Post by Mike Green on Nov 13, 2006 12:21:18 GMT -5
This past Saturday (11-04-06), a few of the ACES and myself ventured down into Franklin County with our sites set on another one of TAG’s moderately deep and challenging caves: the Baby Hog Horror Hole. This project began almost one year ago during a wet-season trip to the Hog where we turned around at a quasi-sumped passage. Water during this time was completely unmanageable, and routing was the only reasonable option.
At approximately noontime, Drew Cole, Chad Dubuisson, Matt Schohl, Andy Howe, Stephen Adcock, and I (Mike Green the Younger) drove into the cove with high spirits. The sun was shining, birds were singing, and the leaves on the plateau were truly a sight to see. After dispersing ropes and gear, we proceeded to hike up the ridge to the multi-drop. Upon arrival we decided that it would be in our best interests to micromanage our different objectives by splitting the group up into teams. Drew and Andy were delegated the duty of ridgewalking and gathering data concerning the surrounding karst while Chad, Matt, and Stephen began to prerig the cave. I got to float between the two teams, and help out where I was most needed.
After prepping gear and separating people into teams, I proceeded into the keyhole entrance to the Hog. While climbing, crawling and regretting our trip choice, I yelled, “on rope” to the team in front of me. When no response came, I continued thru the claustrophobic canyon-crawl only to be passed by a fairly large cave rat. I attempted to catch him for dinner, but failed to reach him in the narrow crawlway (sorry Pup, maybe next time). I proceeded down a level in the tight canyon to the area we dubbed the “toilet bowl” due to the “flushing technique” required to pass the obstacle during our last, wet trip. To do this, one must sit in barrel sized tube which forces water up around the neck. After this, the water rushes out a small hole in the bottom and over the first pit (18’). It wasn’t as wet this time, but almost just as annoying. After repelling the first two pits (18’ and 15’), I was reunited with the rig team at the top of the third pit, the Pork Rind (34’). For those who don’t know, the Pork Rind is a freefall-style pit that requires a caver to rig onto the rope backwards and crawl down and out over the lip. The drop is challenging, but very entertaining. It never ceases to make me laugh while standing around and watching others struggle with a crawl, squeeze, pit, etc. (but, I’m never laughing when it comes my turn). The next pit in the series followed immediately. This 24’ pit is also awkward, but is very manageable with the rigging style we chose. At the bottom of this pit is a 20’ down-climb to very low lying, stream passage; additionally, there is a high lead out of the room from the top of the pit. We concluded high lead to be an in feed from Prince Pit (~60’ pit adjacent to the BH^3). This marks the end of the “tourist” trip, and is where we were forced to turn on our prior trip. Although the water table was significantly higher on the previous trip, it still managed to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
The dimensions of the crawlway couldn’t have exceeded a foot, but true nature of the crawl comes from the high level of stagnant, cold water that fills it. This “ear-dipper” extends well over a hundred feet, and is followed by several hundred feet of hands-and-knees crawling. Chad, Stephen, and Matt braved the cold water as I routed out to find Drew, Andy, and a spare polypro (I didn’t have more than silk-weight synthetics on at the time). I meet the ridgewalking team shortly after climbing the first rope out. They had apparently collected a good amount of information on the area (cave points, karst locations, etc.), and wanted to check the high-lead above the last pit (24’). Quickly satisfied with not returning to the surface, I nabbed a wetsuit top from Andy and bolted thru the water crawl in search of the other team.
After some horizontal traversing, I caught up with Chad, Matt, and Stephen who were taking a break in a junction room after the crawl. Claiming to be “in the zone”, I decided to continue and to follow my nose thru a down-lead. Sure enough, the passage ended after only 50’ at the top of Baby Hog Well (101’). Trying to hold back my laughter, I shouted back my findings only to be called wheelsucker! (See what you’ve done Rockeater). The 100’er is a nice change from the rest of the cave with a nice balcony, a freefall drop, and an excellent rig point. The true character of the cave quickly comes back into focus with a muddy crawl at the bottom of the pit. Realizing that at this point we were out of rope, we abandoned our vert-gear, and pushed forward.
After a few climb-downs and a tight, muddy crawl, we reached the last pit (9’). This pit/down-climb is as awkward as every other drop in the cave in that the crawl immediately ends over the pit. Essentially, one must climb down face-first over an undercut lip. Chad was the first to brave the unaided, 9’ climb, then Stephen, then Matt, then myself. As I attempted to crawl out over the pit, one of my legs became wedged in the crawl, and in turn, gravity took its course and put me in a very uncomfortable situation. Only after struggling for a minute or two was I able to free my leg from the crawl, only to fall in the process. I managed to catch myself with one arm, but fortunately, no one was around to witness my novice, buffoon, caving technique.
