Last Minute Nutty Putty Trip

Sunday, March 12th 2006 - James Henry

Location: Nutty Putty Cave Trip Leader: James Henry On Trip: Tamie Jensen, Richard Thomson, James Henry My friend Rich is originally from Delaware, and had been caving in West Virginia. Rich is indirectly responsible for my getting into caving. He hasn't been caving since he moved out here, so I decided to take him. I got up on Sunday morning, grabbed my gear, and went over to Rich's house. We hopped into his Saturn Vue, and headed south. We had to meet Tamie in Lehi at 9:30, and we made good time getting to the Crossroads. The drive out to the cave was pretty uneventful, and we listened to The Who at too high of a volume, and not a spec of snow on the ground, and blue skies. We followed Tamie through the fence, and the 'back' way to the cave. We parked below the cave, and walked up to the entrance. Someone's poted a sign near the cave entrance, and the register pedestal and box has been removed. There was a LARGE boulder in the entrance of the cave. This didn't hinder getting in or out of the cave, but it is evident that this was not in place previously, and it is too large to have been pushed through the entrance. I think this boulder may have fallen out of the roof of the entrance 'foyer'. This was the first time I had been to the cave when the entrance had very little water in it. There was a strong smell of urine, but I pushed through, and got into the cave, followed by Rich. We went down the Big Slide, and had some fun down in the birth canal. Tamie and I crawled up into the Aorta Crawl, but apparantly Rich's glasses kept fogging up on him, so he decided to stay behind. Tamie and I got to the place where the side passage takes off from the Aorta crawl, and decided to turn around. We crawled back out, then exited the Birth Canal head first per tradition (well, my tradition). Climbing back up the big slide, where the second rope was anchored, I noticed another rope wrapped around a rock, and improperly being used to 'back up' the bolt that is in place. Looking at the loose, rope on rope contact, I knew this was an accident waiting to happen, so I removed the rope. I took the rope home, and disected it. It's a hardware store rope. No ribbon, and what looked like chopped up carpet fibers as the core.... With that taken care of, we decided to go to the end of The Maze section. We crawled, and twisted through. Tamie kept looking for the Barbie doll, as we made our way to the back of the cave. We sat in the back most room, chatting for a while, then we decided to go out. I took the lead, and at one point, Tamie and Rich looked lost, and asked me if I knew what I was doing. I looked at them and said "I'm Caving, and I'm having a great time!" We all got a good chuckle out of that and I proceeded to take them back out. Crawling out of the cave, we noticed that the weather had changed a bit. There was about 2-3" of fresh snow on the ground... We drove out with nary a problem. On the way back, we stopped at Family Tree restaurant, and had a burger. Rich was telling me that the caves he was used to were massive in comparison. Nutty Putty to us is a pretty good sized cave, but to him, it was a little 'dinkey'. All in all, an enjoyable trip.