Published
in Halliday, William R. (1959).
"
The story of the exploration
of
As in the case of nearly
every unplanned beginning, there are a few details of the 1950 fiasco which
cannot be reconciled. It seems quite clear, however, that it was in 1949 that
some high school boys stumbled across the obscure opening of the cave while
hiking in the
They returned to the cave
with friends of their own age, equipped with flashlights and ropes. They tied a
rope outside the cave entrance, and began to climb down along its length. Soon
they came to its end and had to return home to borrow more rope. In this way
they made several visits, advancing deeper and deeper into the cave. Finally,
on March 22, 1950, three of the young explorers came to a great pit leading
downward into the largest chamber they had yet found in the cave. It was not
quite vertical, and they had plenty of rope. One by one they slid down a
drop-off of more than 150 feet and continued exploring until they came to still
another pit and could go no farther.
Then came a problem. They
could not slide back up the rope. Nor could they climb up the slick, rotten
shale walls even with the aid of the rope. In fact, there was nothing they
could do except sit. They sat.
These audacious young
explorers had never been in any other wild cave. They had no training in
mountaineering and rockclimbing. They had no
information about cave-exploration techniques. They had unwittingly committed
every major blunder known to cavers with one exception, and this exception
saved them.
Originally there had been
five in the party. After a few minutes in the cave D. B. (Pete) McDonald and
Jerry Hansen, university students who were "guests" on this trip,
realized that the exploring party was wholly unprepared for such an
undertaking. They wanted nothing to do with it. Pete and Jerry waited while the
others went on.
Several hours passed. When
their friends were an hour overdue, the two became properly alarmed. They left
the cave and from the nearest house notified the office of the sheriff and the
boys' family.
Pete is an outspoken person.
His dramatic telephone report brought the sheriff and a crew of deputies at a
gallop. Almost before the sheriff arrived, however, a swarm of others had heard
of the boys' plight and had collected from nowhere. Sobbing parents, praying
clergymen, newspaper reporters, deputies, and mere bystanders were milling
about in the little glen just outside the cave entrance. No one had any
constructive suggestions. The sheriff himself was a portly man, and it is
doubtful that he could have entered the cave even had he been so inclined.
Except for James Lyon, brother of one of the boys trapped below, no one in the
crowd showed the slightest interest in being the first rescues to enter the
cave.
Hansen and McDonald were both
thoroughly fatigued by their recent exertions. Nevertheless, it was clearly up
to them whether the trio was to be left in the cave. Pete says that he was
seriously tempted. Anticipating this situation, however, Pete had called a rockclimbing friend of his, Allen W. Kesler,
as well as the sheriff. James Lyon, Pete and Allen re-entered the cave, and,
near exhaustion themselves, pulled the lost explorers to safety.
It was early in the morning
when they reached the surface. The rescuees were in
much better condition than the rescuers, and led the way out of the cave. They
were greeted triumphantly. "The Lord has provided!" exclaimed one of
the thankful parents.
From the narrow entrance came
a muffled, plaintively discordant response: "What about the rescue
party?"
What, indeed, of the rescue
party? The parents gave the credit to God and the newspapers gave the credit to
the sheriff. James Lyon went off with his brother, and Pete and Allen found
themselves quite alone, ignored by everyone. They began to laugh.
The
In the interval between these
two trips a group of ten local citizens, also without caving experience,
decided to find out if the tales told by the youngsters were true. Was there a
zoo-foot pit three thousand feet down in the mountain? Perhaps the cave might
be worth something as a tourist attraction.
The usual problem arose at
the jagged, narrow entrance. Charles Malmborg, the
titular leader, was one of several who were unable to squeeze through. Those
who could enter spent four and a half hours in the cave. Mr. Malmborg reported: "The men of our party crawled down
the twisted, tortuous passage for an estimated distance of from 1,500 to 2,000
feet; part of this was climbing vertical drops of 10 to 40 feet hand over hand
on a rope. When they arrived at the place where the boys had been trapped, they
found a sheer drop of over 100 feet ... Our advice is Keep Out." This they
filed as a written report for the staff of the
Jack Ehlers, spokesman for
the other explorers, in turn filed an indignant report of his own:
"Undoubtedly Mr. Malmborg's party never, reached the place where the boys
were stranded if they were only 2,000 feet in the cave. We used 50 feet of rope
to get down the 100-foot drop they speak about. The larger drop ... is some 200
feet high. . . ."
Nevertheless, it was the Malmborg report, forwarded to the N.S.S. by the Forest
Service, that first brought
Meanwhile a
"In conclusion, it is my
candid opinion that this cave has no scenic value, will not by any stretch of
the imagination meet National Park System standards, and is without a doubt the
most hazardous cave I have ever seen. If it were in a National Park Service
area, I would recommend that the entrance be blasted so no one could possibly
gain entrance to it. The inscription above the entrance: `Fool's Cave' is a
justifiable description."
