by Beyond Mammoth Cave- A Tale of Obsession in the World's Longest Cave (epub)
The first and most significant of these discoveries was made by Pete Crecelius on a trip into a promising passage heading to the east from Station P152 in Lower Elysian Way. Pete had discovered and briefly explored this lead on one of his early survey trips in the area. The lead was not huge, but it bellowed a large volume of air. It had the looks of having been at one time a major tributary to the now inactive main passage. Deep pools covered its floor, and its walls were coated with dramatic flowstone cascades. The lead was spectacular.
Pete named the passage the Black-White-Orange-Blue Passage (BWOB)—“gorgeous side lead with potholed black ledges, white formations, orange rimstone dams, and blue pools,” he had written in his trip report. His party surveyed over three thousand feet in the BWOB. They discovered splendid, clean-washed canyons, dazzling waterfalls, and good leads at every turn.
On trip after trip, they sloshed their way to the BWOB and into the ankle-deep axle grease mud of Muckwater Canyon. They traversed over the glistening and menacing Turbine Blades of Clearwater Canyon, walked past the three waterfalls of the Elephant Dome, and ran through the long and broad Muddy Tube to points beyond. This chain of spectacular passages went on for over ten thousand feet, the strong breeze undiminished, beckoning them ever further to the southeast. The opportunity for discovery in this new area seemed immense. Our maps showed that the passages of the BWOB area crossed under a broad valley into the northwestern flank of Eudora Ridge. Unlike the small passages of Old Roppel, a mile distant in the southeast corner of the same ridge, leads here seemed ripe for a significant breakthrough. They would surely take us into the large upper levels that must underlie Eudora Ridge and lead us far to the east.
The discoveries did not stop with the breakthrough in the BWOB, however. Upstream from Grand Junction, where Lower Black River flowed into Elysian Way, Elysian Way headed south, big and walking. Large gravel banks and wide pools led nearly two miles to emerge into a complex area of tall canyons and domes that lay less than a thousand feet in a straight line from the Roppel Entrance, yet five arduous miles underground.
Also, just a few hundred feet south of Grand Junction, an elliptical tube with a narrow stream canyon in the floor took off from the south wall. The lead had been noted but not explored. While heading out after a long survey trip, Bill Walter crawled into the small passage. After several hundred feet of muddy hands-and-knees crawl, he came to a spot where the ceiling broke up into a higher passage.
Bill climbed up into a large canyon, big and walking. In one direction, he walked a couple of hundred feet; in the other, the ceiling broke upwards again. He climbed into the inviting higher level where he stood in another canyon, like the first, although a little smaller.
He ran down the flat-floored, six-foot-high canyon. In one direction was the same scenario as before—a hole upwards to more walking canyons. Cave everywhere. Satisfied, Bill retraced his steps to the waiting party.
“Well, what did you find?” Hal Bridges asked between mouthfuls of a candy bar.
“Oh . . . not too much.” Bill shrugged his shoulders. “Just a bunch of canyons—nothing too spectacular.”
Hal did not notice that Bill was downplaying the lead. Roppel Cave was full of canyons. Hal finished his candy bar, and they closed their packs. They rose and began the now standard high-speed sprint to the entrance.
Bill decided to keep his discovery to himself, for the time being. But on 24 January 1981, he proudly led two parties into his small side passage. He told each party where to begin surveying. This was well planned.
“How come you didn’t tell anybody about this?” I asked.
“I didn’t want to get everyone too excited. It may not go anywhere.”
I looked around the half dozen canyons that led off from where we were sitting. Big cave. The simple fact was that Bill Walter just didn’t want to get scooped.
“You’re kidding, right?”
He smiled and said nothing.
The new canyons, named Freedom Trail in commemoration of the release of the Iranian hostages, led north and south. On that first day, we surveyed over three thousand feet, ignoring many walking-sized leads. Over the next several months, Freedom Trail was extended to the south to connect with the shafts in upstream Elysian Way and north to connect with a maze of upper levels near the big waterfall at P88 in Lower Elysian Way. Lots of cave.
