First TAG Trip (Dry)
Not quite Cave Diving... but the drier (well, kinda drier) counterpart of dry and vertical caving. Last weekend CaverCraig and I took a trip up to TAG for a dry caving weekend, and being my first time up there it was quite an experience! We left Tallahassee and met a friend in Tifton, GA and headed up to La Fayette, GA. It was a great drive, three full grown men in a single cab of a Ford Ranger. Saying it was cramped is a little bit of a stretch. We set up camp at Pigeon Mountain, got our asses in gear and headed over to Pettijohn's cave on the mountian. Did I mention it was below freezing? We all got in our crawl suits and helmets and went into the well traveled cave, and man, these TAG caves are wayyyy bigger than our FL dry caves! The first room of Pettijohn's is amazing, its huge! We explored that area a bit, climbed to the back, turned around and headed to the lower levels to try and find the Echo Room (we didnt). We met a couple of good ol' georgia boys in there (locals) and they offered to show us around. We crawled through the Pancake passage and explored some more excellent cave, lots of climb ups and climb downs. We made it to a chimney drop near the 100' pit, climbed down and explored some more! Went along a sweet little stream passage that had eroded the walls quite smooth, it was probably my favorite passage in the cave. We got to the point where we were a little tired, and being 2 am we decided it would be best to head back and get out. Made our way back, those chimney climbs were a PITA, gave me a little bit of entrance fever. Mainly because I was borrowing a crawl suit that was just a little tight, couldnt get full range of motion. After another hour of exiting, we finally made it out into the freezing cold and headed back to camp and slept.
The next morning we went to the little caving supplier in Chickamauga and stocked up on some gear, and tired to get carbide for out lamps, but they were out! So the owner went to his home and brought us his own supply! It was an extremely nice thing to do, and we were greatly thankful for it because we had ran out of carbide the night before. We headed over to Cagles Chasm just north of the border in TN for some vertical work. It was my first time to do real vertical pits, i had learned and practiced quite a bit hanging from a 30' tree in the backyard, but it wasent quite the same. The area was beautiful, on the side of what southerners call a mountain, but what an Alaskan (like me) would call a little hill, but to each his own. We rigged the rope and Craig rapelled down first so I could get a feeling for how to get over the lip. When he was down I set up my rack and got on rope. I was pretty nervous getting over the lip, and possibly even a little more nervous when I got past it and was hanging 180' from the bottom! To say the least my rapel probably took 10 minutes. But man, once I was on the bottom, it was amazing! The view of the hole at the top was excellent, and the cave at the bottom was big. We found a rat at the bottom, and im guessing his rat wife left him and there was a big messy rat divorce, cause he must have decided it was too much and jumped off the ledge. We explored the pit a little bit and then climbed out, and I am much more comfortable at climbing than rapelling. It was starting to get a little dusky, but we decided to bounce the pit one more time to prepare for the trip the next day, and I felt so much better on this rapel. I even practiced my bag hauling skills and zipped right down the rapel and climbed right back out, but not until I snapped some great pictures. It was just dark when we started hauling up the rope, and it was pure night and cloudy by the time we made it back to the truck. And then on the drive back to camp it decided to start raining, which put a quick bummer on things. But when we made it back to camp it had lessend to a light rain so we quickly got the fire going and changed into our rain gear. There were some other campers around and they brought us over a pallet but invited us to their raging and comfy fire, which was an experience. One of the guys was an old caver who had to retire from hard caving awhile back due to back problems, and the other was jsut getting into it. But they were some characters...telling us stories while they sat at their fire smoking peyote and playing wooden flutes that one of them makes. One of them even suggested bungee jumping the Fantastic pit at Ellisons cave! It was an experience to say the least.
The next morning we packed up camp and prepared ourselves for the reason of the trip, Fantastic Pit at Ellisons cave, a 600+ foot pit, which we would do a 540' rapel on. We met up with another friend who had a 615' static rope which we would do the pit with. The hike up to Ellisons entrance was beautiful, walking through the woods in a Georgia winter is quite peaceful. We got in the cave, followed the wide stream passage to the warm-up pit, which is a 130' drop all on its own. It was a fairly easy rapel, the lip was friendly. This is a serious multi drop cave, as we had to do two more short rapels (less than 40 feet) but we difficult being right up against the walls with hard lips to get over. The cave is quite nice; large, but not many formations actually. Or at least many that I saw. It took up about 4 hours to get close to the Fantastic pit, there are a few small crawls that were hard getting all of our gear through, especially the one called 'the anus'. We got to the last room before the pit, and did the crawl out to the balcony, which was scary all in its own because the crawl is about 4 feet from the pit, but its tight and virtually no chance of falling. We made it to the balcony, and with the sound of a raging waterfall all about I finally saw the grandeur of Ellison's cave and the Fantastic pit, and boy was it ever. It took us awhile to uncoil and rig the rope, as it had got a little tangled while crawling. While getting ready, one of the team backed out and decided not to do the pit, he said he wasent ready for it mentally. Me? I was all in, I didnt crawl back there for nothing and I wasent going to sit around for 3 hours while the others explored the cave at the bottom. When it was my time to rig up (I went second), i was just a little nervous. Something about hanging 540' above a seemingly endless pit. But i rigged up anyways and dropped off the ledge, which was actually the most friendly edge in the cave. Here I was, hanging 540' above the ground, and I couldnt even see the first persons light at the bottom. It was a tough time feeding the rope through my rapel rack, a very tough time due to the weight of the rope below me. It got easier as i made my way down, and I got passed the inital fear and wonderment took over as I started seeing how enormously huge this pit was. Huge as in a chunk of limestone bigger than a medium sized building leaning against the pit came into view and dissapeared within a few minutes of rapelling... it was just breathtaking. I finally made it to the bottom, amid the windy mist. I got off the rope and let out a whoop of joy for slaying 'the dragon' as we had dubbed the pit at the beginning of the trip, i kinda felt like Saint George. The third team member descended and we signed the register and went looking for the North Pole formation, which we didnt find. I guess we will have to make another trip! We explored for another hour or two and made our way back. The first guy and I ascended tandem, and it took us about 50 minutes to climb out because he was having trouble with his ascenders catching. The third member, in training to climb Mt. McKinley in May, ascended in 20 minutes. What a haus. We made the return trip out, all of us having entrance fever, and finally exited Ellisons after a 12 hour trip. We hiked back down the mountain in the 25 degree night, which actually wasent too cold for me. Changed into clean clothes and headed back to Tallahassee, arriving home at 6 am. I feel like I can do anything now, after rapelling a 600 foot pit it doesnt seem like little things are that scary anymore. I had heard after doing this pit I would be a better man, and by golly, I sure as hell am.
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