The Salt Lake Grotto of the
N.S.S. was organized in September, 1952. Less than a month later four of us
obtained permission from the Forest Service to see just exactly what this
Fool's Cave was. We knew that no one could crawl down 1,500 feet of cave and
back up again in four and a half hours, much less the two miles in nine hours
reported by the Lyon-Ehlers party. Still, there must be something there, and it
was our job to find out what it was.
Our party included Bob
Kennedy, a
"How in the world will
we ever describe this entrance?" was my irrelevant thought when we topped
the ridge and descended the gully to the cave. It was a sink, and yet not a
sink in the usual sense of the word. The gully ran westward along the face of a
low limestone cliff, and the beds dipped steeply to the north. Originally the
gully had continued past the cave, but at some time in the past its stream had
found a way into the limestone and abandoned its former course, gouging out a
sink as it surged into the cave. Wormlike impurities in the limestone gave the
grotto at the base of the cliff an extremely jagged appearance and this was
accentuated by a series of deep cracks in the rock.
The actual entrance was a
vertical slit along the side of one of these fissures. It was twelve inches
wide and perhaps twice as long. Except for those accursedly jagged projections
of impurities, it would have been quite wide enough for us. As we slid into the
cave, each of us heard the loud rip that told us our coveralls would not
survive the trip.
We dropped eight feet into a
small chamber and lit our carbide lamps. Alton Melville lowered our ropes and
other gear to us, and we were off, twisting and turning for a few yards until
we entered the main passage. Looking back we could see bluish daylight through
two small openings. It was the last we saw that day.
The cave passage had the
general shape of an inverted V. It led downward at a slope of more than 50
degrees. At the floor the passage was three to six feet wide. At shoulder level
it was often little more than passable. On the floor were large and small
boulders. Gravel and silt also bore witness of the stream which cascaded
through the cave each winter and spring. The boulders forced us to clamber
where we could otherwise have walked. Overhead other boulders were wedged into
the narrow crack, but none was loose. So far the danger had been greatly
exaggerated.
After 150 or 200 feet, we
entered a chamber about twelve feet wide and twenty feet high. Here a second,
smaller chamber entered from our left. Peering into it, we could see that it
paralleled the passage we had just traversed.
Still the cave continued
downward and precisely northward. Within fifty feet, we came to another
chamber, forty feet high. Its floor was a mass of great fragments of fallen
limestone blocks, now securely wedged in place. In opposite comers narrow pits
dropped fifteen or twenty feet to the old level of the cave.
Both pits were tight, jagged
and undercut. Since neither looked easy, two of us tried each pit. More sounds
of ripping clothes were heard, but we passed through and compared notes. On the
way out, each of us preferred to try the others' route rather than again face
the misery he had previously encountered.
Ahead of us the cave narrowed
down to a width of one foot. Aside from a few more tatters, this was no special
problem until we came to the end of the narrows twenty-five feet on. The floor
then dropped away for twenty feet. Instead of limestone we found only wet,
rotten-feeling shale as we climbed down. What was this? We had seen no shale at
the entrance.
We looked back and upward
after we had all made the descent. High up we could see the limestone, slanting
downward just as it had everywhere above the pit. Below it was a layer of shale
making up the lower walls of the pit. The answer was obvious. The cave had
extended downward to the very bottom of the thick limestone deposit, and the
cave stream had attacked and eaten into the weaker shale which lay below it.
Then we noticed something
else. On one side of the passage the contact of the limestone and the shale was
about three feet higher than on the other side. We were descending along a
fault where one block of bedrock had once slipped about three feet onto the
next. We found the same situation at every long drop-off we passed, and
drop-offs were plentiful. First came ledges twelve and ten feet high. Soon we
came to the lip of a more impressive cliff, about thirty-five feet high. Here,
for the first time, we fixed a climbing rope. At the base of this cliff we found
the rotting remains of a once-stout wooden ladder, but it gave us no clue to
its maker.
Within a distance of less
than fifty feet we encountered two more shorter, vertical descents. Then our
voices echoed hollowly and we saw a great black vault looming ahead of us. At
the ceiling the narrow crack rose out of sight. Down we gazed into nothingness
over the edge of The Great Pit. We were impressed. It was quite a hole.
This was what we had come to
investigate. We looped a manila climbing rope 120 feet long around a large,
well-wedged boulder, tied it with a bowline knot, and tossed it over. It hung
along the stream-cut angle of the pit and did not reach the bottom of the room.
Looking at the pit we saw
that the drop was not quite vertical and the walls of the cleft were close
enough together to permit us an occasional pressure hold. We decided that we
could climb back up without undue difficulty, using prussik-knot
slings if necessary. To Bob and Marv fell the unhappy
jobs of belayers, which meant that they would have to
remain atop the pit while Dick and I were exploring below.
Carrying short lengths of
rope from which we could fashion climbing slings, I tied myself to the belay
rope, exchanged signals with Bob, grasped the climbing rope and started over
the lip.
Within a few feet, I learned
that the ascent would not be as easy as it had appeared. I was back in that
miserable, rotten shale. The shale was only a minor nuisance going down, and I
called to Dick that it would be safe to rappel if he wished. Testing the rock
for handholds, I found I could dig them out with my gloved hands and even carry
them with me. I have never encountered such rotten rock in any other cave.
