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Somehow or other I figured it could be done; it didn't seem to be that big a thing. I had been rappelling before, and had made my rappel pads from one of my mother's old purses. You take the purse, split it down the middle with the handles on either side and take all the metal out of it. Then put it around your leg, tie the handles together, and run the rope under it, over your shoulder, and you get your rappel pad.
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To make a long story short, the next trip found us at the top of the Rappel well. They made me carry the rope all the way in there. They said, "if you're going, to do it, you're going to carry the rope." I didn't mind a bit. Earl did make me use a safety line or this first rappel. He carried another rope in which we thought was a 200-footer, but later turned out to be 400 feet. I was wrestling about 600 feet of rope through that cave, somehow all braided up, most of the way. So we rigged it. So the day I made the big rappel, Tom McDaniels and Ed DesRochers had gone on down the Staircase, and were waiting on the bottom to make sure that the rope was on the bottom. The one thing they cautioned me about was not to look down. They said, "Be sure you don't look down if look down and see us, you'll die of a heart attack; you'II just pass out and die." So I went down. They had me so shook up that I sort of just inched down the rope. I stared straight at the wall, and never did look down until I touched the floor. They really had me shook up. But it really didn't turn out so bad; I realized it was a lot of fun, and they had just sort of psyched me out. They believed that I might get hurt, so they weren't in the wrong or anything.
Trip after trip began into Newberry. Earl moved out of town again, and there I was caving with the people at VPI. I got me a motorcycle and would go up there to go caving. There was one big trip before Earl left. Let's see; there was Joe Lawrence, Ed DesRochers. Earl, Roy Charlton and I. We camped in the cave for four days. It was so blooming cold outside you couldn't camp outside, so we camped on the sixty foot level or whatever you want to call it. continued
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Glen Davisbelaying carolyn Lewis out of Newberriy's entrance, VA.s Photo by R. E. Clark. |
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