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Maxwelton Sinks
Jan. 7, 2012
By
Larry Sowers

James River Grotto Trip Report

 

Trip participants: Larry Sowers, Harry Sowers, and Chuck Waller

This was our first trip back to Maxwelton since this past summer. We wanted to go beyond our last stopping point. (See last report.)

We were able to find the pre-rigged rope drop we had missed earlier. We also rigged the drop with a ladder in order to rappel down the rope and climbup the ladder. We wanted to see if we could do this in an efficient manner if we had a larger group. On one trip, we had 15 cavers, making it very difficult to do any vertical work because of the time involved in getting this large group down and up any drops. Chuck, Harry, and I rappelled down the 30 ft. pit and climbed the cable ladder out. We also explored passages beyond and spent a total of about 5 hours in the cave. It's probably the safest trip I ever made because we used double bolts for the rope and ladder and belayed as well! This is great for safety but time consuming. The trip would have been much longer if we had a much larger group.

The second problem is that we have many who have not done any or very little vertical. Hopefully we can discuss some of these things at our next grotto meeting the last Tues. of Jan.

Trip report submitted by Larry Sowers