Before long I was nearing the
end of the rope. With relief I saw that it extended to a steep limestone slope
which could be negotiated without artificial assistance. I called back the good
news, untied the safety rope, and gingerly made my way downward another sixty
feet to the floor of the chamber and thence forty feet to the small opening of
a passage continuing into the unknown.
Now it was time for our gear
to be lowered to me. As I watched, a loop of rope descended into view. The
packs were caught on a ledge. I called the news up to the others. The slack
rope disappeared, and I heard them jerking the packs loose.
Out of nowhere came a weird,
low-pitched, whining whistle. A whirling object fell through the beam of my
flashlight, struck the slope at the base of the pit, and shot straight out to
land almost at my feet. With a gasp I recognized the leather case of my 35 mm
camera.
I picked it up and looked at
the camera with justifiable misgivings. Amazingly enough, it looked as if it
could be repaired even though the frame was a bit askew. The leather case had
absorbed most of the terrific impact of the 100-foot fall.
By this time the packs had
been lowered to the end of the rope. I left my shelter to untie them, then
retreated again. A tiny glint of yellow light appeared at the apex of the
chamber, then began to descend. Dick had started down. Soon came the soft whir
of the first falling rocks he dislodged. It was followed by a series of sharp
cracks as the rocks smashed against the limestone layer below, then ricocheted
in tiny fragments, rattling against the walls of the chamber like machine-gun
fire. How slowly he seemed to move, almost two hundred feet away! It was not
long, however, until he joined me. We called to Bob and Marv
that we would be back within two hours.
After the vast height and
comfortable width of the Pit Room, we felt cramped in the narrow passage
beyond. Nevertheless, it was no smaller than that above The Great Pit. The cave
began to slant downward again, still continuing due north.
Within fifty feet I was
intrigued by some irregularly carved limestone ridges which permitted us to
straddle the passage instead of descending. I made my way along them.
Unexpectedly, passages opened on each side. With Dick close behind me, I
climbed to the opening on the right. Nestled in a hollow was a small pool with
brilliant white shelfstone covering most of its
surface. It was the first beauty we had seen in this dark, gloomy cave and our
spirits rose immeasurably.
Mud made the crossing a bit
ticklish, but we stepped across the main passage into the other opening. Here
again was a surprise. A short, low passage led to a small chamber floored with
soft, powdery dirt. The dirt was almost completely dry, a real novelty for this
dank cavern. To our left a tube about eighteen inches in diameter slanted
upward as far as our lights could reach. At the far end of the room we ducked
through a hole and emerged in another small chamber. This one was much more
dramatic. From above and from the left came a steep, wide tube. Offset a few
feet, it plummeted to unknown depths down a slick, bare limestone slope.
Flowstone covered part of the floor of the tube, and we were interested to see
that a small, tortuous stream had dissolved a tiny channel down its surface -
mute witness of changes in spelean environment.
We looked at the platform
upon which we were standing. It was a "false floor" of flowstone. On
the other side of the small room a similar, thin coating was still perched atop
a dirt fill. Across the yawning mouth of the wide pit we could see some white
stalactites contrasting brilliantly with their drab surroundings.
We could go no farther in
this direction, but we still had some time before Marv
and Bob would be expecting us. We returned to the main passage, fixed our last
rope at the top of a small ledge, and again pushed on into the depths. It was
not far, however, until we came to the lip of a 30-foot drop-off. A shallow
pool was visible below. Our spot-beam flashlights showed us that the passage
continued, but this was the end of our scouting trip. In four hours we had
learned a great deal about the cave and could plan our return trips
accordingly.
We coiled our rope and
returned to the Pit Room. A faraway pinpoint of light, much dimmer than an
evening star, told us that we were not forgotten. At the sight of our lights
Bob and Marv probably felt equal relief.
As mine was the ultimate
responsibility, Dick was to ascend first. A husky, teen-age mountaineer, and
strong as an ox, Dick had no fear of the climb. He scorned the use of prussik slings. As he would be on belay and could not hurt
himself, I raised no objection. Seeking the mouth of the lower passage in order
to be out of range of falling rock, I watched as he tied in and began the
climb.
At first all went well as he
ascended in the wide V of the pit. The rope provided handholds, and he was
usually able to retain footing by pressure on the walls of. the V. A hundred
feet is a long way to go under these conditions, however, and it was not long
until he was calling Resting" to his belayer.
After a few minutes he began to struggle upward again, yard by yard. It was
forty minutes before a very tired young man was hoisted over the lip of the
ledge by the scruff of his coveralls. Then it was my turn.
I was planning to do it the
easy way-by using prussik-knot slings. By this
technique the climber is tied to the climbing rope by three smaller ropes. One
is fastened around his waist as a safety device, and the others form loops for
each foot. The prussik knot holding each sling to the
main rope loosens with a slight push upward, and grips with the least pull
downward. By moving each knot in turn the climber is able to climb right up the
rope, slowly but securely, in his own private loop ladder.
