jtice
Flashaholic
Be Prepared - Bowden Caving Report - 10-22-05
I just wanted to share with you, a camping/hiking/caving adventure I went on, specifically, the conditions of the adventure, and how they can change quickly.
The goal of this story, is to make you alittle more aware of your situation,
and make you think about what the conditions and time frame can do.
Me and two friends (Ben and Sam) went on a caving trip last weekend.
It was about a 1.5 hour drive to the campsite.
By the time we got to camp it was about 11am, alittle windy, and some drizzling rain.
We were only staying one night, so we kept it simple, and only put up one large tarp. Got out our caving gear, and changed into our caving clothes.
I got out my Garmin 60cs GPS unit, to see exactly where the cave was, since I had been given the coordinates to it a couple weeks ago.
It was only about 1.5 miles from camp. Not to bad right? WRONG !
That 1.5 miles was straight down a STEEP hill, that dropped somewhere between 1800 and 2200 feet !
We knew it wasnt going to be a fun hike back, but we didnt think it would be THAT bad. More on that later...
So, we grab our gear and head down the hill.
My gear consisted of a backpack with 3 liter water bladder, and a Pelican case.
I had an extra set of batts for my Canon A95 camera, and a set for my SL 4AA Luxeon.
There was also my backup light, the UK 4AA Lux.
My main light was my Stenlight (www.stenlight.com) attached to my caving helmet. Which has a 2400 mAh lithium pack.
There was no trail or road leading down, so we just made our way down threw the woods.
We finally get to the cave, which has 5 ways into it that are within about 400 feet of each other. We find the main one, and start down in.
We are immediately greeted by a 20 foot drop, with a very old and ragged piece of webbing anchored into the rock. This is to be used to help you get over to the left, where you can then climb down easy.
Traversing over to the left wasnt all that difficult, but it was very unnerving knowing there was a 20 foot drop if you slipped off this foot wide ledge you were sitting on.
After that, there was two other places that were about 10 feet high or so,
there were rocks piled up there to help you climb up and down.
After making it down the 3 or 4 drops,
we are now greeted by about a 2 to 3 foot high crawlway.
Not too bad, we have done worse. so we thought.
We crawl back in at least 30 feet, and it gets lower. It gets to the point where you have to tilt your head sideways.
Your chest is laying on the ground, and your back is touching the ceiling.
You have to scoot yourself forward 8 or 10 inches, then shove your pack forward, scoot up again, shove your pack again.
This continued on for at least another 100 feet or so, but of course felt like 300 feet.
Twice, I had to breath out alittle, and force myself through, this is not a very good feeling when you realize how far into the hillside you are.
Finally, we get out of the crawl to to a section where we can actually situp!
This feels great after that long crawl, so we take alittle break there to rest and stretch out.
Further ahead are a couple more short crawls, mostly hands and knees crawling.
We get to the main section of cave, which opens up quite a bit.
For the most part you can walk crouching down, or standup here.
We take a break here to get something to eat, and look at the map.
Even with the map it was VERY hard to determine where we were.
It is very hard to judge distance, especially if you are crawling most the time.
But we had a pretty good idea where we were, and decided to push on.
We get to a section of the cave that opens up quite a bit.
With large rooms that are easily 30 to 40 feet high. With boulders the size of small cars suspended above our heads.
Its really hard to understand how half of them are staying up there, but thats usually the case in the caves.
Thats why helmets are VERY important !!!!
Even though a 3000 pound bolder is not going to slow down much after it encounters your helmet.
There are plenty of small rocks that can fall and hit you in the head, easily knocking you out.
We get 100 feet of so into the larger rooms and decide to drop our packs, and explore this area.
This was a mistake. Do NOT leave your packs anywhere, unless you are leaving it with your buddies, as you crawl down a small passage to scout it out and come right back.
There must have been at least 4 ways to traverse threw this section to the next set of rooms.
Ben ends up in the ceiling, and has to backtrack alittle to get back down to our level,
so that he can advance down threw the rooms with me and Sam.
