After spending nearly two weeks here in Alabama, all I have to say is FUCKING WIN! I've had so much fun, and stayed with two really nice people (Amy and Brian) who have kept me busy for the whole time. Just what I needed!
My time here started off with a 4 day Cave Rescue "Technical Rescue, Cave I/II" course with Huntsville Cave Rescue Unit, a very friendly bunch of local cavers who operate in a similar way to home. Many of them are also volunteer firefighters, medics or high angle rescue team members. I learnt a LOT on the course and had so much fun during the practicals both in cave and on the bluffs (practice cliffs). According to them I'm the best horizontal stretcher attendant on a haul that they've had *blush*.
After the course, to take a bit of a break from the pre-7am starts we'd been having, we got up late and Brian kindly got us in to the Huntsville Space and Rocket Centre (he works as a fracture mechanic for Boeing contracted for NASA). The centre has some spectacular peices of military and space exploration history and one of the three non-mock up Saturn V rockets (the other two are at Johnson and Kennedy centres which I have also been to).
All in all was a very good day!
The next few days involved lots of caving! I'm very lucky that Amy is an extremely talented photographer and can take some very impressive shots whilst underground, most of the pictures are tagged on my facebook but other pictures (and possibly the ones from the last few weeks) are on her flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunguramy/.
The first cave was Bluff River, an incrediby large horizontal borehole cave, apparently characteristic of TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia) caves, the passage at least 30ft wide and tall in many places, sometimes more with some very pretty formations. The river runs slowly throughout the passageway with some boulder ruckles on the way. The cave terminates in a pretty grotto high up a mud/boulder slope that is relatively unstable. A good simple and bimbly cave to start off with!
The next day, St Stephens Gap was the cave in question for Amy and myself, a naturally lit 180ft freehanging pit, with two entrances. The unique thing about this cave is the ability of a caver to descend in on rope and walk out on foot through the second entrance, so a good place to start practicing! It was a short half hour/45 minute hike up to the cave entrance where we began to rig the rope, fidding a few times with anchor points until we were both (relatively) happy with the result. Once sorted, Amy descended through the keyhole slot into the large open pit below, once she'd got off rope at the bottom, it was my turn. At first I was very nervous, being new to a rack (the descending device being used) however once I got going I slowly rapelled, taking in my beautiful surroundings. The air was laced with beams of light from the large surface opening, creating a sort of peaceful haze, once at the bottom, I decided to ascend up to the top (Texas style) and rappell down once more, after adding a back up anchor due to the original deviation becoming unstable.
Once I was down for the second time, we went for a bimble in the minimal horizontal passage near the pit sides, with some interesting dome formations and a tight rift-like squeeze that went for a reasonable distance. Once out of the cave (walking, of course) we hiked back down to the car and home again, of course stopping for the classic southern fast-food on the way!
The evening that followed was something very different that I thought was definately worth doing again. Long story short, we drove out to Guntersville Lake, got into Kayaks and paddled over to a partly flooded cave entrance. We waited for the sun to begin to set and suddenly thousands of bats began to fly from the entrance into the dusk light. A beautiful experience. About 250,000 bats migrate from that cave every evening and it certainly seems like it!
The third day of caving for Amy and myself was another horizontal cave, Tumbling Rock. After driving through redneck country for nearly 2 hours we reached a small car park where we settled and got ready. Anticipating a large hike to the entrance I was pleasantly suprised to find it was literally within a stones throw. On in to the cave we went, initially a very dry cave with the occasional mud patch, but large open passage as expected. As a mendip caver I like to think I can squeeze through things, so Amy thought she would challenge that perception by showing me a squeeze entrance and telling me where I need to end up. Needless to say it was never going to end well for me, about 8m in I hit a dead end and the passage shot upwards through a *very* tight rift. Not knowing if it was the right direction and that I might have missed something behind me whilst having my helmet off (due to the fact it was too wide to fit) I asked Amy to shine her light into the end of the tunnel I was supposed to aim for, I saw no light so decided to reverse out (painfully) and accept defeat.
After moving along a tad more we reached some old salt quarry works, used during the civil war. These mine works still have the footprints of the slaves forced to work in the harsh conditions at the time, and it's known that the mine was taken over by the unionists at some point, with the mine director hung from the tree outside as was customary at the time. There were 5 stacks of mine workings that we passed on our way towards the "Elephants Feet", a room with two huge pillars resembling exactly that. I looked miniscule next to them whilst Amy had me pose for some photographs before moving on. We were aiming to get to the further reaches of the cave, namely "Topless Dome", the "Christmas Tree" (a large stalagmite formation) and the "Tumbling Rock", from which the cave got its name, however soon into our trip we got relatively lost and repeated our steps through the streamway at least 4 times. Amy was adament the path I found through the boulder ruckle was the wrong one, and that the chamber it led to wasnt one she recognised, however after a bit of pursuasion she followed down through the ruckle and into the chamber. From there I headed right down the larger ruckle in the chamber towards a low muddy streamway that went for a fair distance before reaching a large boulder choke. At this point, Amy declared she recognised it, and that we mustve found an alternate route. Happy that we'd established some bearings, we continued. Eventually after many interesting rooms and features (Grim Reaper, Totem Gallery) we reached an entrance to Topless Dome. It was not what I expected, in fact it was better. Even with a 3000 lumen light the top was not visible, at 396ft high the Saturn V rocket could fit inside it. Incredibly, there are ropes left over at the top from the pretty ballsy cavers that bolt climbed it in the 80's (or something like that). Again after some photography we continued on to the Christmas Tree and the Tumbling Rock, a massive boulder so elegantly perched above the common route that its a fright to notice, it will fall one day once the weak ceiling bed that holds it gives way, but luckily it didnt fall on me. Once some photography brilliance was conducted by Amy in the chamber neaby, we exited the cave, puzzled by the route finding that we encountered on our journey.