At least this is the
principle. I made the slings and affixed them to the rope, then tied on the
belay rope and began to climb. I advanced eight inches and no more. My prussiks would not slip. I started over again. The second
try was no more successful than the first. Apparently the mud and grime on the
rope created just enough friction so that the knots would not slide freely when
the weight was removed. The climb was not going to be easy, after all.
The details of this ascent
are something I prefer to forget. I was able to use one sling as a handgrip on
the rope, and that was all. "Handholds" on the shale cliff were
easily available, but were worse than useless. I could pick them up in chunks
many inches in diameter. Each time I placed my foot against the wall, a shower
of shale shattered far below me. Twice I slipped, and fell a few inches until
halted by the safety rope. I blessed that wonderful nylon rope and the caver
belaying me. A dozen times I rested to get a little strength back into my arms,
which were doing almost all the work. The last time I was only a few feet below
the ledge, and Dick, now well rested, gave me the horse laugh. "So that's
the easy way!" he crowed. It was all over after an hour. We coiled the
ropes, renewed the carbide and water in our headlamps for the third or fourth
time, and headed out, rejoining the surface party just at dark, ten and a half
hours after we had gone underground.
Despite our difficulties, the
trip was a success. We had learned what the cave was like and what we would
need for more than a scouting trip. We spent many evenings constructing rope
ladders, and we acquired a set of field telephones with a thousand feet of
wire. We bought several lengths of rope, both to replace our old manila ropes
and to extend our underground capabilities.
We calculated that it would
be possible for four people in sleeping bags to stretch out on the soft earth
of the small dry chamber we had found, and made up lists of minimum needs for
underground camping. We trained new recruits, both in easier caves nearby and
in night-climbing practice on a cliff just outside the city-nearly getting
arrested in the process. An overzealous deputy sheriff, driving by while we
were practicing, was unable to imagine why people with headlamps would be
climbing around on a sheer rock face at night. He was sure that we were up to
no good.
By spring our plans were
completed and we were waiting for drier weather when a bombshell struck. It
came in the form of a telephone call from Pete McDonald, who now was one of our
most active members. "Have you seen the Tribune this morning?" he
bellowed. I had to admit that I had not. "Look on page thirty-two,"
he suggested and hung up.
"Climber Urges Sealing
of Canyon Cave" was the headline staring at me from page 32. It told of
the daring feat of a local climber, wholly lacking in previous cavern
experience but well known in the
We called an emergency
meeting to discuss this threat. The local newspapers had no way of knowing that
no mountaineer, no matter how skilled in his own field, was qualified to render
so important a judgment, nor was the public, for whom the articles were intended.
Even more threatening, it seemed to us, was the claim that the descent was
sponsored by the Forest Service.
We went to the headquarters
of the
Partially reassured, we
decided to issue a statement to the local newspapers outlining the facts. All
this took time, and the editorial columns of the Deseret News took up the cry, "Close it up!" Before out
statement was ready, however, we were delighted to receive unheralded support
from the southwest corner of the state. Leroy J. Bailey, chairman of the old
In regards to an editorial in
the Friday News [he began], why not
season your Ounce of Prevention [the editorial's title] with a bit of judgment
and knowledge?
A mountaineer climbs into a
cave; it's dark in there and looks hazardous.
So, he immediately says it
should be closed. He has no idea of how much that cave may be to science. He
says that it has no scenic or scientific value. Is he a qualified speleologist?
Does he know whether or not the cave can contribute to the knowledge of the
biologist, geologist or hydrologist? ... The fact that I am able to read the Deseret News does not make me an authority on
newspapers. Neither does the fact that a mountaineer can climb into a cave make
him an authority on caves. When he takes his mountaineering equipment
underground he is working under conditions that are entirely foreign to what
he is used to. When he has learned to take care of himself properly while
underground; when he has learned that what is safe procedure in bright daylight
is NOT safe underground; when he has learned something about caves; then he can
speak about caves with authority. In the meantime, let us not be hasty in
recommending that a cave be closed until all of the facts are in. Caves are
more than just a hole in the ground. They are the source of a vast amount of
knowledge of earth structure and other sciences.
After
It was not until October 3,
1953, that we completed our preparations. Dick, Marv,
Pete and I were to comprise the advance party which was to spend thirty to
thirty-six hours in the cave, sleeping in the "Bedroom," as we had
dubbed the dry side passage, after advancing as far as possible into the cave.
Support parties led by Bob Keller and Bob Kennedy were to be in charge of
transportation of equipment and safe tying us at The Great Pit. It sounded
ideal, and we packed our gear in duffel bags, since the cave was too tight for
the use of pack boards.
Once we were inside, it soon
became unfortunately obvious that the cave was also not designed for duffel
bags. The bags caught on every jagged projection. Tight squeezes that had
previously given us only routine difficulty required lengthy, laborious hauling
and shoving. Note-taking, attempts at photography, and unrolling and unsnarling
the telephone wire added to the interminable delays. It took us almost twelve
hours even to reach the edge of The Great Pit.
