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NEWRIVER
Joe Howell and Bob Woody in new River Cave, Va, 1955. Photo by D. Anderson |
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In New River Cave one weekend, I was caving with Ed DesRoches and some others. Every rock we stuck our head under had half a dozen footprints under it. We got back past the waterfall and were sitting there re-carbiding next to a fissure. Ed said, "I feel a draft." I gave him some smart-alecky answer like, "Don't catch a cold." Then we realized what he had said, and we got to looking, and sure enough, there was a breeze coming out of this little fissure. We got to hacking the chert out; Ed was too big to get through, but I made it through and crawled back into this doggoned maze. All of this was breakdown room, breakdown blocks with sand all over them. Got back there and my light played out almost, just a little tip o' light, couldn't find my tracks out, bit panicky before I did find my way out. I went back, and told Ed that we had made a new discovery.
We went back to Blacksburg that evening, dark when we got there, and stopped by Joe Lawrence's to tell him about it. Joe had dinner guests. But he jumped up, threw open his closet, grabbed his cave gear, and said, "Let's go." He left his wife sitting there with her mouth open, and the guests sitting around.
We went back to the cave. Joe and myself were the only ones who could get through. I was tired. I went to sleep. Joe was down there poking around in the room trying to find his way out, further into the cave. When I woke up I had forgotten who I was and where I was. I couldn't hear anything, couldn't see anything, all was just this black numbness. Just through sheer reasoning I had to figure out who I was and what I was going to do. What I did was to really holler. I got an answer from Joe!
I think Adam Chou was the one who found his way through that breakdown room into the upper section of the stream there. Quite a bit of discovery there.
I went back there during an early Virginia Region meeting with a bunch of student cavers. They got way back in there, and I kept telling them we had to turn around because we were getting low on supplies. Well, I finally got them turned around. One by one their lights ran out of carbide. I think I was down to my flashlight. We caught up to another group before we got out of the cave. I think we were down to six men and two lights when we caught the other group and got some carbide from them. That was a real wild trip.
I did one hair raising trip to New River Cavewith Dr. Murray and Ed DesRoches. Dr. Murray wanted to cross the waterfall. I don't know why. Getting there and looking at it, I don't know why he wanted to cross it. Easy enough to get up and go around up at the top. But we went up, and I believe Dr. Murray went fingers and toes right across the face of the waterfall pit and into a passage on the other side. I tell you if I hadn't been in the middle of the safety line, I never would have gotten across. Ed was tail man and he got across. We caved up there in a lot of rotten breakdown. The stream up above there shows from temperature readings that it had been on the surface not so long ago. Somebody had been up there fairly close to the virgin areas we were in. You could see these white dots leading ahead of you. Hadn't been but one man up there as far as we could tell. But it wasn't too hard to get up there by going around. But the thing is Dr. Murray can see across a room with a lot of people and he will brighten up, holler and wave and come running and shake my hand and call me by name. He did that at one of the Virginia Region meetings. I was talking to my sister Mary Virginia. Dr. Murray looked at me, greeted me, and said, "Who is the young lady?" My sister stood back and looked at him and said, "Why Dr. Murray, I've just sat through a whole quarter of your classes" but he really remembered the fellow that was holding that safety line.
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next--Endless Caverns, pg197
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