The initial breakthrough into Elysian Way was pay dirt for the CKKC. There was cave everywhere, and we were immediately intoxicated by the immensity of it all. We surveyed mile after mile, expanding the cave system in multiple directions. It looked as though it would never end.
Throughout all this fervor of exploration, Jim Currens was true to his word. He had vowed never to return to the cave to the north, and he did not—no matter that miles of passage were being discovered and surveyed. After a while, we stopped asking him to come.
Jim continued to follow his plan of beating the CRF into south Toohey Ridge. They could not be trusted, he assured us. Who could argue with him now? The CRF’s blatant disregard of the connection moratorium was vindication of his long-held position, a reinforcement for his distrust of them. It had not taken long for us to find out about the secret connection trip taken by Diana Daunt, Roger Brucker, and Tom Brucker to the sump in upstream Logsdon River. Tom Brucker knew that the cat was out of the bag and had called me before I could hear about it from other sources. I was aghast as Tom told his tale.
“What the hell did you guys think you were doing in there?”
“Well,” Tom said sheepishly, “I wanted my dad to finally have the opportunity to be on a connection trip, I . . .”
“What! How could you!”
“I regret it now. I know we shouldn’t have done it.”
“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? What would you have done if you had connected?”
“I don’t know . . . sorry.”
I thought about it. Roger Brucker was sneaky. He had set us up with the connection moratorium agreement. Follow the cave wherever it goes, I said to myself. Such bullshit. He knew better; he had to. He was just playing on his son’s emotions.
“Shit, Tommy, I can’t believe you did that. We trusted you.”
I could tell that stung, but he deserved it. Tom was silent. “But, I am glad you called to tell me,” I said.
I forgave him, probably too easily. I knew that the likes of Diana and his father together would be hard for anybody to resist. Tom had been seduced.
I was furious! I had trusted the CRF, and now I had been screwed by them. For two years, I had been lambasting Jim Currens for his CRF paranoia. Much as I hated to admit it, he had been right. Not only had the CRF broken the rules, but they were broken by the person who had written the rules. I had been the group’s strongest advocate among the cavers of the CKKC; now, my credibility concerning CRF politics was destroyed. I now knew that the CRF could not be trusted. We had to do everything we could to stay one step in front of them.
I shot off a handful of letters to Roger Brucker and the CRF president expressing my rage at this blatant attempt to connect the caves. I received no satisfactory answer except to hear that the political repercussions on the CRF side were considerable also.
Given the fallout of the ill-fated endeavor, I felt some comfort that there was little likelihood that the connection attempt would be repeated, for awhile anyway. Again, little could be done about it except protest. Meanwhile, there was cave to explore. I looked to the future.
Jim Currens’s resolve hardened. He concentrated his efforts in a series of passages overlaying Logsdon River on the upper level. At the end of a long crawlway appropriately named Tylenol Trail, Jim explored a complicated network of small canyons. Tylenol Trail headed south off a small domepit at the southern end of Currens Corridor. After a few feet of pleasant passage, the lead withered to a low, dry, tedious crawlway. The small canyons beyond the six-hundred-foot belly crawl went south, but vertical shafts, breakdown, and dangerous traverses over deep pits made th
e going slow and difficult. These were tough trips, and the big discovery never came.
The Rift was the last remaining major area with leads that pointed to the south. Ron Gariepy and Bill Eidson, pioneers in the exploration of this area, had left an enormous borehole unsurveyed. There was no trip report and no information to build on. Bill and Ron, like many others, had not documented their efforts, so many things they had learned were inevitably lost. Some of their work had to be redone by later parties. Neither caver could recall substantive details about the borehole other than that it ended at a dark, menacing pool. It looked like a good lead on the map.
Jim Currens’s party stood in front of the deep pool in May 1981. It was painfully apparent why Ron and Bill had stopped; the location was miserable. A strong breeze roared through the twelve-inch gap between the ceiling and the surface of the slimy pool. Undaunted by the water, Greg McNamara splashed into the pool and eased through the low, wet passage. A few moments later, his party heard his echoing whoops.
