TAG August 26-28, 2005

 Tymme showed up at my house on Thursday night. After looking at pictures and cave locations we headed to bed around midnight. The next morning I over slept by at least 30mins. I got up at 7:30 thanks to Chris Bells call. He arrived shortly after I got up.

 I felt like I was under packing for the trip. The plan was for everyone to cram into Brian Welp’s Trail Blazer so I was forced to pack light. Brian arrived around 8:30. Soon we had Tymme packing gear. He somehow got all the gear to fit without using the toper. As a backup for the fester to follow we packed the canvas topper just to be on the safe side. After dropping off the bridge radio frequency application at the post office and a quick stop for Donuts and gas we headed south. The sunny weather quickly turned wet. We drove threw nasty down pours as we passed into Tennessee. I surrendered control of the Trail Blazer once we hit Tennessee. Tymme took over as we headed down I-24 towards Chattanooga. 

 We arrived in Chattanooga just in time for rush hour. We had stop and go traffic for about 30 minutes as we made our way to On Rope 1. Once at On Rope 1 we browsed like 4 kids in a candy shop. I purchased a 1,200ft rope for bridge day. Ouch! After struggling to get the spool outside Brian got it into the back seat. We paid for our purchases and talked with the guys at On Rope about caves and a local microbrewery before heading downtown to quench our thirst.  

 After weaving threw the city we arrived at Market and Broad streets downtown. Soon we had found a parking spot and were mingling amongst several hundred if not in the thousands of bikers. We stopped at the Big River Brewing Company for dinner. The wait was over an hour so we signed in and tried our luck at the bar. Within ten minutes I spotted a table and we snagged it. Our waitress was funny and man she was nice. She was thin build with dark hair and a sarcastic attitude. Tymme mentioned the 1,200ft rope and she suggest a local pace that specialized in bondage. We all had pizza for dinner except for Brian who enjoyed a pasta dish. We drank a couple pitchers of Sweet Magnolia. It was a dark beer with a rich sweet flavor. No bitterness at all. It was really good. I enjoyed several glasses myself. After dinner we paid and walked out the door. I realized I left my camera and ran back in to grab it. I was lucking it was still there.

 We drove down to Lafayette where we stopped at a Wal-Mart.  We got the essentials bananas, gloves, candy bars and batteries. Then we headed off to Blue Hole which is the resurgence for Ellisons. We would camp there for the night.

 Soon we arrived at Blue Hole and set up camp. The consensus was to sleep before doing the cave. Everyone headed off to bed. Several bad jokes where made about the condoms I left in my shaving kit before we heading to bed. Chris at least could rest in comfort that they where lubricated.  Ok, I’ll stop there.

 After sleeping for about an hour I woke up and was wide awake for the next hour or so. I called Kari and chatted with her for a while. I was really tempted to go rig the pit. The down side to my plan was carrying all the stuff I needed. I finally gave up and went to bed for just over an hour when the reds showed up.

 The sound for cars moving down the road woke me. I heard skidding and gravel flying as they ground to a stop. “Hey, Baby you want a beer!” “Damn”, I thought to myself as they yelled at each other for a while. I guess there beer ran out or they lost interest in throwing cans into Blue Hole because they left. The nice guy even said by. “By all where leaving now”.

 The next morning we awoke up around 6am to get an early start. We cooked oatmeal for breakfast and made some coffee with Brian’s peculating coffee pot. I spent the next several minutes enjoying the word peculate. Soon we got our gear together and headed up the hill. I can only assume one of two things has happened since I visited the cave last time.

 Option 1: The Mountain has been greatly reduce in size

Option 2: The heat got to me and I just hiked in a stupor 

Option 3: I’m in better shape

 I guess it must be option number three because it sill looked really big and I can recalled the walk. However, it was still a long walk up the hill but not the death march that I remembered from past trips. During my first visit to the cave I and several friends and failed to listen when Ryan Moran stated “Don’t forget anything this is a walk I wouldn’t want to do more than once.” That day Ryan ended up carrying all the rope for the cave trip up the hill for us as we struggled just getting to the cave.

 We made good time up the hill. Tymme was the hero and carried Biggens my 760ft rope up the mountain for us. I in turn carried Tymme’s gear which I’m still convinced I got the better deal. At the top we stopped for a few minutes to get our thing together. I dropped down the short climb down into the entrance. Then I was passed Biggens and started down the stream passage towards the Warm-Up Pit.  The stream passage reminds me of something that Disney would fabricate with its nearly square shape. Chris was soon able to catch up with me was I struggled down the passage with Biggens. The rest of the crew caught up with us right as we reached the warm up. We rigged Brains peace of Petzl rope and made the drop. I carried Biggens down tethered under me and then pressed on towards Fantastic. We climbed the nuisance dropped before dragging Biggens up the drop. From the top of the drop we continued for scrambling over beak down as we approached Fantastic from the attic rig. Soon we were all at the pit. Everyone’s eye grew wide as they started down the massive 586ft pit.  I went around the traverse first followed by Biggens and then the rest of the crew.

