"Undated"

Trip Report: Crossroads, Breathing and Roadside Pit

By Rick Wagner

We (Susan, my kids Jennifer and Sarah) arrive at the Field Station about 2 o'clock Friday afternoon. We just did get the tarp over our tent when it started raining. Green Valley lives up to its name again. About 8 o'clock that night, Jay get us all fired up for a late night Crossroads trip. David Efford, Timmy Grimm, John Lipp, Jay and myself go underground at 9:00 o'clock. After only being in the cave about 15 minutes, John feels like he's been in for 2 hours. I decide to lead him out. We later find him resting in the bed of Jay's truck. The rest of us head towards the slot. David likes it so much he goes through a second time to take some pictures. After that we head out. Timmy and myself take the bypass around the pit and Register to catch Jay, but it's a tie. We forget about David until we hear him yelling in the direction of the pit. I backtrack to find him in the bottom of it. We regroup and head towards the entrance after three hours. We've had enough.

10:30 Saturday morning Jay and myself are not able to find any (suckers) cavers, so we go on to Breathing with map in hand. We do a little ridge walking on the hike up (AKA we took the wrong road which we'll blame on road construction) and finally make it to the entrance where we take a much needed break before entering. At the Junction Room, we make the second wrong turn of the day. We now know where the other parallel passage is, the one that dead ends. After four hours we've had enough. Back at camp after everybody's "Batman" imitation, I inform Billy we're off to Roadside Pit at 8:00 AM Sunday morning. "Count me in" he says and at 8:00 AM we pick up Billy and head towards Wva.

Jay claims he can get there in 45 minutes. This quickly wakes Billy up and an hour later we're suiting up. Oh by the way, in the rush to leave the Field Station with Billy half asleep, he leaves his vertical gear. "No problem" he says and with a piece of webbing he makes a Swiss Seat, then makes two Prisik Loops and he borrows a Figure "8" and two carabiners and he's ready. Billy goes down first, I'm next then Jay. After looking around the historical section and trying out the pinch to the back section we decide to leave. Billy Prusiks up first and you would think he was pushing his van up Afton Mountain the way he is grunting and groaning. I'm glad Jay lets me use his Rope Walker because it's the hot ticket. Jay and I decide to haul up our bags before he comes up. It won't work, I should have listened to Billy's advice (doesn't everybody?). When Jay gets to the entrance slot he has to take off his chestroller to get through. While I'm hauling up the rope I forget about the knot we put in to haul up the bags. It gets stuck at the first ledge. "Stuff like this happens all the time" Billy says. Jay's ready to sacrifice the rest of the rope until we realize there's 20 feet still inside. Billy decides to free climb down the ledge but not before Jay and I make him use a harness. Jay belays him while I look for a stick for Billy to knock the knot free. After Billy climbs out and sits on the entrance ledge, Jay pulls on the rope and it pops out of the carabiner. This happens after Billy had previously instructed us not once, not twice, but three times to "always check the carabiners to make sure they're locked".

We head towards Green Valley at 1:00. Jay's driving finally gets to Billy and he announces "if you don't slow down, I won't tell you where any more caves are". We have a nice ride back after that. From now on I'll call Mr. Brockwell "A.M. Jay" for his early morning cave trips. Even with all the rain it's another perfect cave conference.

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