“Come on through! It’s huge!”
This was too good to be true. The rest of the crew sloshed through after Greg and descended a steep mud bank into a large river passage. The river emerged from a high canyon and drained away from them to the south.
Jim’s face beamed with excitement. Here was a big passage, thirty feet wide and high. They were heading due south and a strong breeze blew. What more could you ask for?
“Let’s survey!” Jim ordered.
They pulled out the survey gear and began the march south. But after only eight hundred feet, the ceiling lowered and the stream disappeared into a gravel sump. They were stunned.
Defeated, they worked their way back to the north, looking for any missed side leads. There were none except for a few high on the wall they could not reach and the canyon from which the stream flowed. The air blew from this canyon, but it did not head south. Jim was not interested. They surveyed dutifully through the pool of water and linked the survey to the main line at the Rift.
The last of the known leads that might have led into south Toohey Ridge had died. I did not see Jim Currens for many months. It was time for a break, he said.
Over the summer of 1981, Dave Weller extended his dig in Dry Valley Cave to over one hundred feet. The tunnel he had dug was long and low for the entire distance. As is usually the case in most digs, the floor gradually sloped upwards to the headwall to where the clearance reduced to sixteen inches. If anything, the passage was getting narrower, and the pace of advance had slowed considerably. Not only was moving the tailings to the surface more difficult as the distance increased, but the floor was also more resistant to our digging efforts. Blasting was now necessary nearly every foot of the way.
Compounding the problems, every time it rained, a stream flowed into the entrance, pooling in the enlarged space of the excavated passage. It then was weeks before the goo dried out enough that we could resume work.
One day, Dave proved that the rusty can lead had at least an air connection with Dry Valley Cave. He used a homemade smoke generator to create thick plumes of white smoke that were carried in by the breeze blowing through the entrance. Pete Crecelius volunteered to sniff for the smoke in the cave, like a bloodhound, and follow it to its source at the rusty can lead.
But this proof was not enough. The rusty can lead was much deeper down in the cave than the level of the tunnel Dave was excavating in Dry Valley Cave. The vertical difference was a problem. Air could move through lots of places that would be too difficult to dig through.
In early October, Bill Walter and Hal Bridges forced their way into the rusty can lead and, after seventy-five feet of narrow canyon squeezing, emerged into a small dome. Fractured rock walls from frost action showed that they were near the surface. At the far end of the small dome, they chimneyed between the narrow walls to reach a level twenty feet higher. A wide passage extended thirty feet to the south before becoming totally choked with rocks washed in from the surface. It was not obvious what they should do next. As they considered their options, they heard the distinctive thump . . . thump . . . thump of someone digging.
Dave!
The digging noise came from all around them. Low frequency sound carried by the surrounding rock was nondirectional. However, in just a few minutes, at the prearranged time, Dave would begin shouting into the cave from the headwall of the dig.
They waited. The noise stopped.
Then, the distinctive tone of Dave’s voice greeted their ears. This time, the sound did not come from everywhere. Bill and Hal looked up; Dave’s voice emanated from a previously unseen hole in the ceiling. Bill and Hal shouted, but because voices do not necessarily carry equally well in both directions in caves, Dave could not hear them. The hole above them was small and out of reach; deep red flowstone draped over its edges. They could hear Dave continuing to shout as they stacked rocks into a tower so they could reach the hole.
With flailing legs, Bill reached an arm over the lip and pulled himself up and through. The passage above was parallel to the choked passage. Bill crawled toward the sound of Dave’s voice, now quite close. After twenty feet, he reached a round room with a high, narrow canyon snaking off to the left. Ahead, the passage continued but was too low. Lying on his belly, Bill squeezed in a couple of feet to look through the low passage, where he saw the glow from Dave’s lamp. Dave was around a corner and very close—perhaps within ten feet. They were able to talk together in normal tones.