We continue into the cave about another 40 feet, when Ben points to an upper section of the room,
and says that he had been up in that section, points down the hall and said that it ended up joining in down there.
I was a bit puzzled by this, seeing how Ben was behind me and Sam the entire time, and I had not even been that deep in the cave yet.
After bringing that to his attention, he says in a state of shock, "wait, we arent heading back OUT?"
He was quite embarrassed by this, but it was perfectly understandable.
Many times there are not reference points in a cave, one room can look just like another.
You can pop out of a small tunnel into a large room, walk 15 feet, turn around, and have no idea where you just popped out of.
It is a good idea to make it a habit of turning around, and looking behind you every so often.
This way you have a better sense of how the cave is shaped, and where you came from.
We went another 100 to 200 feet through the cave, when Sam and I decided we needed to head back,
due to it getting late, and the fact that our packs were now a ways back in the cave.
Remember, you have to get back OUT, and it usually takes more energy to get out, due to you being alittle tired from going in. It is a good rule, to turn around, and head back out, BEFORE you have used half of your food/water, and energy.
Going back out wasnt too bad, we seemed to make it through the crawl fairly fast, and to the section of drops,
that we now had to climb back up out of.
Usually, climbing up is easier than climbing down, you can see where you are going better, and can see handholds etc.
We pop out of the cave at about 7:30 pm
It is completely dark, in the mid 40s, raining, and blowing like hell.
Now comes the hard part....
We were alittle worn out from the 5 hours of caving we just did, but not too bad, done worse.
So we start our dreaded journey up the hill.
The first part isnt as steep, and we trying to find a trail, or old logging road to follow,
instead of having to walk straight up this streambed, which my GPS said was leading straight to camp.
So we end up fallowing the streambed as much as possible, until is feathers out, and is no longer an option.
To make the hike as short as possible, I use the GPS to guide up the hill, as straight toward camp as possible.
Some parts of the hill are 75 to 80 degrees, its soaking wet, and the wind had blown alot of wet leaves off the trees.
It was hard going, and we seemed to need a tiny break every few minutes,
to catch our breath, and let the burning in our legs fade some.
Now, I admit, we arent in the best of shape, and we dont do hikes quite this extreme in a regular basis.
But we had actually done large, steep hill climbs like this before, but in good weather, during the day.
We are about an hour into the hike back to camp now.
My two long sleeve shirts, and coveralls, are now completely soaked threw from the rain.
The hill only gets steeper and steeper toward the top, and our legs are burning like crazy.
We had ran our of food right after getting out of the cave, and all three of us were getting hungry.
I believe this was a big contributor to our problem, we were very low on energy.
Our bodies had to use what calories we had to get us up the hill,
and were probably not producing the body heat they should have been.
Normally, even in the dead of winter, if you are doing a hard hike, you will begin to get hot and sweat.
This was not the case that night, cold wet exhaustion were the primary feelings.
Even though the camp was basically straight up the hill,
it was very easy to veer off to the right or left while climbing the hill.
I had to keep a close watch on the GPS to make sure we were taking the most direct route possible. I would have ened up way off course without it.
At one point, we met up with an old logging road. These roads are very cold, and not really a road at all.
They are just leveled off paths, now overgrown with grass, with large debris scattered across them.
We wanted a break from the steep hill climbing, and the road at least took us up the hill.
After looking at the GPS, I decided we could travel the road a short ways,
but then we would have to travel straight up the hill once again.
We walked a good ways up this road, and by this time were getting quite low on energy.
Ben usually has alittle more endurance than I do, and was just up ahead of me.
Sam had fallen quite a bit behind me, so I decided to stop, and take a good look at the GPS while letting him catch up.
The fog and rain were so thick you could only see about 25 to 30 feet in front of you, even with lights.
This made it very hard to tell where the "road" was going to lead to.
I would like say though, my Stenlight did an excellent job of lighting my way, on the LOW setting.
It was plenty of light with night adapted eyes, besides, any higher setting just made the fog worse.