Cagels Chasm was the chosen cave for the next day, four of us this time, Amy, Brian, Myself and a Brazilian man of whom I can't remember the name (for shame!), Cagels is a cave with multiple pit entrances, the largest at 185ft. The entrance of choice was Jeepsides, a 15ft drop to a 100ft pit, followed by a small horizontal stoop passage and another 60ft drop which landed us into the bottom of the main pit. The view was incredible, a perfectly round vertical shaft uniform for 185ft until a chamber at the bottom caused it to widen. We hung around for a bit, chatting with another caving group that had dropped the main pit before three of us set off deeper into the cave. Amy decided to stay behind due to back pain, unfortunately caused by an ill-prepared ledge attendant during the rescue course rehearsals whilst she was playing casualty in a stretcher. During our time exploring below the main pit, we encountered some very dodgy boulder chokes and a large chamber on the other side with an exceptionally unnerving boulder hanging from the wall above us. We decided that we'd spent enough time tempting fate and went back up to the main pit bottom.
Prior to entering the cave via Jeepsides, it was established with the other group that we'd do successive through trips, them descending the main pit and ascending through jeepsides and us vice-versa, however we noted their terrible rigging (using a rope only just long enough at the expense of rigging efficiency) before we went into Jeepsides. We voted the better exit was the way we came. Only after we surfaced and the other group left did a few of us tie two of our ropes together and descend the main pit for funsies before tandem ascending out (both on rope ascending simultaneously).
Sunday 2nd September was a day to remember (rhymey rhyme). Natural Well was the location, a 200ft deep pit in the middle of some woodlands just outside of Huntsville in Monte Sano State Park. The start went without a hitch, we rigged to a solid looking (but hollow) tree about 5m from the entrance and got geared up, during which I asked Brian whether he trusted the hollow deceivingly strong looking tree we'd anchored to. He assured me it would be fine, as long as it didnt get windy, and to my relief the air was calm so down I went into the pit. Whilst at the bottom (after checking for snakes) I radioed up to Brian so that he could descend, he wanted my weight on the end of the rope whilst he descended to simulate the extreme rope weight he'd experience on a very large drop (let's say.... El Cap?), so I weighted the rope, climbed a few feet and relaxed whilst he made his way down.
Once he'd reached me, we were originally inclined to explore some passage at the bottom but since it seemed to have started raining we thought better to ascend out. After a short while of ascending a noise was echoing down the huge pit, not recognising it I didn't think much of it until a voice came over the radio. It was Amy at the surface, "Hey guys, the Tornado siren's been going off for a minute or so up here". Surprised by the situation I found mysef in, I asked her to repeat, to which she explained that she needed somewhere to hide as the wind was picking up significantly. Brian gave her instructions on a neaby crevace whilst we decided what to do stuck on rope, ascending was the chosen option, since to go down we'd have had to changeover to rappel plus being down the pit and losing our exit rope/anchor would suck. Our very quick ascent was a clear sign of our eagerness to not be on rope if the tornado decided to play games so we were at the surface in no time, de-rigging and packing our stuff to get out of the woods.
Soon enough we were in the car heading back to Huntsville, listening to the weather channel with sirens going off all around us. The "hotspot" for tornado touchdown was basically where we needed to go through so the journey didnt take long before it got fun. Rain harrowing down reducing visibility to an entire fuck-all, high winds and greeny-yellow sky colour was enough, but the creepy rotation within the lower cloud levels made me wonder just how much longer it would stay "fun" for. The storm was very fast moving, approx 30-40mph, so it quickly passed over what with us driving away at the same time in the opposing direction. Once back at the house, it was time to feet-up and relax and contemplate the amusing nature the day had shown us.
Monday 3rd September 2012, the U.S. Labor Day public holiday. This meant Brian was off work and ready to cave! Unfortunately the day was a wet one, so the previous plan of the impressive Neversink pit went to shit. The new plan was one I was a bit dubious of a first but the description sounded better than I assumed. It was Cathedral Caverns show cave. I'm generally not a fan of show caves, the commercialisation of a natural wonder, concreting of the floors and alteration of passage and chambers causing irrepairable damage to thousands of (if not more) years of natural formations and beauty. Fortunately Cathedral was a better example of a commercial cave, with the only real modification being a concrete walkway throughout its length and some minor dynamiting of some restrictive passageway (the dynamiting was needed work anyway for efficient exploration). It holds several records as far as show caves go, including largest entrance, largest flowstone wall and largest stalactite/stalagmite column aptly named "Goliath" (very impressive), it also holds a beautiful grotto of calcite columns towards the back of the cave, causing it to look like a cathedral giving the cave its name. Overall the day was a big success and I was very happy to have gone there.
Cathedral Caverns unfortunately marked the end of my time here in TAG with Amy and Brian, who have been excellent hosts for the past 12 days. I hope to see them again next year maybe and get some bigger pits done, maybe Surprise Pit in the Fern Cave system at 404ft.
All pictures in this post are property of Amy Hinkle (Sunguramy), more pictures through the link at the top of this post or via my facebook if we're friends at http://www.facebook.com/joshbratchley.
Now to Utah!!
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