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We'll turn
back now
By: Patrick O'Diam
From the September 2004 Flowstone
"Do you guys ever get to a point where you say, 'Okay, this
is it. We'll turn back now.'?" asked Tom as he looked up to the top of a
particularly difficult and muddy climb he was about to ascend. His long silence
was finally broken as the reality of where he really was began to sink in.
"Well, sure, we say that sometimes," Micah responded, but
then added with a laugh, "but we rarely listen to ourselves when we say that.
We keep going anyways."
"That is what I was starting to think," Tom said in a quiet
tone.
Over the past two months, I have done more caving than I
have done for the last two years put together. David kept asking for a trip
report. From Limrock Blowing to Ledbetter Saltpeter, and from hikes in the
Bankhead Forest to hanging from a pulley in my backyard, I just didn't have
anything that sparked my writing desire. It was true that I had been on quite a
few trips, but they were surrounded by normal events. The most unusual things
about the trips were the large numbers of ticks and rattlers and other snakes I
kept encountering. After pushing the passages in Valhalla for an hour or so, I
knew I finally had the events I had been looking for in order to take the time
to put the events down on paper. I had also hoped this would get David off my
back about the trip report I had been promising him for months.
On June 4th, I had taken Dr. Tom Oliver to
Neversink for his first taste of vertical caving. He seemed to really enjoy the
experience, and thus started weekly cave trips that each offered a unique
experience. We visited War Eagle the following week and enjoyed the borehole
passages and the beautiful formations. Next, it was time to see how Tom would
do with the exposure of Painted Bluff overlooking the Tennessee River. He
seemed to really be enjoying himself, so Micah and I decided to turn it up a
notch or two.
About 7:30 on the morning of June 21, Micah, Tom, and I
left from my house and headed for Valhalla. Upon arriving and spreading a bag
of mulch around the top of the pit, we dropped a rope and Micah went down to
offer a belay for Tom. The day reminded me of my first experience at Valhalla
back in the early '90s; the weather was warm, there were large, puffy, white
clouds in the sky, and bright beams of sunlight shown down into the pit. From
the first time I visited the pit, I fell in love with it and I returned numerous
times before its closing. I am so grateful to the SCCi for all their work in
obtaining and reopening pits like Neversink and this one. The marker of the two
boys that lost their lives when a large rock fell at the bottom of the pit still
stands at the top as a reminder of the dangers that are involved with the
sport.
As Tom rigged into the rope, I instructed him over the lip
and watched him disappear into the pit somewhat quicker than I had expected.
After some adjustments under the lip, I listened to the rope sing as he dropped
the 227 feet to the floor. I rigged into the rope and made it to the bottom
where we left our gear and proceeded into the cave. On a previous trip, Glenn
Ledbetter, Micah and I had tried to find the Mega Dome, but did not have a map
with us. I'm not for sure where we ended up, but I know we were not close to
the Mega Dome. This day, armed with a map, we continued into the cave only to
quickly realize we kept ending up in the same room, time after time. I am sure
Tom was doubting our caving ability; here we are, not even 10 minutes into the
cave, and we find ourselves going in circles.
After climbing up into another passage, we finally
determined we were back on the right track and continued through some crawls.
This was the first time that Tom had experienced tight spaces in a cave and was
unsure about it at first, but started taking a liking to it in a snug chimney
passage. After consulting the map several times and finding an interesting
spiral formation (yes, Harold, it really was spiral, but it didn't change
colors), we eventually found ourselves in a small room with seemingly no way on,
when some purple webbing was spotted going up one of the walls. Tom later told
that at this point he was thinking, "Okay, this is it. We'll turn back now." I
noticed how quiet he became as I walked over to the webbing and, aided by
Micah's back as a climbing brace, headed up the 17 foot climb. After about 10
feet, I had reached a difficult spot where I could not go out and over the
rock. Tom, still not a sound coming from his direction, was thinking, "Okay,
this is it. He can't make it any further. We'll turn back now." His eyes
became quite large as I followed Micah's suggestion to go down and try coming
back up through a tight crack in the rock. To Tom's horror, I made it up and he
decided he was not going to wimp out without trying. As he squeezed through the
crack, the rock was hugging his body tightly and made it difficult to move, but
he was able to worm his way up. Micah, still as wiry as ever, scurried up the
wall and pushed onward.
With Micah in the lead, he called back to us, "Hey, there's
a rope going down. Yall hang out there and let me go take a look."
Now, at this point, Tom was once again thinking, "Okay,
this is it. Surly this rope will be too tough to get down without a rack.
We'll turn back now."
It turned out the rope was knotted and dropped only about
15 feet. Micah returned to the bottom of the rope a few minutes later and said,
"You can come ahead. I found another rope going back up and I think we should
be able to climb it easily enough."
It was at this point, when we were at the bottom of the
next drop and looking at the rope and trying to find footholds to aide in our
climb, that Tom's thoughts finally exited through his mouth, saying, "Do you
guys ever get to a point where you say, 'Okay, this is it. We'll turn back
now.'?"
Micah's reply did not seem to comfort Tom very much, but
Tom was doing an excellent job keeping up with us we were going to push on as
long as he was willing. With the final climb, we crossed through the canyon
passage and climbed on up and down and up again and back down and finally heard
the splashing sounds of Rain Drop Falls.
As we entered the Mega Dome, standing at the bottom of this
200 foot void above us, a feeling of accomplishment and pride came over us all.
We had reached our goal for the day; we had achieved what we had set out to do.
We sat in the darkness for quite some time, listening to the dripping water and
contemplating the reality of where we were. In reality, we were only about 50
feet from the bottom of the pit where our rope waited, but the solid rock wall
prohibited us from it. We would have to return the way that we had come. We
had just reached the halfway point of our trip. I looked at Tom and smiled,
congratulated him for making it to this point, and told him, "Okay, Tom, we'll
turn back now."
Upon reaching the daylight at the bottom of the main pit,
Micah climbed first and then I attached to the rope and Tom climbed underneath.
This was Tom's first time to climb tandem and he pushed me up the rope. I
thought after the events of the day, he would be tired and take a while to
climb, but he stayed right on my heels. With a meal at the Liberty, we
continued home and hung our muddy caving gear out to dry.
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