I used my SL 4AA here and there, to see alittle further up the hill, picking out somewhat easier paths.
The caving helmet helped ALOT for the rain. My face and back of neck were not really getting that wet.
Plus it kept my head pretty dry, which I am sure helped.
The Stenlight took the rain and wind for the entire 3 hour hike. It has more than proven itself to me.
Both Ben and Sam have been using their UK 4AA LED lights, as their primary handheld cave lights.
I use one of these as a backup in my pack also.
Having used one for a few cave trips, I was sold, and bought two more, with the intention of letting them use them.
Well it turns out they liked them so much, that Sam bought one off me, and Ben, well, he wont give the other back. hehe
The UK 4AA LED is not a bright light by any means, but was more than enough in the pitch black caves,
and even seemed to work very well for them in the night hike back.
The 10 hour runtime is the strong point of these lights.
Even I felt re-assured knowing that the UKs would last them the night.
By the time Sam had made it to me, I turned around to look where Ben was.
I saw his light WAY off to the left, as he was wrapping around the side of the hill.
I yelled for him, but he was out of range, the wind was howling too loud.
This was not a good situation, I hate getting separated.
Since Ben could outpace Sam, there was no way we could catch up to him.
To make matters worse, he was heading very far to the left of camp,
we actually needed to head directly up the hill from where Sam and I were standing.
In fact, we were already off to the left some. We had no choice, and had to head up the hill, leaving Ben.
I tied a glowstick to a tree on the side of the road where we headed up the hill.
Hoping that if Ben backtracked, he would see it, and understand to head up the hill.
Sure enough, about 45 minutes later, I hear a faint yelp.
I can see Bens light as I look back down the hill, close to where I know I left the glowstick.
Sam went ahead up the hill, figuring we could catch up to him.
Ben made it up the hill to me and collapsed. He was definitely exhausted.
After alittle rest, we continued up the hill to camp.
About half an hour later, we had reached the gravel road that led to camp. What a relief!
It was about 0.3 miles to camp, but that went quick on the nice flat level road.
We get to camp, start up our trucks, and immediately strip out of our wet cold clothes.
After jumping in the truck, Sam laid the passenger seat back, and was literally snoring in 3 seconds.
He woke up shortly after, and put on even more layers of clothing,
and to consume some much needed energy, in the form of pepperoni rolls.
I could tell our core temperature was down, the trucks heater was on full blast.
Our skin seemed very hot to us, but we still felt very cold INside.
It was at least another hour before I felt better.
What made it worse, was the next day, we found a much closer spot to camp below the caves, at the base of the mountain.
The cave was well worth the effort through the crawlways etc, but we werent about to try that hike again.
Heres a pic, just to give you an idea of typical West Virginia terrain.
This experience enlightened us to quite a few things.
You should think about the days activities that you have planned, and not only bring the gear needed for those events,
but also be prepared for more. I have been accused many times, of over packing, and taking way too much gear.
I can say, that from now on, I will be bringing even more, especially for warmth and food,
and that I will probably not be harassed about bringing so much gear. At least not by those two.
I usually have enough water with me, I like to stay hydrated, and hate having to ration water.
But, I will be bringing along more food in the future also.
I dont think I have to say much about the importance of good lighting equipment, but I will anyway.
We always have backup lights, and a change of batteries with us while caving.
But I can assure you , the 3 hour hike to the top of the hill would have easily turned to 5 or 6 hours,
had we not had lights with us.
It was very dark, due to the over cast sky, plus it was raining, with very thick fog.
Hiking back up the hill would have been a very slow, and dangerous.
It would have taken a couple more hours, and alittle colder temperatures to actually give us hypothermia.
But, we were definitely experiencing the first fatigue and exhaustion.
Due to the lack of food, and having to push our bodies further than they are used to, in extreme conditions.
Be prepared for the worst, which is usually worse than you think it can get.
Have a backup plan, and the equipment to support that backup.
Watch over the other members of your group, do not let anyone split off from the group.
Think about what you will be doing, the conditions it involves, and how those conditions could change.
