next--Tory Cave
articles index
|Names.
|Photos index
|Cave index
|Places and Grottos.
VAR home page
|
previous--Cass prt 3
next--Tory Cave
articles index
|Names.
|Photos index
|Cave index
|Places and Grottos.
VAR home page
|
R.E. Whitmore
"We could put rocks under the wheels."
"Never mind. We've passed it already. Say, there's a gravel overlook up there. And it's level."
"Not wide enough. A truck could hit us and knock us over the edge."
"Shit! That'd be terrible. Let's look awhile longer."
"Look. There's a gate going up into a field. We could pull up to the gate and put rocks underneath the wheels."
"Yeah. Looks good."
Ed eased the beetle up the narrow rut to the gate and stopped. Beyond the gate was a pasture. Ed shut down the lights and the engine and the field was replaced by overwhelming darkness and silence. I slid down into the seat and closed my eyes while my brain continued to slide downward into the velvety void. Into the dark. The dark.
Are you afraid of The Dark? Like, "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs"? Or, The Dark at the end of your rope? When "The Dark" is supposed to be something to fear, why then do you suppose some fools rush headlong into it? Don't they realize that's where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth? The abode of the unknown?
Perhaps they "know" The Dark. Lot "knew" his daughters, and in a cave at that. Perhaps the unknown is better than the known. Boredom we know. Drudgery we know. But I'm also pretty certain that a rope extends downward to the bottom of a pit, and that when I get there it won't be dark anymore.
So with this reinforced faith I snapped a single brake bar onto the virgin manila and plummeted downward in my fishbowl of self contained light. Massive slabs of breakdown loomed into view, then a pile of kinked rope, then I was on the bottom.
I would like to file the following complaint about new Montgomery Ward manila. it is slicker'n greased cat shit. The rope had a glossy finish, as if it had been lacquered. I'm not sure if this finish had anything to do with the slickness or not, but those were the two main differences I noticed between this and other ropes. Above I could see Ed's light beam sweep and flash as he maneuvered into position at the top of the rope. A dust deluge signalled his departure from the ledge. His lamp came into full view as it bore down upon me. I was seized by a momentary rush of trepidation. He was coming down much too fast! Whitt! I'm falling! Stop me! Falling!" Panic laced his shouts and I dived headlong for the rope. No time to wrap it around me. I grabbed and swung out over the pool. When my feet touched the floor again I looked up and read the word "Vibram only inches away from my face. My arms were to ache for days to come.
Rick was even skinnier than I was, so he had no trouble with the rope per se, but with no hat to, hang his lamp on he had to improvise a bracket. We did this by tying the lamp to his leg just below his knee with an extra length of sling, which worked out fine.
The remainder of the trip through the cave was relatively uneventful, except for the picture taking episode. All of mine (and Ed's too, as I recall) came out foggy and poorly focused, except for the multiple-flash fiascos which turned out totally blank. I was back in my 127 Ektacolor days before I got married and inherited a 35mm camera. The 127 was my sisters. I still have it, too, plus two instamatics and a Polaroid, compliments of sundry people I've worked for. So where was I?
Ah, yes. We saw the end of the cave and got out eight or nine hours with no difficulties. Total time for all three of us to prusik out was less than one hour, but of course we had sobered up considerably by then. So upon arriving back at the car we sat about immediately to remedy our dried-out situation with what few beers were left in the cooler. Following this and the normal piddling around that usually takes place outside a cave we turned our attention to what proved to be the most arduous portion of the entire episode -- the trip home.
Home is where you find it, goes an old misquote. At the moment, home is a cold pasture by a lonely strip of West Virginia highway. And with the heater off, its gawdawful cold. And mostly dark, except for a pinpoint of light that keeps bouncing and flickering up ahead.
"Ed
"Shriek! Yowl We're off the road! Oh shit, oh dear ... " Ed panics and clutches at the wheel.
"Wake up, Ed. Look, there's a light coming. We've got to get out of here."
"Oh, damn! They'll shoot us. They'll kill us all."
Fumble. Find the key. Start the engine.
"Hurry, Ed. It's getting closer. They're almost here."
, |
"Oh...oh...I'm trying... there, it started...tell them don't shoot..."
Back onto the pavement. Roar off down the highway. it's probably just as well we'll never know who or what that light was.
I can't begin to tell you how paranoid we would have been if we had actually stolen a Cass sign. But after taking forty-five minutes to find our way from the entrance back onto the road... yeah, that's right. For fortyfive minutes we drove around in cow pastures looking for the way out. At one point Ed had Rick and I get out and push sideways on the car to keep it from turning over. Then after we finally got back onto the road, it wasn't until it changed to a hog path with barely room to turn around that we realized we had gone in the wrong direction.
"Forget the Cass sign. They'll know for sure cavers took it. We've gotta think about getting home."
"Yeah. And if it takes us an hour to get to Cass, how long will it take us to get to Bleaksburg?"
Rick grinned from the back seat as he popped another beer, "We'll make it".
The VW strained at the last hill. Jagged, frost-rimmed curves blurred in and out of view. Gray mist hung in the trees. Aardvarks pranced along the center line. Another mountaintop ... sign says "Brush" ... elevation something. Then sunlight poured in through the windshield, and Rick stirred in the back seat, "See? I knew we'd make it."
In a letter dated November 26, 1974, Earl Geil, formerly a member of the UVA Grotto, related one of many tales concerning the Nicholson brothers (whose father, Ike, discovered Butler Cave. Earl writes: "Although I never witnessed their descent, the brothers are said to have made a free-fall rappel from the Belay Loft of Cass Cave. According to my sources, only the last eighty feet of the leap had a controlled belay; the first 100 feet was a literal jump!"
|
previous--Cass prt 3
next--Tory Cave
articles index
|Names.
|Photos index
|Cave index
|Places and Grottos.
VAR home page
|