Day: October 27, 1995

Brett, the Man with the Van who Has Mad Driving Skills

The group met at 9 a.m. behind Buruss. Since it was decently early and we were planning on going to the not-so-distant Trout Mountain in West Virginia, Ed told everybody to meet over at Mr. J’s Bagels. After a hearty breakfast, the group met out in the parking lot to see what shape the gear was in. It ended up that there were too few electric lights for everybody, so a decision was made to pick up the Carbide gear at Ed’s place. Off to West Virginia. John drove his Jeep, Mandi took her Honda, and Brett took the rest of the club. Upon our arrival, the club met a few other cavers from Williamsburg. After dressing, many of the cavers were eager to enter into the 58-degree warmth of the caves. However, Ed had to dress, and then completely undress to put on kneepads. Half the club went to Trout with Mandi and Linne’, but the real cavers followed Ed into the crawling nightmare known to the locals as “Hamilton.” Ed hadn’t been there in over two years and he knew the possibilities of getting lost would most likely be imminent. Nonetheless, he bravely led the fearless followers into the darkness-never to be seen again (well, not quite). Inside the cave, people were having fun.

Crawling around for hours, people got quite used to seeing an ass in front of them. Singing, laughing, and Darwin Awards were all discussed. Many people were really into the trip-like Warren. Warren was taking control-finding tight passages to crawl into left and right. JC, on the other hand, preferred the bigger rooms. When we were given an option of either crawling or walking, we always knew where JC stood. We were having so much fun we accidentally discovered a large area of the cave! It was uncertain if we had actually found the back of the cave-but Ed had never made it this far before. After playing around in the large rooms, Ed thought it would be a good idea to leave a two-hour pad to exit the cave. The search was on. But, it didn’t take long. Ed and John went off by themselves looking for the exit, but only found rambling passages that would have continued for hours, or so it seemed. Back in the main room, Ed tried another passage himself. He went forward about 5-10 minutes. It was all crawling again, so he felt he was on the right path. Sure enough, up ahead Ed saw a dim light. Yelling got him nowhere, but he definitely knew that it was a sure way out. He called the club and they soon followed.