Take care
~John
I just wanted to share with you, a camping/hiking/caving adventure I went on, specifically, the conditions of the adventure, and how they can change quickly.
The goal of this story, is to make you alittle more aware of your situation,
and make you think about what the conditions and time frame can do.
Me and two friends (Ben and Sam) went on a caving trip last weekend.
It was about a 1.5 hour drive to the campsite.
By the time we got to camp it was about 11am, alittle windy, and some drizzling rain.
We were only staying one night, so we kept it simple, and only put up one large tarp. Got out our caving gear, and changed into our caving clothes.
I got out my Garmin 60cs GPS unit, to see exactly where the cave was, since I had been given the coordinates to it a couple weeks ago.
It was only about 1.5 miles from camp. Not to bad right? WRONG !
That 1.5 miles was straight down a STEEP hill, that dropped somewhere between 1800 and 2200 feet !
We knew it wasnt going to be a fun hike back, but we didnt think it would be THAT bad. More on that later...
So, we grab our gear and head down the hill.
My gear consisted of a backpack with 3 liter water bladder, and a Pelican case.
I had an extra set of batts for my Canon A95 camera, and a set for my SL 4AA Luxeon.
There was also my backup light, the UK 4AA Lux.
My main light was my Stenlight (www.stenlight.com) attached to my caving helmet. Which has a 2400 mAh lithium pack.
There was no trail or road leading down, so we just made our way down threw the woods.
We finally get to the cave, which has 5 ways into it that are within about 400 feet of each other. We find the main one, and start down in.
We are immediately greeted by a 20 foot drop, with a very old and ragged piece of webbing anchored into the rock. This is to be used to help you get over to the left, where you can then climb down easy.
Traversing over to the left wasnt all that difficult, but it was very unnerving knowing there was a 20 foot drop if you slipped off this foot wide ledge you were sitting on.
After that, there was two other places that were about 10 feet high or so,
there were rocks piled up there to help you climb up and down.
After making it down the 3 or 4 drops,
we are now greeted by about a 2 to 3 foot high crawlway.
Not too bad, we have done worse. so we thought.
We crawl back in at least 30 feet, and it gets lower. It gets to the point where you have to tilt your head sideways.
Your chest is laying on the ground, and your back is touching the ceiling.
You have to scoot yourself forward 8 or 10 inches, then shove your pack forward, scoot up again, shove your pack again.
This continued on for at least another 100 feet or so, but of course felt like 300 feet.
Twice, I had to breath out alittle, and force myself through, this is not a very good feeling when you realize how far into the hillside you are.
Finally, we get out of the crawl to to a section where we can actually situp!
This feels great after that long crawl, so we take alittle break there to rest and stretch out.
Further ahead are a couple more short crawls, mostly hands and knees crawling.
We get to the main section of cave, which opens up quite a bit.
For the most part you can walk crouching down, or standup here.
We take a break here to get something to eat, and look at the map.
Even with the map it was VERY hard to determine where we were.
It is very hard to judge distance, especially if you are crawling most the time.
But we had a pretty good idea where we were, and decided to push on.
We get to a section of the cave that opens up quite a bit.
With large rooms that are easily 30 to 40 feet high. With boulders the size of small cars suspended above our heads.
Its really hard to understand how half of them are staying up there, but thats usually the case in the caves.
Thats why helmets are VERY important !!!!
Even though a 3000 pound bolder is not going to slow down much after it encounters your helmet.
There are plenty of small rocks that can fall and hit you in the head, easily knocking you out.
We get 100 feet of so into the larger rooms and decide to drop our packs, and explore this area.
This was a mistake. Do NOT leave your packs anywhere, unless you are leaving it with your buddies, as you crawl down a small passage to scout it out and come right back.
There must have been at least 4 ways to traverse threw this section to the next set of rooms.
Ben ends up in the ceiling, and has to backtrack alittle to get back down to our level,
so that he can advance down threw the rooms with me and Sam.
