jan2003

(0')--I'm at Pherris' Pit in Tennessee with Near Normal Grotto cavers Marc, Emily, Kevin, and Andy. I've got all my gear on -- cave pack, helmet, harness, rappel rack, cow's tail, frog ascension system. So many items dangle from my harness, but I've been practicing for this day and I am sure I can keep them all straight. Kevin kids me about all the gear hanging from me, telling me that I look very European. Kevin and I watch as Emily gets ready to rappel. She doesn't have the rappel rack fed as high as she could on the main rope. When she tries to step off over the entry hole the rigging sags and she winds up sitting on the wet rocks beside the hole. "This is the part I hate," she says, and without hesitation slides on her behind into the entry hole. Emily is swallowed by the earth. Several minutes later, we hear her yell "Off Rope!" It is my turn. I feed the main rope into my rappel rack, positioning the rack as high as I can and then locking it off. I step off over the hole. Rigging sags and my harness creaks. I commit to the rope, remove the cow's tail from the safety line. I feign confidence because Kevin is taking my picture. The weight of 246 feet of kernmantle rope below me prohibits the rope sliding through the rappel rack. I could let go of the rope and not go anywhere. I begin the descent feeding the rope through the rack, as if I were pulling myself down.

(5')--My knees, then my feet, are in contact with wet rock for a few feet as the entry hole rises over my head. Now I am looking at rock wall directly in front of my face, but my legs contact empty unseen space. I look down. Black. I expected to see pinpricks of light from headlamps below me, but there is nothing. I force myself to look up through the entry hole at the rigging above--I've waited a long time to do this, come a long way, and I should take it all in--and begin feeding more rope through the rappel rack.

(10')--The entry hole bells out and any feeling of security thins away to a thread. My headlamp shows walls ten or fifteen feet away. Nothing below me but black.

(20 or 30')--The walls are much farther away. Fluted vertically, which surprises me. I don't know what I expected to see. I keep thinking about the rigging, the rope, my harness. All have been checked and double checked. But I keep thinking What if? I know the rigging is good, Marc explained every bit of it, every connection. What about my harness? The best harness is still just held together by threads. What if? Fear and regret mix. Have I made a mistake by allowing myself to get in this situation? (Allowing? More like working and training -- nobody talked me into this. I did half the driving to get here.) I am on the verge of freezing up. I make myself feed more rope through the rack, gripping the rope too tightly. Each time I slide my hand down or stop feeding the rope I bounce a little, feeding my panic. I feel very alone, even though there are cavers above me and below me.

(50'?)--Some thought control is in order here, and I have been forcing myself to consider how much I appreciate the strength of the rope, how much I appreciate the way the stitching--not threads, threads is a poor choice of words--the way the stitching holds my harness together, making all this equipment infallible as long as it is used properly. But now my headlamp seems to be fading. I reach with my guide hand to focus the beam. Nothing wrong with the headlamp -- the walls are dimly lit because of the distance. Fear is augmented by wonder as I descend and I begin to exclaim out loud. "Holy sh... moley! Son of a ... sea biscuit!" I am doing a pretty good job of controlling myself. The other cavers are not much given to displays of excitement. I am an emotional sort and I am not always this good at holding back.

(100'?)--Just as I have exercised thought control about harnesses, rope and rigging, I have decided that my stomach be unaffected by the slow spin I have started. The walls rotate about me and I dimly perceive a large, jagged hole eaten away in the wall, half exposing another pit alongside this one. Another rotation and the hole is just above me. I look straight up the rope. The entry hole has shrunk to a bright dot. There is a supernatural quality to all this. The fear is still there but the regret is diminishing, being replaced by exhilaration. I am seeing things that maybe humans are not meant to see, secret worlds beneath the earth. The rope slides more easily through my mini-rack.