The end of the cave is marked by a fairly large breakdown room with approximately 60’-70’ of vertical traversing. Oddly enough, it looks like the bottom of a large pit, but there is no dome…This marked the end of our journey to the bitter end of the Baby Hog Horror Hole. Total in-cave time was a little under 6 hours, although it seemed a lot longer than that. With Baby Hog bottomed, leads checked, and surrounding caves search, we routed in search of our next project: obtaining Mexican food!
The following is an account from Andy Howe:
“Seeing how excited Mike was that I'd actually hauled in a wet suit top, and seeing how un-excited I was to do the crawl myself, I had little choice but to hand the wet suit over to him. Left with only a fleece vest under my skimpy cave suit to keep me warm, I was even less thrilled to do the wet crawl. However, I'd already had my run-in with wooziness earlier in the cave when a mild but noticeable bout of claustrophobia grabbed me in the entrance passage and shook me around. I couldn't just route out, so I opted to explore upstream. As I'd rapped down into the room, I'd noticed the going passage near the top. I'd also noticed that it looked reachable on rope. Luckily, I was right on both counts. I frogged up the rope, changed over to my bobbin, and slowly let myself down again, but this time I walked left until I was traversing the ceiling and able to stand on a chalk stone wedged into the crevice. It only took a couple of mud balls bouncing near Drew for him to find shelter out of the fall zone, which was good because soon I was disturbing enough above him that a few basketball sized rocks came down. After confirming the solidity of the roof, I pulled the rope in behind me and detached from it. If something happened to me now, the rope was out of reach of the rest of the team, so I had to be careful. It was actually easy going passage following the water upstream. The passage was very clean, which meant its pointy bits were exposed, and the walls somewhat more sharpened, but it wasn't anything truly horrible. I followed it about 150' until it took a sharp left and went into a long straight thin fissure. One should be able to follow this fissure, on their side, suspended from the floor, but it wasn't going to be me today. I was in my gay-little-cave-suit and my shoulders and upper arms were already shredded. Besides, were I to get stuck, nobody could reach me and the team would be trapped below. I came back out to the rope, and looked for a way to drop it through the ceiling crack, so the others could explore the upper section. However, the rope wasn't long enough to belay to anything and still reach the floor, and the only way it would reach the floor was by pushing against a large chalk stone that could possibly come loose and fall. This was too risky. So I just got on rope and Tarzanned out as carefully as possible and reported back to Drew. Then we routed out to the surface, borrowing a calcite encrusted rope along the way so we could explore a surface pit Drew found earlier.”
At approximately noontime, Drew Cole, Chad Dubuisson, Matt Schohl, Andy Howe, Stephen Adcock, and I (Mike Green the Younger) drove into the cove with high spirits. The sun was shining, birds were singing, and the leaves on the plateau were truly a sight to see. After dispersing ropes and gear, we proceeded to hike up the ridge to the multi-drop. Upon arrival we decided that it would be in our best interests to micromanage our different objectives by splitting the group up into teams. Drew and Andy were delegated the duty of ridgewalking and gathering data concerning the surrounding karst while Chad, Matt, and Stephen began to prerig the cave. I got to float between the two teams, and help out where I was most needed.
After prepping gear and separating people into teams, I proceeded into the keyhole entrance to the Hog. While climbing, crawling and regretting our trip choice, I yelled, “on rope” to the team in front of me. When no response came, I continued thru the claustrophobic canyon-crawl only to be passed by a fairly large cave rat. I attempted to catch him for dinner, but failed to reach him in the narrow crawlway (sorry Pup, maybe next time). I proceeded down a level in the tight canyon to the area we dubbed the “toilet bowl” due to the “flushing technique” required to pass the obstacle during our last, wet trip. To do this, one must sit in barrel sized tube which forces water up around the neck. After this, the water rushes out a small hole in the bottom and over the first pit (18’). It wasn’t as wet this time, but almost just as annoying. After repelling the first two pits (18’ and 15’), I was reunited with the rig team at the top of the third pit, the Pork Rind (34’). For those who don’t know, the Pork Rind is a freefall-style pit that requires a caver to rig onto the rope backwards and crawl down and out over the lip. The drop is challenging, but very entertaining. It never ceases to make me laugh while standing around and watching others struggle with a crawl, squeeze, pit, etc. (but, I’m never laughing when it comes my turn). The next pit in the series followed immediately. This 24’ pit is also awkward, but is very manageable with the rigging style we chose. At the bottom of this pit is a 20’ down-climb to very low lying, stream passage; additionally, there is a high lead out of the room from the top of the pit. We concluded high lead to be an in feed from Prince Pit (~60’ pit adjacent to the BH^3). This marks the end of the “tourist” trip, and is where we were forced to turn on our prior trip. Although the water table was significantly higher on the previous trip, it still managed to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
The dimensions of the crawlway couldn’t have exceeded a foot, but true nature of the crawl comes from the high level of stagnant, cold water that fills it. This “ear-dipper” extends well over a hundred feet, and is followed by several hundred feet of hands-and-knees crawling. Chad, Stephen, and Matt braved the cold water as I routed out to find Drew, Andy, and a spare polypro (I didn’t have more than silk-weight synthetics on at the time). I meet the ridgewalking team shortly after climbing the first rope out. They had apparently collected a good amount of information on the area (cave points, karst locations, etc.), and wanted to check the high-lead above the last pit (24’). Quickly satisfied with not returning to the surface, I nabbed a wetsuit top from Andy and bolted thru the water crawl in search of the other team.
