Main Drain Cave

August 4-5 2006 - Duane McCully

Trip Leader: Brandon Kowallis On Trip: Brandon Kowallis, Thorpe Cox, Duane McCully This trip was originally supposed to happen a day earlier but I ended up working almost all night the night before. Therefore, we hiked all of the gear and ropes to the entrance and Brandon rigged the entrance drop on 8/4. We also went through Snowcone Cave on the way back down. Saturday morning Thorpe joined us at Tony Grove and we headed up to the cave. The main purpose of this trip was to get the cave rigged and to shoot some video. Immediately after the doing the entrance drop, aka Deception Pit (270') and Leaky Faucet PIt (~230') one runs into many areas worthy of photography and videography. In fact, this is the area where Brandon's NSS cover photo of cave pearls was taken. We spent an hour or so shooting video in this area. Lighting for this undertaking was aided by Brandon's one million candlepower spotlight. The only other task that we wanted to accomplish was to install a new rope for Kilo Pit. We headed down to Frayed Knot Pit (~250'). At this point it was already decided that Thorpe would head back at this point. After watching Brandon rig the drop (with the rope that had been left there from last year), I ultimately decided that I would not go down. My body was sending me a number of signals all of which were bad. So Brandon dropped down Frayed Knot and left the Kilo Pit rope at the bottom to be installed on another trip. At this point we headed out. Brandon went ahead of me so he could shoot some video of me climbing out of the entrance. On the hike back to the car we also shot some video of the wildflowers in the meadow. And as far as feeling in sort of a funk all weekend, I'm sure working all night was not helpful. By the time I got home I was working on a full-blown sore throat and as I write this I see that my body will spend the next few days trying to fight, hopefully successfully, a summer cold. The politics and general interest level in Main Drain is way down from last year. That is not to say that the politics are non-existant. It would now appear that anyone who is fit and technically competent should be able to get themselves on a trip.