Poking About in TAG.
11th -
13th December 1992 and 15th-l8th January
1993.
For those
of you who don’t know about my little sojourn in the Good Old U.S. of A., I’m
here working for the American branch of a British company in a place called
And so it
was that I found myself at Cumberland Caverns near the town of
I quickly located Alan Cressler, one of the hard team, in the car park and his
mate Ted Wilson. They announced that we were off on a Friday night excursion to
Cumberland Chasm just up the road. After a hack through the woods we arrived at
the entrance which was blowing out steam into the chilly night air.
A short crawl and a narrow climb led to a fine 140 foot pitch into a chamber
with water sinking in the floor in several places. All the draught was coming
out of a narrow rift passage which is tantalisingly close to one of the far
flung corners of the Cumberland Caverns system. However TAG cavers have got far
better things to do than fart about digging to connect a pothole to a cave as
you’ll see.
When we got back to camp at Cumberland Caverns about a hundred people had
turned up and Alan introduced me to them all but I can’t hardly remember any of
their names, but some of the real classic cavers of the area were there. Then
an odd and rather frightening thing happened: we sat round a campfire chatting
and didn’t drink any beer!
The next
morning we were up early and down to Shoney’s Restaurant for a $5
all-you-can-eat breakfast bar. I’m afraid it made the menus of certain
The
American caver is never happy without his truck and our team of eight had six
cars. Eventually we found a space large enough to park and we hacked off
through the woods to the entrance. After tying the rope to a tree we abseiled
the 150 foot entrance pitch with the rope rubbing in lots of places and no rope
protectors. (Ray would have a fit if he saw it). Alan was busy fiddling about
with some 4000 year old Indian remains which he later identified by sex and age
somehow (clever git). The rest of us soon got bored of the bones and went down
the shorter second and third pitches into a boulder floored chamber. Meanwhile
we had spotted an obvious lead between the second and third pitches but it
required some more rope and bolting to get across to it. More of this later.
After Chism Chasm a few of us decided to go to Rock Drop Well, a cave with 4
pitches and lots of swinging onto ledges to find the way on. It ended in the
inevitable boulder-floored chamber. A good sporting trip with an awkward
take-off on the last pitch.
Then it
was back to the Christmas Party. My worst fears were confirmed when it was
revealed that there was an alcohol ban. Fortunately I had taken the precaution
of packing a bottle of Scotch so me and another British caver from the Mendips
had to drink it out of a lemonade bottle. I was quite surprised when I was
reading my Christmas present a few weeks later, which was a copy of ‘The Great
Caving Adventure’ by Fartin Marr. He went caving with the same people (Marion
Smith and Jim Smith) in 1972 and suffered a similar fate at the Cumberland
Caverns Christmas Party. On Sunday morning I had to sort out some business with
Cecile James who was going to give me a lift to
I knew
they were going to
The ubiquitous tree belay gave a steep sloping abseil to the top of the first 120
ft drop in a wide daylight shaft. A rebelay to another tree gave a fairly
free-hanging drop onto a dead deer. From here large passages radiated out and
there was a second 60 ft drop down through boulders into the lower part of the
passage. A short walk led to another fine pitch of 165 feet into a large
chamber with a stream entering from avens and sinking in the floor. A passage
led off apparently to several other chambers where the morning team were
carrying out a survey. When we gibbed we pretended it was because we wanted to
get home but in fact we didn’t want to get involved with any boring surveying
and get stuck behind a load of slow old gits on the pitches. That just left me
with a boring 8 hour drive back to
A few
weeks later I was back in TAG again. I was too late for the Friday night trip
and arrived at Cumberland Caverns at 1 am. The next morning we assembled at the
Ponderosa Cafe in the neighbouring town of
We all did the exchange trip and I
pushed on down through a loose boulder choke for another 40 foot through some
small cambers increasing the total depth by a few feet. E2 soon became a bit
porridgey and covered everyone with a thick coating of sticky mud on the way
out.
In the next cave my demented digging
tendencies surfaced at the bottom of a
cave
called ‘28 foot pit’. A low
crawl with a strong draught beckoned me
irresistibly so I
attacked with bear hands and a geologists hammer. After 20 minutes of digging I was through and into a low crawl. However after 20 foot it ended at a narrow inlet, so I backed out. I discovered the downstream way on but it needed digging through another mudbank. The others
were a bit bored of waiting so we left it. The others renamed it ‘Pete’s Poke Hole’ In my honour and a tear came
to my eye at the thought of having such a fine cave named
after me. We then did a bit of prospecting
and found another 50 foot open shaft which had
been reported by locals but
never explored by cavers. We got quite
excited as we
abbed into a large chamber with
a nice waterfall but It ended in a
solid choked floor. It was dark
by now so we retired to a restaurant for a well-earned ridiculously
cheap tea. On Sunday, after breakfast
we split up arid went to various places. Me, Geoff Dilcher
and Paul Aughey from
that night we were out-bragged
by Alan Cressler’s team who had found over half a mile of superbly decorated railway tunnel at Chism Chasm with a simple bolt climb and pendulum.
Bastardsl
Monday was a public holiday in honour of Martin Luther
King so we had another days
caving. Again we split up and I went with Ted Wilson just to do a couple
of short caves Short they may have been but the quality was there. The first one
started with an awkward muddy sideways
crawl which continued for about 20
minutes, hot work with large
bundle of rope. This led to a
squeeze and a skydive. I was in
my element and Ted was too
and we were moving along well. He’s from
After exiting to an ice storm, which is a cross between a snowstorm and a hailstorm, we made a chilly descent of a neighbouring 90 foot
shaft before it
was time for me to set off on the long drive back to
Pete
Hall
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