The telephones had stopped
working, so we abandoned them at that point. We lashed three ladder lengths
together, and Dick rappelled over the edge to straighten them. They made the
descent easy, and for the first time we felt a little better about our bright
ideas. Our bedding and gear was lowered, without accident, and the four of us
wrestled it into the Bedroom.
We were exhausted, and it was
bedtime anyway. We uncurled the bags and made a dreadful discovery. There was
room for only three sleepers, not four, and the three would really have to
contort themselves to fit. Dick was the only one who was at all comfortable
that night. He abandoned the Bedroom, looked at the rocklike false floor in the
adjoining chamber and staked a claim to it, wholly ignoring the pit just beyond
his feet.
We munched a cold supper and
crawled into our bags as A. Y. Owen shot photo after photo. A. Y. is an ace
It was not a restful night,
and we were in need of rest. The room had seemed warm and dry in comparison to
the rest of the cave, but a damp chill soon crept through our bags. The soft
dirt floor developed, hard, rocky knobs and we had to roll over many times. We
were so tightly packed against the walls that when one of us had to roll the
others had to follow. At intervals one of us would turn on his flashlight to
consult his watch, hoping it was morning.
At about 5:30 we gave up,
rolled up our bags, and began breakfast by cutting the top off a can of soup
and putting our carbide lamps under it. After the soup we heated water in the
same can for what looked like cocoa but still tasted like soup. Canned fruit
salad and
Our original plans had called
for us to do our exploring the previous evening, but all chance of that had
been dissipated in the 12 hour struggle above The Great Pit. Several hours
remained, however, before Bob Keller, Bob Kennedy, Pete McDonald and the others
would meet us at The Great Pit. Still bleary-eyed, we dragged the sleeping gear
back to the Pit Room and returned to the main passage with our climbing gear.
Two rope ladders brought us to the bottom of the pit at which we had stopped
before. Beyond we found a level passage which continued for about fifty feet,
then narrowed to a slit less than a foot in width. It was too narrow. Although
it led down out of sight, we could not continue. Was this the end of the cave?
We noticed that the stream
bed did not enter this crack. We retraced our steps and soon saw that the
stream course swung to the west and entered a small, irregular aperture at knee
level. We did the same, and found ourselves in a rather spacious room with a
pit curving along its south and west walls. We tied our last ladder to a rock
pinnacle, and Dick safe tied me down. At the base of the pit I crawled a few
feet and found myself looking into the upper end of a huge chamber slanting
down to my right.
It was a good place to stop.
We had used all our ladders, and the support party would soon be expecting us
back at The Great Pit. I rolled a rock over the lip of the overhang and into
the new chamber. It rolled for many seconds. It would take much more gear to go
farther into the cave. It was equally obvious that we would have to figure out
some other way of getting equipment into the depths. The method we had
attempted was futile.
I climbed back up and Dick
went down for a look. Then we coiled the ladder and returned to the belayers sitting atop the other ledges. To gain experience
we tried climbing each ledge without the ladder and were pleased to find it
possible. We were learning more and more about the cave. We dragged everything
to the Pit Room and arrived precisely on schedule.
Where was the support party?
We saw no gleam of light at the apex of the room, but far off we could hear a
low growling rumble that soon resolved itself into distinct voices. To
everyone's amazement, both parties were on time-something almost unprecedented
in the annals of cave exploration!
All our gear was tied into
four loads to be hoisted by the support party. In this way each climber could unsnag a load dragged upward ahead of him. Marv took the lead, climbing the ladder on belay as A.Y.'s lamps flashed brief glimpses of brilliance into the
gloom. Then A.Y. ascended, losing a metal tripod leg which chimed melodiously
on the way back down. Next went Dick, carrying the battered piece of tripod,
and I was alone.
I have been alone many times
in such a place, and even in this exact spot. Cold, wet, and nearly exhausted,
however, I must have been somewhere near the breaking point. Loneliness
overwhelmed me. Dick's light and that of someone far above were the last connection
I had with anyone on earth. What was I doing here, anyhow? The thought came to
me that man has no place in such secret places of the earth. The vastness of
the arched chamber surrounded me.
A shout recalled me to
rationality. "Rope coming down," someone called. It was time to
move. I dragged the last bundle up to the end of the ropes and retreated to my bombshelter, out of the range of dislodged rock. The pack
moved only a few feet before snagging. Bowing to the inevitable, I called for
the safety rope and began to climb the ladder, signaling when the equipment was
free so that the support team could pull it up a few more feet. Ladder climbing
is an art, not a sport. It is hard work under the best of conditions.
Nevertheless, it was a tremendous difference from my previous struggle with the
pit. I was up in less than fifteen minutes despite the problem of the snagging
packs. What a pleasure it was to see the faces of my fellow cavers! No longer
was I alone.
Every face showed real strain
and fatigue. It had been no easy job for either team. We started some of the
party toward the surface with part of the equipment while we sought to retrieve
our 105 feet of ladder. Naturally, it jammed, and we twice had to send Marv partway down to free it. Though the strongest of all
us, he was completely exhausted by the time it was all free and at our feet,
ready for rolling and packing.
