Thursday morning I was up early, and got a ride up to campus where I was meeting Jon to go caving. It was going to be an awesome day! Jon and I were going to go do Sinks of the Roundstone Pit in the morning. It's a 120 foot vertical shaft, with a small amount of cave extending beyond. After that, Brandon and Critter, and my old caving friend Chris were going to meet us and we were going to do some exploring in Mullins Spring Cave.Jon and I hiked up to the pit entrance, and worked on rigging the rope, and putting on all our rope gear.
I descended the pit first. It was nerve-wracking at first, but once I was on my way down it was so much fun.
Once Jon descended he led me as far as you could go through the cave. There was a little bit of free climbing down, and then some winding passage carved out by the water. When we reached the end we turned around, and rested at the bottom of the pit. Then I ascended first. It wasn't too bad of a workout going the 120 feet up. You had to push the fear from your mind thinking that your life depended on a small rope. We went back to the gas station near the Interstate exit and waited for Brandon and Critter. When they arrived we made the drive to Mullins Spring Cave.
The "plan" was to go explore the dry areas of the cave, and then Chris thought he remembered the really deep water connection passage to get to the main part of the cave. However, as soon as we entered Chris led Brandon and Critter off to another part of the cave. Jon followed me. We explored some passages I knew, and even found others. Jon and I climbed down to a pit that had a waterfall, I had always believed a small passage shooting off from it ended. However, we climbed up the wall and through a little hole we found it went. Jon remembered it being connected to the "Violation entrance" (another connection made to the Mullins spring cave system). It was nice figuring this out. After a while we backtracked and tried to find the others. We eventually did. They had spent a lot of time in the water. They took us back to a dome and waterfall they had found, and then I found a small hole that I challenged people to squeeze through. Jon and I tried, and both made it. Brandon couldn't fit.
At this point, we were tired and cold, so we decided to head out... The very wet entrance, of course. It was deep, and cold.
We changed, parted ways, and I went with Brandon back up to Richmond. We hung out and played games until I went to bed. It was a great day of caving.
