The pictures are from two separate grotto trips to Organ Cave.

The trip report is from a third Organ trip. 

Trip Report and photos

By Doug McCarty

     We didn't have a camera with us on this December 2002 commercial entrance to Lipps entrance through trip, but it was noteworthy, from my point of view, anyway. 

    The people on the trip were Grant Riffle, Jason Thomas, Alan Carpenter, Chris Carpenter and myself. I was the defacto trip leader--a fact that seemed to come up on several occasions and bite me on the butt. I was leading the way because I, ahem, knew where I was going. We headed through the 1812 Room to the Gypsum Passage and made a left at the Throne Room to go down to the Waterfall Room. We smelled marijuana smoke on several occasions, but never did figure out for sure who was smoking it. We ran into a small group ahead of us, but they were trying to figure out where the smell was coming from too. After we left the Waterfall Room we didn't smell it again. 

    Coming back north from the Waterfall Room, we took a side trip to the Revak Room and then continued on a standard through trip path--up to the Sand Room, up through Ascending Way, up through the Handley Silo into the Handley Room. Here is where things began to go slightly awry. I couldn't identify which of several small passages leading south out of the Left Hand Passage was the Breezeway. Hmmm. Jason tried one lead and I tried another. We were both wrong. Mine was a downhill belly crawl that got lower and lower and lower. I had to wriggle my way back out uphill. We tried a few other ways as well. After about an hour of foolishness we finally found the Breezeway right where it was supposed to be. 

     At the other end of the Breezeway, while the rest of the party made a side trip to the Discovery Passage, Alan and I headed down a crawlway to nowhere. After we backed out and the others had returned, we all went down Jones Canyon and up Skid Row to the Lipps Maze. As we were going up Skid Row I made the mistake of saying, "Shucks, we're almost there now". What I meant was that we were two thirds of the way to the Lipps Entrance from the Main Entrance, and even closer, proportionally, if you factored in the fact that we had gone down to the Waterfall Room and back. It was unfortunately interpreted as meaning that the Lipps Entrance was just around the next bend. We got through the Lipps Maze and the Rehajo Connecter fairly quickly, but I was getting flack from all sides about having mislocated the Breezeway and our being "almost there". 

     As I was busy defending myself from the ongoing verbal assaults, I suddenly realized that we were going downstream. Downstream? Uh Oh. We weren't supposed to be going downstream. It is normally no big thing to momentarily walk past where you were supposed to go, and I knew where we were, but I also knew these guys wouldn't let it rest. They didn't. We turned around and went up the right way, but I caught more flack. What kind of trip leader was I? I had misremembered where the Breezeway came into the Left Hand Passage. I had led Alan down a crawl to nowhere. I had said we were "almost there" when we were only two thirds of the way to the Lipps Entrance. I had missed an obvious turnoff up the Lipps Stream Passage and so forth and so on. Actually, they were just giving me a hard time just to give me a hard time. Lesson learned: If you make yourself into a target you will be shot at.