ORGAN CAVE

Feburary 23-25 2001

by: Jason Hart

It started out as a thought in Billy Picketts head, as a lot of things do. To do a trip so demanding that only the finest of people need apply. To do a trip from the Organ commercial entrance, and out the Lipps entrance via the meatgrinder. So at a grotto meeting Billy set out a piece of paper and said "sign, and go where few Rassers have gone before" (in a spooky voice) So I signed like I was selling my soul! But to my amazement so did a bunch of crazies. So this brings us to our cast: Trish Griger, Brandi Hart, Elizabeth "the squirrel" McIntire, Catie Biggers, Jay Brockwell, Rick Wagner, Joey Wagner, Tim "TIMMY!!" Grimm, Miles S., one Billy Pickett, and m,e Jason Hart.

Billy just made a few slight adjustments to the red speleorocket that he calls "the van" so the vehicle was rarin' to go to West Virginia of all places! Billy collects all of his kids (Trish, Jason, Brandi, Catie, Miles, and Elizabeth). And heads off to the wild, the wonderful, place we call West Virginia. Ricky, Jay, and Joey already have been at the Fort Savanna motel in Lewisburg for some hours now and greeted our welcome. They transformed a regular motel room into a field station of the future. The wall were adorned with cave maps of Organ cave, and some caves we did not plan to go in. But all of those decorations made us feel right at home.

In the morning we arose at caver eastern moonlight savings time. Billy packed up his kids and took them to Walmart. (as every good West Virginia dad does) We were very happy when we realized that it was a supercenter and had a Mcdondals. After we ate, we headed off to the cave! After visiting the official Organ cave store we packed up all the newly purchased confederate flags and drove the Billy's van and Jay's Jeep to the Lipps entrance. All I can tell you is that we entered the cave when the sun was a shinein'. We walked along some lighted walkways and were telling jokes about tourist. (there real smart to stay on that trail!) We traversed stream passage for a long way, when I realized that we are in West Virginia and these streams run forever. So we back tracked and approached a little more cautiously. Soon we approached a sump on a different passage and knew that we had gotten carried away and gone too far. The map showed the first left was the passage into the meat grinder. Well, Tim went into the "first passage to his left" and came out quite disgruntled. He appeared startled and looked at the navigators. You could see Glenn in his eyes saying "It's a disease I tell you a DISEASE!!" (For all of you who don't know that means that it is tight, real tight!) So we knew that was not the way. Joey and I head up the stream passage trying to find our SECOND LEFT instead of first left. We eventually found it and it was called the MEATGRINDER, call us hamburger because we were goin through it!!

We crawled a long crawl. Yes, there were hunks of fine sirloin that just about every one lost on the way. It truly is the Meatgrinder. At the end of the meatgrinder there is a special place ,this is almost a "It's a DISEASE!" place but with a lot of wind. With the Meat Grinder behind us there was no choice. Jay had some problems getting through the hole , so he striped down to his poly pro and gave the rock a run for is money. But I am happy to say that the rock and Jay survived this trying ordeal.

Well, in the words of a famous caver that was "childs play" compared to the lower Jones Canyon!! Crawlclimbswim comes the close on describing how to traverse this passage. And the comforting words of Billy saying "I don't remember it being this hard!" did not make it any easier. In this passage we had a cruising team, led by an exploration team. The exploration team always does it the hard way (Brandi, Elizabeth, Jay and Joey). By the time the exploration team was about to cry they could hear me crusin right along in a upper passage. I looked down a crack and found them lounging in a stream. They praised me for finding the real passage, climbed up the slime, and rested in soft, dry cave dirt. At this time the whole group re collaborated and set off a game plan to find the way out. We came to pit after pit and always found a safe way around. After this point fewer and fewer jokes were begin told, and fewer rebel yells were begin delivered. Everyone's focus was to get out with time to find a restaurant open. (Lewisburg closes about 10:00)

About 3-4 hours later we glanced the at the West Virginia Cave Protection law sign on the wall ,and a twinkle fell in the eyes of the cavers. After slickin up as best we could do in a speleo van, we headed to Hardees. We made all of the employees mad, but we really needed sustenance. After returning to the motel room Billy was looking at the wall smiling. He pointed to a map of Carpenter-Swago caves and said "here it is, next month!!" The trip report for that cave will becoming very shortly. The next morning the cripples (I mean Cavers) limped on home. After signing the wall of the speleovan everyone took a good look and laughed the phrase of the trip. This was " Organ entrance to Lipps entrance via the Meatgrinder. Let unass this Shiest hole!!"

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