(150/200')--This can't be possible. Acids in ground water dissolving limestone, theories of rock-eating microbes--these fail to explain how a pit of this depth can exist! I remind myself that this pit is of modest depth compared to those we often read of in NSS News. The descent has gone on and on. I want it to continue but I worry about the ascent. And I'm down, landing ignominiously on my butt. As quick as I can I detach from the rope, get out of the fall zone and yell "Off Rope!" I thank Marc. "For what?" he asks, somewhere off in the darkness. "For all this," I say, waving my arm, meaning, "Thank you for the opportunity to do this." Maybe he doesn't quite take my meaning. "I didn't put it here," his disembodied voice replies quietly. Does Marc know that he has just said, here at the bottom of this immense pit, the one thing that could possibly make an atheist a believer? A few minutes later Kevin appears from above. The five of us take a few minutes to explore around the piles of breakdown for any side passages. One spot with some potential gets small fast, forcing me to twist in ways that make me nervous. I would prefer not to strain a muscle down here. Marc begins his ascent of the rope. Then Andy begins with his ropewalker. I will follow close below Andy but I am nervous about ascending in tandem. "The only problem is some people get a little sea sick," Kevin says, trying to reassure me about the strength of the gear and the rigging. I get on rope and start frogging, pacing myself carefully. This is the part I have practiced in my barn at home. With my son Adam feeding about 120' of rope through a belay device, I ascended to the rafters, he lowered me, I ascended again -- you get the picture. I am fairly confident I can do this 246' feet because, well, I have to or die of embarrassment. I frog up ten--what?--paces? frog hops? sit/stands? Then try to relax, take ten deep, slow breaths. Then ten more sit/stands. The rope keeps bouncing because Andy is ropewalking above me. I consider that my frogging must be affecting his ascent as well. Once in a while I get a freebie from Andy; I stand with absolutely no effort. Maybe this happens when I stand just as the rope stretches from some effort that Andy makes. I feel myself float upward a moment later, the delayed reaction occuring just as I sit in my harness. And once in a while it takes great effort for me to stand. I hope that this is my effort making Andy's ascent easier. I hear Andy talking to Marc. Andy is far overhead, silhouetted in the light of the tiny entry hole. I stop my bouncing so he can exit more easily. Never had any trouble with sea sickness, I congratulate myself. I lean back and let my chest harness assume some of my weight, switch off my lamp for a minute. Just hanging out in the dark. I notice that I am not getting overheated thanks to a cool shower I have been getting from above. Andy is out and I go to work, resuming my cycle of ten sit/stands, ten slow resting breaths. I feel good, I can keep this up. As I work, I time travel a bit, as I do so often when caving. I remember Explorer Post 1 from Champaign, avid flashlight cavers, traveling to Bloomington Indiana with the intention of doing Shaft Cave. We had some goldline and a few carabiners which we cross-loaded to make a rappel device. We stopped at a sports shop to buy a pair of Jumar ascenders with money from the Post treasury. The plan was that we would all rappel in. One of the fellows said he knew how to use the Jumars. He would show us all how to ascend out on our diaper sling harnesses. Fortunately the owner of the sports shop overheard the plan and informed us that he would call the police to intercept us if we headed anywhere near Shaft Cave, and did we still want to buy the Jumars? We caved Buckners that day. Over the years I have come to suspect our Adult Advisor of informing on us in that sports shop and encouraging the shop owner to lecture us on how serious a cave rescue can be. I'm still working. I don't remember getting hit with this much water during the descent. I find out later that it has begun to rain up top. Rainwater is draining into the entry hole, is bouncing off rock to produce a drizzle in the pit. I don't mind, the drizzle is keeping me from overheating, but my glasses are now wet and hopelessly fogged. I just keep on working, resting, working, resting, paying attention to my heart rate. It is 31 years after Explorer Post 1's aborted trip to Shaft Cave, but I am finally caving vertically.

Our annual Grotto Picnic was held Saturday, September 14 at Clark Falls Farm near Utica IL. The farm was a bit of a surprise ?sort of a miniature Starved Rock or Mathiesson State Park hidden among soybean fields.

There were no sack races at this picnic. Our activity began around 11:00 with rappelling on ropes rigged by Steve Taylor and Marc Tiritilli. From the area immediately above the cliff there is not much to see. Once over the side, the rappeller is rewarded with a minor panorama of the falls (absent the water on this day) and surrounding cliffs. I am convinced now that the best way to enjoy a view like this is not from behind a guardrail, but hanging in harness just below an overhang.

I made my first rappel and then bottom belayed several others. Meanwhile more members were arriving, but I did not see them until I came up for lunch. I would have predicted a modest turnout, maybe seven or eight people, but when I got back to the pavilion twenty people were beginning to enjoy the lunch and the company of fellow cavers. Attending our picnic were Steve Taylor, JoAnn Jacoby, Troy Simpson, Amy Marcier, Dave Carson, Matthew Carson, Marc Tiritilli, Tracy Tiritilli, John Schirle, Jim Jacobs, Marty Jacobs, Julie Angel, Beth Reinke, Chris Beck, Don Coons, Larry Bird, Cheryl Bird, Kevin Rasmus, Andy Rasmus, Ralph Sawyer.

The plan was for each of us to bring our own meal, but somehow an excessive amount of food, especially fried chicken and desserts, was available. During the meal President Troy Simpson conducted a short business meeting ?? see the minutes.

After lunch most of the group went on a pull?down rappel trip to the base of Clark Falls ?? two rappels, thirty feet and forty?five feet. I asked what a pull-down trip was ?? the rope is doubled over an anchor so that once everyone has rappelled, the rope can be pulled down and used for the succeeding rappels. I did not go on this trip but it was described to me as "awesome". The words "almost died" are here in my notes as I write this but I can't remember who said them or why. Rappellers hiked back to the pavilion on the trail, noting plants such as musclewood, hop hornbeam, white cedar, poison ivy and a mystery plant.
Meanwhile I had opted to rappel most of the way down the cliff again and switch to ascension using a one-legged frog system. I am just learning ascending and I know I did not look good doing it (there are some things I look good doing, but driving a tractor with a bag on my head is a topic you won't find in the Near Normal News). Sweat was running into my eyes as I struggled upward. Most of the energy I expended did not gain me an inch, but was wasted. I did finally make it to the top after several rests. May I take a few lines to thank Marc Tiritilli, Steve Taylor, Don Coons, and especially Chris Beck for very patiently sharing their knowledge?

This would have been plenty for me, but within an hour our group was hiking a railroad track to the abandoned Utica Manufacturing #1 Cement Mine. The mine almost seemed to me like a long?abandoned house, a series of large rooms with a consistent ceiling height and a relatively level floor. That is where the similarity to a house ends, however, and the similarity to a cave begins. Like a cave, the mine is home to bats and a ground water isopod. We were privileged to see hundreds of cave formations: soda straws, stalactites, blotches in the gravel floor that will someday be stalagmites, draperies, and dragon's teeth, all in their infancy. This felt to me like time traveling to the birth of a cave.

Many thanks go to Larry Bird for arranging the spectacular site and for the mine tour. The people and the location made the Near Normal Grotto Picnic a big success!

January 2003 Near Normal News