We continue into the cave about another 40 feet, when Ben points to an upper section of the room,
and says that he had been up in that section, points down the hall and said that it ended up joining in down there.
I was a bit puzzled by this, seeing how Ben was behind me and Sam the entire time, and I had not even been that deep in the cave yet.
After bringing that to his attention, he says in a state of shock, "wait, we arent heading back OUT?"
He was quite embarrassed by this, but it was perfectly understandable.
Many times there are not reference points in a cave, one room can look just like another.
You can pop out of a small tunnel into a large room, walk 15 feet, turn around, and have no idea where you just popped out of.
It is a good idea to make it a habit of turning around, and looking behind you every so often.
This way you have a better sense of how the cave is shaped, and where you came from.
We went another 100 to 200 feet through the cave, when Sam and I decided we needed to head back,
due to it getting late, and the fact that our packs were now a ways back in the cave.
Remember, you have to get back OUT, and it usually takes more energy to get out, due to you being alittle tired from going in. It is a good rule, to turn around, and head back out, BEFORE you have used half of your food/water, and energy.
Going back out wasnt too bad, we seemed to make it through the crawl fairly fast, and to the section of drops,
that we now had to climb back up out of.
Usually, climbing up is easier than climbing down, you can see where you are going better, and can see handholds etc.
We pop out of the cave at about 7:30 pm
It is completely dark, in the mid 40s, raining, and blowing like hell.
Now comes the hard part....
We were alittle worn out from the 5 hours of caving we just did, but not too bad, done worse.
So we start our dreaded journey up the hill.
The first part isnt as steep, and we trying to find a trail, or old logging road to follow,
instead of having to walk straight up this streambed, which my GPS said was leading straight to camp.
So we end up fallowing the streambed as much as possible, until is feathers out, and is no longer an option.
To make the hike as short as possible, I use the GPS to guide up the hill, as straight toward camp as possible.
Some parts of the hill are 75 to 80 degrees, its soaking wet, and the wind had blown alot of wet leaves off the trees.
It was hard going, and we seemed to need a tiny break every few minutes,
to catch our breath, and let the burning in our legs fade some.
Now, I admit, we arent in the best of shape, and we dont do hikes quite this extreme in a regular basis.
But we had actually done large, steep hill climbs like this before, but in good weather, during the day.
We are about an hour into the hike back to camp now.
My two long sleeve shirts, and coveralls, are now completely soaked threw from the rain.
The hill only gets steeper and steeper toward the top, and our legs are burning like crazy.
We had ran our of food right after getting out of the cave, and all three of us were getting hungry.
I believe this was a big contributor to our problem, we were very low on energy.
Our bodies had to use what calories we had to get us up the hill,
and were probably not producing the body heat they should have been.
Normally, even in the dead of winter, if you are doing a hard hike, you will begin to get hot and sweat.
This was not the case that night, cold wet exhaustion were the primary feelings.
Even though the camp was basically straight up the hill,
it was very easy to veer off to the right or left while climbing the hill.
I had to keep a close watch on the GPS to make sure we were taking the most direct route possible. I would have ened up way off course without it.
At one point, we met up with an old logging road. These roads are very cold, and not really a road at all.
They are just leveled off paths, now overgrown with grass, with large debris scattered across them.
We wanted a break from the steep hill climbing, and the road at least took us up the hill.
After looking at the GPS, I decided we could travel the road a short ways,
but then we would have to travel straight up the hill once again.
We walked a good ways up this road, and by this time were getting quite low on energy.
Ben usually has alittle more endurance than I do, and was just up ahead of me.
Sam had fallen quite a bit behind me, so I decided to stop, and take a good look at the GPS while letting him catch up.
The fog and rain were so thick you could only see about 25 to 30 feet in front of you, even with lights.
This made it very hard to tell where the "road" was going to lead to.
I would like say though, my Stenlight did an excellent job of lighting my way, on the LOW setting.
It was plenty of light with night adapted eyes, besides, any higher setting just made the fog worse.
I used my SL 4AA here and there, to see alittle further up the hill, picking out somewhat easier paths.
