feet of forest, and then an equal length of field where the slope straightened out to 43 degrees. Then another layer of forest, and finally Thorn Pit. It was half an hour of stairmaster squeezed into five minutes.
Thorn Pit is covered with an enormous steel cage that must weigh several tons. I didn�t see any road nearby; someone either made a thousand trips with steel beams, or it was dropped pre-fab from a helicopter. I'm leaning toward helicopter.
Bill found a hole in the ground right at the edge of a field we walked through. No one in our group knew about it, so Bill and Mark's son went exploring. After a few feet, Bill found a register inside, so it wasn't quite virgin.
Coming down was less walking than controlled falling. It took less energy, but that was made up by tensing your foot with every step so you wouldn�t pull a Princess Bride. I tried not to think that I wasn't involved in the pit rigging, and thus didn�t have to do the climb.
The non-vertical Sinnett-Thorn entrance was a short walk from Mark�s van, over a much appreciated gentle incline. There were others also going in the cave, including the owner of the cave, some friends, and a daughter, who I believe was nine. Don't quote me on this, since my knowledge is so limited I'm not even sure if the owner was a man or a woman.
Sinnett-Thorn was very dry; not much in the way of mud or wet ceilings. West Virginia had been going through a dry spell, which was bad for crops and cattle, but good for cavers.
The plan was to hit the waterfall, then go up the Silo and find the Big Room. Mark and Bill were leading, naturally. We reached the silo entrance, where Mark and Bill stashed two packs and moved on. I guessed they didn�t want to carry them around a smaller cave like this.
The passage to the waterfall was a tough one to find. At one point, half of us stood right on the small passage by the floor, and walked right over it. Some backtracking, and it was found. A decent sized room. But not the biggest in the cave, as anyone who's been in Sinnett-Thorn can attest to.
We went back to the Silo entrance, Mark and Bill picked up their packed, and we moved through. The order of transit got a little fuzzy then, and somehow I became the leader for climbing the Silo. I had no idea where I was going, but the word 'Silo' indicates a vertical shaft, and sure enough it was a rough shaft up. It was steep, but there were enough handholds to make it up. There was also a rope rigged, but I didn't touch it.
I reached the apparant top of the Silo, so I stopped and waited for someone who had been in the cave to come along. Scott and Seth were behind me, (their first times in here as well) so we waited in a small room with a few passages off it.
After 15 minutes, I felt incredibly stupid. I poked my head out of one of these passages, and found the Big Room. I had been sitting underneath it. D'oh.
The Big Room is huge, three football fields long. When I had been in big rooms in other caves, I would estimate that a plane would be able to fit in there. The response was always that a plane could LAND in the Sinnett-Thorn Big Room. And it certainly could. It was mostly flat, so if you were to attempt this, most of the ground wouldn't need to be cleared or paved.
Mark and Bill brought out the big guns then: massive flashlights, punching through the dark like light sabers. The giant handhelds gave the room a real X-Files feel.
Scott Sala went to the far end of the Big Room, into a small crawling passage. It went a little someplace, and I was perfectly happy to sit there lazily as Scott pushed the lead. It look travelled, but was tight, so Scott backed out.
We found Jeralin, Francois, Tattoo Wayne and Dawn at the near end, close to the Sinnett-Thorn pinch. A few people here would be attempting it. I would not be one of them. I had done the Gunbarrel in Knox and the Devil's Pinch in Bone-Norman, but I had reason to get to the other side those times. On the other side of this pinch was just a hour of through trip and then a pit I didn't have the vertical gear to ascend. So if I fit through, I'd have to turn around and fit right back out. Bah.
The pinch was completely dry, which I've heard was very rare. A crowd of three or four cavers stood around it, rubbernecking the brave skinny souls who went though.
Francois and Scott made it through. A few other people attempted the pinch, but quickly found a sticking point and backed on out. Those of us not taking the Pinch would be backtracking down the Silo to get out.
And that began the wait. Most of the trip was single file, so one person has problems getting through the cave (let's say a nine year old girl) and the rest of the cavers stand around like it was Pennsylvania traffic.
It was a soild hour of waiting in the Big Room itself before we began filtering down through the Silo. The rope threaded down made for a quick arm belay, so we sped things up as much as we could and did the quick easy descent. It led to another half hour of standing around at the bottom of the Silo, but at least it was a change of scenery.
By the time we got out, a 2 1/2 hour trip became 5 1/2 hours. A cable ladder had been dropped from the pit, so I could have had a speedy way out if I dared the Pinch. Hopefully the ladder will be there next time (or I stop putting off a vertical gear purchase).
That night we went out for pizza, and I saw something on the menu too creatively named for me to pass up: a bambino taco wedgie. A wedgie was a sandwich made with cooked pizza dough for bread. It sounded good (especially the taco sandwich), but we were already ordering three pizzas and three appetizers, so I didn't want to collapse the table with a giant wedgie. I got the kid's size (a bambino, because people speak conversational Italian in West Virginia) but the kitchen accidentally cooked a small. A 'small' is half a pizza's worth of toasted dough on the bottom, with the other half on top. Ordinarily I'd be thrilled, but with that, my share of three pizzas, three appetizers, and free refills on drinks, and I had more food than I could eat. The other people at the table were glad to help out, but we still took back four pounds of food in doggie bags.
Mark had a TV/VCR combo in his van, so we spent the night watching Fight Club and the Waterboy. Pizza and rentals; yep, this is roughing it.
Sunday was Cave Rat Cave. If I was a seasoned caver who knew how valuable new caves were, I'd be schmoozing landowners every chance I got. As is, I'm content to tag along on the caves that Mark Skove does the ambassador work for. Thanks for the new cave, Mark.
There was another bastard of a hill to reach Cave Rat Cave. Is it too much to ask for a chair lift?
Cave Rat was named after a real rat that lives in the cave, the size of a chinchilla. I never saw him, but half the trip did. They left him little piles of food.
It was obvious that Cave Rat hadn't been visited much. There were easy to clear rocks on what would obviously be main walking and crawling passages. Several handholds broke away in my hand. And there was the mud.
The mud was sticky and heavy. A half-inch layer grew on the bottom of everyone's boots, and on the sides as well. It got so much that my legs began noticing the extra mud weight. I felt like a peanut butter Twix.
We did arm belays down a rope Mark rigged to get down into Cave Rat, and we climbed that same rope up to get out. Ten feet from the entrance, I got stuck. My foot was slipping off my hold, and the ground was covered in wet leaves that would slide me down a story or two. I probably would have been fine without the rope, but since it was there I was mentally conditioned to think this was impossible without the rope. Meanwhile, the rope was keeping me right under the ledge I wanted to get up. I had to get a boost from Francois to get out.
We went down Hell Hill Part II, changed, and went on the road home. I got to drive the fun part again, West Virginia crossing over to Virginia. It started raining a bit, which scared me since that was the exact condition that made me smash my car. But we made it home safely. With the dead stop in Pennsylvania, naturally.
My caving life is still focusing on quantity instead of quality. The way to become a good art judge is to look at a million paintings. I've looked at maybe two dozen caves, and that's including four or five bumblebee-sized caves on Dry Branch Road. After a few years of disgust at rinky-dink caves, maybe I'll shift gears and try to go to only quality caves. But getting three new quality caves in a weekend will be good no matter how jaded I get.