“Almost there,” Bill said. Determined to worm through, he scraped at the dirt with a flat rock. But after fifteen minutes and two feet of progress, he decided he would not get out that way today. Bill and Hal went back the same long way they had come in.
Now it was just a matter of time before Dry Valley Cave would be connected to Roppel Cave. During the next two weeks, enthusiastic diggers narrowed the gap to three feet. However, the difficulties of continuing the dig for even that short distance were formidable. I proposed that digging could be done more effectively now from within Roppel Cave where there was considerably more elbow room to work. Any tools required could be passed through the tiny opening to the cavers inside the cave, avoiding the necessity of lugging tools the long distance from the Roppel Entrance. I guessed that only a few hours would be needed to finish the project. Roberta Swicegood and I volunteered for the trip.
I thought this was a hero trip, and I was surprised that no one else expressed interest in being a member of the in-cave party. Roberta and I began making plans.
With Cady Soukup, Roberta and I were the main CKKC force in the Washington D.C. area. The three of us were together frequently, meeting no less than once a week at my parents’ house on Tuesday evenings. Although I had recently moved to Frederick, Maryland, forty miles to the west at the base of Catoctin Mountain, we were still using my folks’ house as our base of operations. We had taken over the entire basement. Wall-to-wall tables were littered with cave maps, stacked boxes of survey notes, file folders of trip reports, and other documents having to do with the cave. In one corner, we had set up a typewriter with stacks of handwritten trip reports next to it and layouts of future issues of the CKKC Newsletter. On those Tuesday evenings we would get together, talk, and even do some work. Every aspect of the CKKC day-to-day operations was getting done. As Jim Currens had steadily slacked off administrative duties, we had taken them over with zeal.
Our initiatives infuriated Jim. Some of his duties we stole—the production of the newsletter was one—because he was not publishing it. Jim continued to carp at us, accusing us of deliberately cutting him out of the CKKC. We pooh-poohed his allegations as silly. Our discounting of him made Jim even angrier. He shut up after seeing that the CKKC Newsletter as edited and published by Roberta was of such high quality that no one could complain about it.
On the morning of the planned trip, Halloween 1981, Jim Currens showed up at the cave. After more than four months of not seeing him around, I had written him off as a contributing caver. He was angry a
t me for telling everyone that he had quit.
“Well, hadn’t you?” I asked.
“No, I was just taking a break.”
“A break? You’ve got to be kidding. A break from what?”
“From you.”
His bluntness stung. I had become his loudest detractor recently. I was dismayed by his actions in mishandling the adversarial situation with the CRF and had let him and everybody else know of my disapproval. Perhaps I was unfair to have bad-mouthed him so roughly. Maybe I was unnecessarily harsh because he had no defense.
There was not much else to say, so I offered, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” It wasn’t much of an apology. I felt sorry I had made him angry, but I still disagreed with his withdrawal as a way to avoid conflict.
As Roberta and I started walking down to the cave entrance, Jim said, “You know, you’re only taking this trip to steal the glory from Dave. You don’t deserve it.”
I stopped in my tracks. I was seething. “Okay, asshole, you want to go on the trip? I didn’t see you volunteer.” I was hot at his cheap shot.
“No, I don’t.” Jim turned and walked back to the others.
“I thought not.”
Roberta and I continued toward the entrance.
Jim’s remark had the ring of truth and made me uncomfortable. I did want the self-gratification of being on the trip that finished off the dig from the inside. But he was absolutely wrong about me wanting to steal Dave Weller’s glory. Dave was the hero. It was Dave who had steadfastly worked at the dig for over a year, riding through the ebb and flow of our enthusiasm that sustained and threatened the work.
We had wanted quick success. When success had not come quickly, our enthusiasm and our participation too frequently disappeared. Often, Dave would continue his obsessive dig alone. Then his small victories would fuel our enthusiasm, and we would come to help, upsetting his methodical plans. But he would just smile and let us do what we wanted. Without Dave Weller, there would have been no second entrance to Roppel Cave.