Tony Grove Tour

October 7-8 2005 - Duane McCully

On Trip: Robert Cranney, Duane McCully My original plan earlier in the week had been to take Friday off and go to Main Drain with Brandon Kowallis. However, that plan fell through and I ended up going up with Rob on Friday night. We ran into Jon Jasper and Brandon at the Tony Grove lower campground. They had spent the day derigging the lower drops in Main Drain. The next morning Jon and Brandon headed off to do some video in BRG cave while Rob and I decided to familiarize ourselves with some of the other pits. We looked Pit #6, Pit #8, and Woodpecker Pit and then headed over to the Devil's Den area. On the way we GPSed another karst feature. We dropped Devil's Den and then went to Twin Sinks. The way we rigged it my 120' rope was just long enough. When I yelled up to Rob to see if he was coming down he said I should probably just come back up. Turns out that it had started to snow. We then took a quick peek at GMZ and headed for the cars. Brandon and Jon told us that the slope below BRG Cave had just enough snow on it that it was unsafe to climb. So they went and surveyed two other caves. Although we got to the parking lot first, Brandon and Jon ended up getting home before we did because we kicked back and relaxed in Logan. This was the first in-cave use of my SRTE D1a descender. It performed very well. I can't generally recommend it because the cost is so high but now that I have it I'm liking it.