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Danger Below!
By: D.Drake
From the October 1998 Flowstone
"ROCK!!!"
Our worst nightmare was now underway.
A football-sized rock had become dislodged, on
it's own and was falling down a 232' pit of
unknown dimensions, with a caver on bottom.
Four harrowing seconds later the boom echoed
up the shaft filling the cavern with waves of
uncertainty. The next few seconds would be
critical!
Only moments earlier?, Jon Cammon,
Jonathan Upton, Patrick O'Diam and myself
were sitting on a wet, clay/mud, slope in a small
entrance room, having just slithered through the
tiny entrance opening to O'Hara Fare Well.
We were all aware of the inherent
danger associated with this pit as we sat
motionless on the slick mud mound "saftied"
into a handline so as to keep ourselves from
sliding down the 15 degree slope into the pit.
Our gear was 'binered' onto the line as well. The
simple fact was, if it wasn't attached to a rope it
was going down the pit. It was quite obvious
that the top of this pit was still undergoing a
metamorphosis. Large boulders, the size of
stoves sat perched on loose gravel, held in place
only by very conspicuous and unstable mud
supports. We were hoping and praying that a
thunderstorm didn't come rolling through while
we were in the cave, for it looked as If the next
"gulley washer" would completely transform the
room we were sitting in.
As the scenario continued to unfold,
Patrick was carefully and methodically rigging
in for descent. The important issue of
motionless behavior cannot be stressed enough.
Every movement sent something tumbling into
the black void. None of us had ever done the
pit, so we had no idea whether the pit remained
roughly the size of the small room we were in
or became a voluminous, dark void like so
many other TAG pits. We only knew that we
had 300 feet of rope in the pit and one fist-sized
rock or smaller, could slice it Like a machete.
Patrick softly worked his way to the
edge of the tight, canyon-type lip and slowly
lowered himself to begin the rappel. The walls
of this narrow opening were razor sharp. He
lowered himself to a gravel covered ledge 20-30
feet below the lip. A rope pad is highly
recommended at this ledge, however, keeping
the rope on the pad is very difficult. From here
the pit bells and becomes another beautiful
TAG specimen. A small stream that, during wet
weather, shoots a healthy column of water into
the cavern, enters the pit at about the ledge level
and cascades to the flat, rock strewn floor some
200 feet later. Rigging in for ascent is also done
very, very carefully so as to minimize the
chance of knocking some of the loose rock
from the ledge and also to try to keep the rope
on the pad.
The last glimpse we had of Patrick was
of him going over the lip. Two, still, quiet
minutes passed when suddenly a ten pound
rock released from somewhere to the right of
Cammon and tumbled off into the pit.
"ROCK", Jon screamed, it was all he could
do. "This could be tragic", I thought. The next
sound we heard was the echo from the rock
striking bottom. We waited breathlessly, for
what seemed like an eternity, for some type of
communication from below.
"Hey!!!!!!" came the much welcomed
response. "I'm O.K."
At that moment, a silent prayer of
thanks was offered I'm sure, by ah present.
Pat's climb was quick and careful and
his words as he "lipped" the pit are worth
repeating. "It's a beautiful pit but I don't want
anything to do with it ever again. I'm getting
out of here now! " I could tell he was greatly
upset. His hands shook as he speedily removed
his gear. The rock had slammed into the wall
only 20 feet above his head and had shattered,
spraying him with stone pieces in the process.
Jon and Jonathan. both equally unnerved,
opted for better judgment and exited the cave with Patrick
Being the idiot that I am, and displaying the sense God gave professional wrestlers, I bounced the pit.
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