Then began the nightmare. If
it had been hard getting the packs down through the narrow crevices, it was far
worse pushing and hauling them back up. Two of the teen-age members of the
support party gave out completely, and Marv was in
bad shape. When we finally reached the double-pit room we sent the trio ahead
without any load. As for the rest of us, it took real effort to move aside even
when a loud clatter and hasty shout "ROCK!" warned of a swiftly
bouncing boulder a foot in diameter, dislodged by someone's slogging foot.
How far to the entrance? We
all claimed to see familiar land marks at every step, but it seemed always
farther ahead, a dimly recollected mirage. When Bob Keller felt the telltale
chill of mountain air he was too tired to pass the word back. One by one we
silently squeezed out into the dusk, dragging our loads behind us. Before the
last pack was out, we had been underground 33 hours and 15 minutes. Wet, muddy,
ragged, and with drawn faces we looked as if it had been a month. A.Y.'s photos show that we must have been a real spectacle,
but right then we didn't care.
Alton Melville had a large
fire ready for us, and hot drinks revived us enough that we could stumble back
through the brush to the jeeps. We were sick and tired of this cave, we
commented to anyone within hearing, and would never go back-at least not right
away. Actually it was six whole weeks before we returned to install a chain and
padlock at the mouth of the cave for the Forest Service and seized the
opportunity to do a little mapping. At that moment, however, we thoroughly
agreed with the remark we overheard as A.Y. telephoned his chief: "It's
the most miserable cave I ever saw." Bob Keller went to the hospital for
ten days, and none of us was much good for some time.
Before that next trip a touch
of comedy entered the story of
Harold Goodro,
the mountain climber who had previously urged the sealing of the cave because
it was too dangerous, apparently had changed his mind. He had gone back to the
cave with two friends, Caine Alder and Lee Jensen,
the article announced, and now invited anyone interested to look for their
marker showing how far they had gone. He claimed to have reached the bottom of
the "4,000foot-long" cave at a depth of two thousand feet, almost
doubling the American depth record previously held by Carlsbad Cavern. They had
reached the bottom and returned to the surface in fourteen hours, about as long
as it had taken us to get our gear to the bottom of The Great Pit.
We had thought that ours was
an unusually good team of cavers, even though we had been overloaded on this
one trip. How could three mountaineers who knew next to nothing about caves
succeed where we had failed temporarily?
We read more of the article
and our hair stood on end. Nowhere in its text was there any indication that
the last man down each pit and the first man up each cliff had been belayed. A
typical section related:
“ ‘The entrance to this
[large room] is in the center of the ceiling, making it necessary to climb hand-over-hand
up a rope without any contact with the wall. Nearly 110 feet of rope climbing
on half-inch wet nylon rope near the bottom of a long cave was almost more than
I could do,' Mr. Goodro said.”
Could this article have been
accurate? We were doubtful. Our own teams have been misquoted by newspapers on
a number of occasions, and it was easier for us to believe that the newspaper
had sensationalized the account rather than that the trio had actually shown
such disregard of safety techniques to which we had devoted such exhaustive
effort. Nevertheless, the article was written by a man who was a personal
friend of the leader of the climbers and who formerly had been president of the
Wasatch Mountain Club. We could not ignore it.
Our attempts to contact Mr. Goodro were unsuccessful and we were left in doubt for a
long time. We envied the trio their very real achievement, but not one of us
was sorry he had not been with him.
Many months later the Grotto
learned from Caine Alder, one of the three men who
had made the descent, that the newspaper account was indeed not wholly correct.
The trio had descended this particular pit-into the Big Room-by rappelling on a
rope tied to a rock above the pit. To this rock they also affixed their 3o-foot
rope ladder. Half of the ladder hung free in space. They carried another coil
of rope, but on the ascent it was of no value until a belay could be
established.
As Caine
tells the story, Goodro tied the end of the rope
around his waist and grasped the rappel rope. With its assistance he climbed up
the face of the shale cliff as far as he could-a rise of about forty feet. The
climbing was not especially difficult, Caine recalls,
but the rock was unusually rotten, and 9oodro was unprotected on the climb.
Goodro tied a loop in the belay rope to serve as a foothold,
then took a deep breath and began the hand-over-hand climb toward the dangling
ladder "about 23 feet" overhead. To reach it would be an amazing
feat, but Goodro managed to climb to its level. But
even his strength had a limit, and he slid back to the loop, unable to climb
onto the ladder.
It was a bad moment. Goodro's labored breathing echoed ominously through the
cave. Someone had to get up to belay the others, and Caine
and Lee were frankly afraid that they would not be able to reach the ladder if Goodro could not.
As the others watched
tensely, unable to help in any way, Goodro again
began the fateful climb. Again he reached the ladder but could not swing onto
it. Again he slid back to the loop, still able to maintain his grasp on the
rope.