 We rigged up Biggens and then Tymme was the first to go down. It took what seemed like forever for him to say off rope. While Tymme was descending I gave Brain and Chris several sarcastic words of encouragement. At some point Chris declared he was happy staying at the top to conserve time. I promptly told him to forget his bad idea in a more colorful manor. Brain went down next. He had all types of trouble on the lip. Once he cleared the lip it took him along time to get to bottom. Soon they were both on there way backup the rope. They managed to frog up the pit in a little under an hour. It seemed like a long time. Chris and I took several small cat naps while they climbed. If they hadn’t chatted the whole time I might have been able to sleep a little better. Next Chris when down. Once again it took forever to reach to the bottom. I followed. Soon I realized what was taking so long. The rope was not repelling well at all.  Even with just 4 bars I would have to pull myself down the rope for several feet until the bottom would drop out and I would drop like a rock. This cycle repeated itself about every 75ft on the way down. It was really getting old when it finally stopped during the last 100ft of the pit.

 At the bottom I bitched about the Highline ropes performance. After walking around for a few minutes I got back on rope and started to climb back out. I got about 25ft off the ground when Chris yelled hey, wait on me. I stopped climbing while he got on rope. Soon he had pulled me almost all the way back down to the floor. I started climbing 25 cycles on my frog then resting while Chris climbed back up to me. This worked well for a while. Soon as we passed the 200ft mark Chris started to get tired. The bounce on the rope was concerning to him.  I tried to reassure him that the bounce was a normal part of a long rope stretching out. Soon though, the rope started to spin violently when I would start to climbed. On several occasionally I made entire 360’s. Although, Chris how was climbing below me never had this problem, it really scared the shit out of me the first couple of times. I just keep on climbing reassuring Chris that he would make it. We talked about getting a case of Heineken and seeing our girl friends if we made it out.  Soon he declared he enjoyed coming but he wasn’t going to come back for a long time. I can’t say I blame the guy. Frogging a 586ft pit isn’t easy. Add to that the low viability and a water fall makes it all the more challenging. Somewhere in the middle I stopped and look up and all I could see was the rope disappearing into the darkness while below me all I could see was Chris surrounded by blackness. The fog that enveloped the middle section of the pit made the walls difficult if not impossible to see adding to the effect. Soon we were at the top of the pit. The lip was not the easiest thing to get over with all the weight pulling down on the rope.

 After we dirigging I volunteered Brain to carry the rope back to out of the cave.  I ended up helping him carried back to the nuisance drop were I lowered the rope to Brian and Chris. From there on they took it out of the cave. Sorry guys Tymme already got the hero award. Tymme and I waited on the Biggens to be hauled up the Warm-UP Pit then we climbed up and derigged and exited the cave. Back at the surface we took a couple of pictures before heading back down the mountain.

 At the bottom we all got into Blue Hole at least partially in anyway. The water was really cold compared to the warm August evening weather so typical of Georgia. I left the passenger side door open to Brain’s car so a nice passers by closed it and left a not telling us not to leave the car open.  Soon we changed clothes took down our tents and headed off to Scottsboro Mt.

 One the way over we stopped at Pizza Hut for dinner. It was really good. Our eyes had deceived us and we ordered too much food. Everyone in the group looked a little tired. I wanted some beer but no one else seemed interested. We got a carry out box and headed out. Soon we arrived at Scottsboro Mt. the place was nearly full.

 We pitched camp and went to bed. I slept like rock. The next morning we awoke before 7:30 and packed up our stuff. We headed down to Western Sizzlen where we ate a $4.35 breakfast buffet. Then we headed north or east as the sign says up US 72 in route to Sawmill Well. Tymme had some GPS issues while I noticed that the GPS point was not realistic. The pit according to our point was 8 mile from the owner’s home. After several tries at adjusting the point we fixed the problem. Charley gave us permission we parked at a large gravel pile about a quarter mile from Sawmill Well. The walk wasn’t bad as we followed logging roads all the way to the cave. I carried the rope and my camera gear as I figured I needed the exercise. Towards the end I was getting over heated but I made it to ok.

 Soon we rigged to a large tree on the North side of the pit. A large elephant path led down slope into the pit.  The pit was really nice. From the top there was a ledge that looked nasty but in reality it wasn’t.  Form there the pit belled out towards the bottom. We all bounced the pit. I did it twice for the exercise and to be able to say I did 1,000ft of vertical. Ok, so the second time I bounced the pit I used my ropewalker but that doesn’t mean much. After I climbed back out we derigged and headed back to the cars. We arrived back in Evansville at 6:30pm.

 Brandon

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