The day to finally have my first adventure in the TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia) caving region was here! My friend Jon picked me up from the airport in Chattanooga Wednesday night and we spent the night at my Aunt Laurie's house in Ocoee, TN. The next morning we loaded up our gear and headed down to Alabama.
Our first stop was at a small grocery store to get some pickled okra. On a previous trip, Jon had gotten some from the same store and it had since became a tradition for TAG caving. Then we were off to Neversink Pit.
We pulled off through a tiny gate, and parked the jeep at the base of the hill. After about a 10 minute hike up the hill, we arrived at the pit. I had never been so close to a pit that large. It was pretty amazing.
Jon rigged the pit, and descended first. When I saw the rope go slack, I took a deep breath and threaded the rope through my rappel rack. I backed up to the edge, looked down, and started to panic. I saw Jon standing 160 feet below me, and nothing but a sheer drop off to the bottom.
I turned my eyes away from the pit and my breathing rapidly increased. I couldn't believe I was doing this. Over the next couple minutes, that seemed like eternity, I slowly fed the rope through my rack and went over the edge, until I found a good balance for making a slow descent to the bottom. Arriving at the bottom my legs were shaking and I struggled to get my footing. I looked up and couldn't believe what I had just done.
I felt pretty proud of myself. I had just pushed fear out of my mind and descended one of TAG's most famous pits. Jon and I spent the next few minutes poking around the bottom taking pictures before Jon began the ascent back up the rope.
When Jon was off the rope, he pulled it up 5 feet, and let it go. That was my signal to hook up and begin the ascent. To me, the ascent was easier, for some reason. It took longer and was definitely a work out. But I was glad to reach the lip of the pit and haul myself over. I breathed a sigh of relief and then helped Jon pack up. We hiked back to the jeep and decided to go see if we could get access to another local cave: Tumbling Rock Cave.
We parked at the guy's house, who subsequently also managed the preserve the cave is on. We looked at the gated entrance and made a couple phone calls to get permission.
We left a message and after a while of waiting we decided to head into Scottsboro to get some food supplies. As we were walking in I told Jon "I don't think he's going to call back; we should probably just forget this cave." "I agree" Jon replied. Not a second later Jon's phone began ringing and after a lengthy conversation we were given access/permission into Tumbling Rock Cave.
Quickly doing our shopping, we could hardly contain our smiles as we drove back out to the entrance and suited up. It was just starting to get dark as we headed in. For the first while, we simply walked along a fairly large passage following a tiny stream. There were small groupings of formations as we continued working our way in.
We saw some areas roped off for excavation. Later research said there had been old saltpeter vats in this portion of the cave. Continuing on the size of some of the formations increased, until we came to a room with what the map dubbed the "Elephant's feet".
We continued on, trying to stay to the right of the cave and hopefully make it pretty far. We poked around breakdown, and tried out different leads. But after about an hour of this we dropped back down into the stream passage and saw the water flowing the opposite way . We pulled up pictures of the map Jon had taken, and concluded somehow we had made a circle. We knew where we were, and decided to head out of the cave. It was starting to get late and we still had to drive back up to Tennessee to our campsite in Sewanee.
We set up camp and then talked with another caver that was near a campfire. He works on windmills around the country. We decided to let him come along on our trip to South Pittsburg Cave the following morning as he had never been there either. Jon had only dropped the pit, but he hadn't explored the cave beyond.
It was a lot colder in the morning when we woke up. And rain was much more abundant. We drove over to South Pittsburg and parked, and then made the hike up the hill to the pit entrance.
It's about a 170 foot drop into this crack. Once inside, it opens up quite a bit. The guy with us (Mike) went first, followed by me, and then Jon. Once again, this drop was pretty intimidating. But it was a great rush. Once we were all at the bottom we climbed down the seemingly endless pile of breakdown and were faced with a vertical wall about 25 feet high. Somebody had rigged a short rope to it. So we hiked all the way back up, grabbed our vertical gear, and came back. Most of us just hooked into the rope with one of our croll ascenders and free climbed with the aid of the rope, using our croll as a safety.
At the top of the wall were two options. Left and Right. Leaving our gear we went to the right. Probably for the next couple hours it involved tight slot passages, belly crawls, climbing up and down some walls, and some neat little domes.
At least we reached what seemed to b a dead end. It was a dome with some very beautiful gypsum formations growing out of the walls. I personally had never seen anything like this before.
There was a rope rigged to the intimidating wall in front of us. Jon was the first one to decide to free climb it. So, using just the rope to pull ourselves up, and the rock for support, all three of us went up. Jon saw it closed up quickly and asked if I wanted to check it out. So, taking off my helmet I plunged into the crack sideways and squeezed myself in until my chest wouldn't expand, and I couldn't get my legs through. Sadly, this was the end of the line.
We went back to one of the walls we climbed up, and I laid back and relaxed, while Jon and Mike spent a good 45 minutes or so exploring a tight painful lead. They eventually returned and we continued on to our vertical gear. This time we took the left passage to go check out some formations and rimstone dams.
This part of the cave was a lot wetter and more active, but it was worth the trip.
This concluded our trip. We returned to our gear, descended down the short wall, and headed back to the rope. I was nominated to go first. The climb up looked very intimidating.
The ascent up the rope seemed to take forever. I focused on the thought of a giant mexican burrito as I climbed upward and made myself not look down at the floor below me. As I neared the top I began to get soaked from the rain. Once I got to the top and safely over the lip it was Mike, and then Jon's turn. I continued to stand in the rain and get soaked, and the temperature was dropping pretty quickly.
When Jon finally reached the top it was a downpour. We packed up our gear and hiked back to the jeep. It was dark, we were soaked and freezing. And then when it couldn't get any more miserable, the keys got locked inside the jeep when I shut a door. So we were stranded underneath a gazebo in the nearby park for 1 1/2 hours until AAA finally showed up and unlocked the door. By that point we all were (especially me) suffering. I had already started the early signs of hypothermia.
We drove over to a mexican restaurant and stumbled in, looking like drowned rats. I almost inhaled my food, but couldn't get warm. I put on some dry clothes in the jeep, and over the course of the night I slowly got my body warmed up.
We had planned on maybe hitting up a cave the next morning, but we were all worn out and the rain was threatening to freeze. So we drove back up the mountain and packed up camp, dropped Mike off, and then Jon and I came back to my Aunt Laurie's to stay the night. Our TAG caving trip was complete. I was definitely pushed past my comfort level a lot, but I enjoyed every second of it. Can' wait to come back! :)