Worry . . . despair ... words
are meaningless at such a time. A superhuman effort was necessary, and a
superhuman effort was forthcoming. Most of us would be exhausted for hours
after two grueling struggles of this sort, but on his third attempt Goodro was able to swing onto the ladder. Then he slipped
the extra rope through the bottom space of the ladder and tied it around his
waist. Now for the first time he had a measure of protection by belay by those
below. If the ladder broke, of course, everything would plummet to the floor
together, but if the climber merely passed out from his terrific exertions his
fall would probably be halted in mid-air if the belay was perfect and the
flimsy ladder stood the shock. And ladder ropes are known to have snapped under
the mere strain of climbing! The lives of three people have rarely been
balanced more delicately on the scales of fortune.
Years later, Caine wrote me:
I do not think that any
knowledge of caves is necessary when a group is trying only to completely
explore a cave. I do think that the prime requisites for exploring are: 1.
Experience in rockclimbing and 2. Experience in
handling ropes. . . . It is obvious that to have had all climbers belayed, we
would have to have left a climber at the top of each cliff [not quite
true-karabiner belays can be used]. This would have required an addition of 12
or 13 men to our group. We did not think this to be practical. It is our
opinion that for an experienced, strong rockclimber,
only one cliff requires the use of a safety belay-entrance into the Big
Room.... Caves aren't the safest things to explore. One is crowding his luck
just to enter a cave like Neff's.
Goodro, Alder and Jensen are rockclimbers,
not cavers. Their viewpoint is very different from ours-but to be fair to
other rockclimbers, it must also be said that this
philosophy of calculated risks to achieve a goal is far from universal, at
least among those with whom I climb. The three climbers are entitled to their
belief, but few who approach such a cave as
We did not doubt that the
three mountaineers had conquered the cave that had caused us so much grief, but
we were highly skeptical of some of their other claims. The sketch map which
they had given the newspaper had quite a number of obvious inconsistencies. We
felt that their depth claim was absurd. There are less than a half dozen caves
in the world two thousand feet deep. And what of the side passages that they
said did not exist? Having slept in one, we were inclined to dispute the point.
At the time of our first
visit we had estimated our greatest depth as 350 feet. Highly disgusted with
our 33-hour fiasco we estimated the depth of our second penetration at not more
than 450 feet below the surface. Knowing the tendency of all of us to
exaggerate underground distances, we suspected that even these figures were too
high. From Goodro's "map," it looked as if
we had gone between half and two thirds of the distance to the bottom. They
might have set a far western depth record-that would take only another hundred
feet or so-but their guesses were no acceptable proof. We would have to go back
and measure the cave.
A year rolled by, and it was
again the optimum season for another assault on the depths of
Another year went by, and
another. New blood entered the Grotto, and the five of us who had taken the
worst beating were no longer in
By this time one of the trio
who had made the controversial descent, Caine Alder,
had taken part in several Salt Lake Grotto trips to other caves and had proved
himself a good caver.
As a result of our earlier
experiences, the group decided against any attempt to carry sleeping bags into
the cave. They planned for a support party to go in a day ahead to install
ropes and ladders. At 6:0o A.M. on October 20, 1956, this support party, led by
Bill Clark and Jim Edwards, entered the cave with 250 feet of rope ladder, 6oo
feet of manila rope, and 24o feet of nylon rope. By nine in the evening they
had not returned, and a rescue party was hastily organized. At the jeep road,
however, a last-moment telephone call relieved the tension. The cavers had just
checked in, exhausted, after reaching a depth we now know to be 823 feet. The
would-be rescuers tracked Bill Clark to his lair. He was in his bathtub, half
asleep. They had run out of ladder at the top of the Big Room, Bill said, and
the next party would have to take some off the bottom of The Great Pit. Then he
dozed off in the tub after mumbling something about difficulties in getting the
ropes back out. Dale says he took that remark far too lightly.
With an additional 240 feet
of rope the assault party reached the cave at six o'clock in the morning,
October 21, 1956. By a last minute decision, they began to map the cave as they
descended, rather than on the return as is the usual practice.
Mapping is always a tedious
job, and progress was slow. Even so, they moved much more rapidly than our
33-hour party, and time is always meaningless underground, anyway. It is
inevitably a shock, no matter how many times it has happened before, to return
to the surface and find that the sun is not where it was when the party entered
the cave. It was a week before I became reconciled to having lost a day on our
previous trip.
The cavers rappelled down
each pit, and the previous installation of the ropes and ladders greatly
speeded their progress. Within a few hours they had reached the point at the
top of the Devil's Slide, where we had stopped. Dale made some rough
calculations, and found, to their surprise, that they were already 650 feet
below the entrance-a greater depth than any other measured cave west of the
Continental Divide! There actually was hope for an American depth record!
This was a convenient point
for the cavers to reload their carbide headlamps. While sitting there, an
ominous rumble echoed through the cave. As one, the group dove for shelter,
while some two hundred pounds of rubble rattled down among them. A large piece
of shale struck Paul on the helmet, knocking him down. This is the function of
helmets, however, and he was not injured. Another rock landed on Dale's pack,
smashing a flashlight and flattening his dinner supply of cheese. A trifle
shaken, the team inspected the rigging of the next ladder, and descended to the
Devil's Slide. Dale says that he is still sure that the rope which lashed the
ladder in place had three ends.