The caving helmet helped ALOT for the rain. My face and back of neck were not really getting that wet.
Plus it kept my head pretty dry, which I am sure helped.
The Stenlight took the rain and wind for the entire 3 hour hike. It has more than proven itself to me.
Both Ben and Sam have been using their UK 4AA LED lights, as their primary handheld cave lights.
I use one of these as a backup in my pack also.
Having used one for a few cave trips, I was sold, and bought two more, with the intention of letting them use them.
Well it turns out they liked them so much, that Sam bought one off me, and Ben, well, he wont give the other back. hehe
The UK 4AA LED is not a bright light by any means, but was more than enough in the pitch black caves,
and even seemed to work very well for them in the night hike back.
The 10 hour runtime is the strong point of these lights.
Even I felt re-assured knowing that the UKs would last them the night.
By the time Sam had made it to me, I turned around to look where Ben was.
I saw his light WAY off to the left, as he was wrapping around the side of the hill.
I yelled for him, but he was out of range, the wind was howling too loud.
This was not a good situation, I hate getting separated.
Since Ben could outpace Sam, there was no way we could catch up to him.
To make matters worse, he was heading very far to the left of camp,
we actually needed to head directly up the hill from where Sam and I were standing.
In fact, we were already off to the left some. We had no choice, and had to head up the hill, leaving Ben.
I tied a glowstick to a tree on the side of the road where we headed up the hill.
Hoping that if Ben backtracked, he would see it, and understand to head up the hill.
Sure enough, about 45 minutes later, I hear a faint yelp.
I can see Bens light as I look back down the hill, close to where I know I left the glowstick.
Sam went ahead up the hill, figuring we could catch up to him.
Ben made it up the hill to me and collapsed. He was definitely exhausted.
After alittle rest, we continued up the hill to camp.
About half an hour later, we had reached the gravel road that led to camp. What a relief!
It was about 0.3 miles to camp, but that went quick on the nice flat level road.
We get to camp, start up our trucks, and immediately strip out of our wet cold clothes.
After jumping in the truck, Sam laid the passenger seat back, and was literally snoring in 3 seconds.
He woke up shortly after, and put on even more layers of clothing,
and to consume some much needed energy, in the form of pepperoni rolls.
I could tell our core temperature was down, the trucks heater was on full blast.
Our skin seemed very hot to us, but we still felt very cold INside.
It was at least another hour before I felt better.
What made it worse, was the next day, we found a much closer spot to camp below the caves, at the base of the mountain.
The cave was well worth the effort through the crawlways etc, but we werent about to try that hike again.
Heres a pic, just to give you an idea of typical West Virginia terrain.
This experience enlightened us to quite a few things.
You should think about the days activities that you have planned, and not only bring the gear needed for those events,
but also be prepared for more. I have been accused many times, of over packing, and taking way too much gear.
I can say, that from now on, I will be bringing even more, especially for warmth and food,
and that I will probably not be harassed about bringing so much gear. At least not by those two.
I usually have enough water with me, I like to stay hydrated, and hate having to ration water.
But, I will be bringing along more food in the future also.
I dont think I have to say much about the importance of good lighting equipment, but I will anyway.
We always have backup lights, and a change of batteries with us while caving.
But I can assure you , the 3 hour hike to the top of the hill would have easily turned to 5 or 6 hours,
had we not had lights with us.
It was very dark, due to the over cast sky, plus it was raining, with very thick fog.
Hiking back up the hill would have been a very slow, and dangerous.
It would have taken a couple more hours, and alittle colder temperatures to actually give us hypothermia.
But, we were definitely experiencing the first fatigue and exhaustion.
Due to the lack of food, and having to push our bodies further than they are used to, in extreme conditions.
Be prepared for the worst, which is usually worse than you think it can get.
Have a backup plan, and the equipment to support that backup.
Watch over the other members of your group, do not let anyone split off from the group.
Think about what you will be doing, the conditions it involves, and how those conditions could change.
Take care
~John