After some horizontal traversing, I caught up with Chad, Matt, and Stephen who were taking a break in a junction room after the crawl. Claiming to be “in the zone”, I decided to continue and to follow my nose thru a down-lead. Sure enough, the passage ended after only 50’ at the top of Baby Hog Well (101’). Trying to hold back my laughter, I shouted back my findings only to be called wheelsucker! (See what you’ve done Rockeater). The 100’er is a nice change from the rest of the cave with a nice balcony, a freefall drop, and an excellent rig point. The true character of the cave quickly comes back into focus with a muddy crawl at the bottom of the pit. Realizing that at this point we were out of rope, we abandoned our vert-gear, and pushed forward.
After a few climb-downs and a tight, muddy crawl, we reached the last pit (9’). This pit/down-climb is as awkward as every other drop in the cave in that the crawl immediately ends over the pit. Essentially, one must climb down face-first over an undercut lip. Chad was the first to brave the unaided, 9’ climb, then Stephen, then Matt, then myself. As I attempted to crawl out over the pit, one of my legs became wedged in the crawl, and in turn, gravity took its course and put me in a very uncomfortable situation. Only after struggling for a minute or two was I able to free my leg from the crawl, only to fall in the process. I managed to catch myself with one arm, but fortunately, no one was around to witness my novice, buffoon, caving technique.
The end of the cave is marked by a fairly large breakdown room with approximately 60’-70’ of vertical traversing. Oddly enough, it looks like the bottom of a large pit, but there is no dome…This marked the end of our journey to the bitter end of the Baby Hog Horror Hole. Total in-cave time was a little under 6 hours, although it seemed a lot longer than that. With Baby Hog bottomed, leads checked, and surrounding caves search, we routed in search of our next project: obtaining Mexican food!
The following is an account from Andy Howe:
“Seeing how excited Mike was that I'd actually hauled in a wet suit top, and seeing how un-excited I was to do the crawl myself, I had little choice but to hand the wet suit over to him. Left with only a fleece vest under my skimpy cave suit to keep me warm, I was even less thrilled to do the wet crawl. However, I'd already had my run-in with wooziness earlier in the cave when a mild but noticeable bout of claustrophobia grabbed me in the entrance passage and shook me around. I couldn't just route out, so I opted to explore upstream. As I'd rapped down into the room, I'd noticed the going passage near the top. I'd also noticed that it looked reachable on rope. Luckily, I was right on both counts. I frogged up the rope, changed over to my bobbin, and slowly let myself down again, but this time I walked left until I was traversing the ceiling and able to stand on a chalk stone wedged into the crevice. It only took a couple of mud balls bouncing near Drew for him to find shelter out of the fall zone, which was good because soon I was disturbing enough above him that a few basketball sized rocks came down. After confirming the solidity of the roof, I pulled the rope in behind me and detached from it. If something happened to me now, the rope was out of reach of the rest of the team, so I had to be careful. It was actually easy going passage following the water upstream. The passage was very clean, which meant its pointy bits were exposed, and the walls somewhat more sharpened, but it wasn't anything truly horrible. I followed it about 150' until it took a sharp left and went into a long straight thin fissure. One should be able to follow this fissure, on their side, suspended from the floor, but it wasn't going to be me today. I was in my gay-little-cave-suit and my shoulders and upper arms were already shredded. Besides, were I to get stuck, nobody could reach me and the team would be trapped below. I came back out to the rope, and looked for a way to drop it through the ceiling crack, so the others could explore the upper section. However, the rope wasn't long enough to belay to anything and still reach the floor, and the only way it would reach the floor was by pushing against a large chalk stone that could possibly come loose and fall. This was too risky. So I just got on rope and Tarzanned out as carefully as possible and reported back to Drew. Then we routed out to the surface, borrowing a calcite encrusted rope along the way so we could explore a surface pit Drew found earlier.”