Along the Slide there was no
problem of narrow, jagged squeezeways. Here the
problem was the smooth, slippery wet shale floor, angling downward at' 5o
degrees for several dozen yards. The few finger and toe holds were loose and
untrustworthy, and it took half an hour even to find a spot for the tripod of
Paul's Brunton compass which was being used to map
the cave. Next came the small hole dropping through the ceiling of the Big
Room, a descent of eighty feet, almost entirely free of the walls. As a safety
precaution, Bob and Yves remained at the top of the pit as belayers.
The others rappelled down. Dale was not wearing rappel pads, and he reports
that the rope burn under his thigh came at a highly inconvenient place.
Dale was descending
uncomfortably but satisfactorily when a shout from below checked him in
mid-air. "Stop where you are," Caine
called, with urgency in his voice. Dale complied, unhappily wondering what was
wrong. He inquired.
"Nothing's wrong-I want
a picture of that," came the reply. Dale's response, lent force by his position,
cannot be printed.
Loose sliding slabs of shale
greeted the party at the bottom of the drop. The sides of the 70-foot chamber
were visible only dimly and, with some regret, the quartet passed onward
without exploring its margins. Within a few minutes the explorers found
themselves in a different kind of cave. Gone was the high, narrow slit.
Instead, they were making their way through a maze of breakdown blocks from
which any number of passages might lead. They had a specific goal, however, and
stuck to the most obvious route.
A happy shout echoed from the
depths where Caine and Alexis were in the lead. The
trickle of the stream at the bottom of the cave was audible in the distance.
Paul and Dale sighed with relief. The had made forty-five measurements over a
period of thirteen and a half hours, and were dog-tired.
Caine took his photographs and he and Alexis returned to
the Big Room, where they exchanged places with Bob and Yves. Dale and Paul were
recording the final measurement when a loud rumble was heard. They pocketed
their equipment and started out. Within two hundred feet they found Bob and
Yves, looking pale and shaken and groping in the rubble. They told a strange
story.
Bob had used a large rock as
a handhold, and found it solid. When Yves followed, the rock began to slide
toward him. Shouting a warning to Bob, he managed to slide out of the way, but
it came close enough to Yves to strike his glasses and knock them off. The
frame broke, and Bob could not find one lens. Yves is almost blind without his
glasses. Getting a one-eyed man out of this cave would not be easy.
For a moment there was
despair. Then, incredibly, while climbing up to Yves, Dale spotted the
spectacle lens lying on a rock. Although it had fallen fifteen feet, it was
unbroken! It took only a little tape from the first-aid bag to repair the
damage-typical cavers' luck!
It was eight o'clock when the
six reassembled above the Big Room. They were tired but happy, and distinctly
optimistic. Dale later told me:
"We figured that it took
about an hour per thousand feet to climb on the surface, and since the cave was
`just a little' harder, we should be out by ten. Twelve hours later we
staggered from the cave with all our equipment still somewhere inside."
It took an hour to coil all
the ladders and ropes. At the Devil's Slide the ladders all fell out of the
ripped sacks in which they were carried. Beyond that point, getting the gear up
each drop was a major undertaking. "In fact," Dale recalls,
"getting anything up a drop, including ourselves, was a major
undertaking."
The chimney and ladder climbs
were exhausting. While the cavers were actually moving, the cold dampness of
the cave was no problem, but the waiting periods necessary during the handling
and coiling of the ropes and ladders caused their teeth to chatter audibly. As
on our earlier trips, the ascents were far more difficult than the descents.
At 6:30 A.M., twenty-four
hours after the party had entered the cave, the group was struggling to haul
the equipment up the 30foot drop-off above The Great Pit. They had solved the
problem of the lack of a belayer atop The Great Pit
by sending the first man up the ladder with a rope around him in rappel
position. But then came the problem that they could not conquer.
The baggage continually
jammed in the narrow pit. They found it necessary to belay one of the group as
he leaned far out to free the packs. While this was in progress, an odd noise
was heard. One of the group was snoring! Everyone else looked anxiously at the belayer, who was supposedly in complete control of the
safety rope. He, too, had fallen sound asleep!
That settled it. The cavers
recognized that they had to get out at all costs before their exhaustion caused
a serious accident. They abandoned all but their emergency gear and plodded
upward. Each step was a distinct effort, each boulder a mountain. Not until
eight o'clock, twenty-six hours after entering the cave, did they emerge into
daylight. Not even then could they stop and rest. A rescue party was to be on
the way if they had not reported by nine. Any one seeing them trotting downhill
with glazed eyes and muddy, ragged clothing would have wondered what could
reduce men to such a condition.
It was not until the next day
that Dale calculated and plotted the readings they had made. He found the
length of the cave, taken along the slope, to be 1,700 feet. Then he computed
the vertical projection. Exultantly he telephoned the others.
"The depth of the cave
is 1,186 feet," he reported. "We've got
What of
ADDENDUM
Two
years later, while this was being written,
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