Lost light survives 5 yrs in a cave

[Scott McCrea]

Back on August 14, 2001 I bought a little single LED, AAA battery flashlight to wear on a lanyard around my neck while caving. I settled on an Arc-AAA. It proved to be a great light. I loved it! On August 24, 2002, we were surveying in Lonesome Pine Cave, TN and I lost the light somewhere in the cave. I found the broken lanyard hanging out of my coverall leg. The light and whistle were gone. We searched for a while, but found nothing. I was completely bummed.

Sunday, Sept 9, 2007, over five years later, we returned to Lonesome Pine Cave and found the light in the stream--underwater, about a mile from the entrance. We were on our way out, walking down the stream, I spotted something shiny in the water. I did a double take realizing that it was my long-lost Arc-AAA. I couldn't believe it. I scooped it up and looked it over. It was in pretty good shape. I tried to turn it on. Of course, the battery was dead after five years. I popped in a new battery and it fired right up. Amazing! This thing was rolling around this stream long enough to wear the black finish off and it still works. I did the dance of joy.

This stream sees a lot of water during wet weather, so I imagine that it has been on quite a ride. What a miracle to get it back. It was a great day!


Here's what it looked like when I found it:



After a fresh battery, it still works!



My long lost light!

[incavenow]

Lucky you Scott!! Of all the junk I've found and hauled outa caves over the years, I've yet to find such a nifty lil light that works. It's always great to find some thing you lost and you really beat the odds on this one!!!

[wendy]

i think i have a light here in florida somewhere, one of those princeton tec scouts, i have yet to be back to look for it, its been almost 5 years now, now with scott's story i have hope again and may go back and look

[tncaver]

Scott,
I don't see Lonesome Pines Cave listed in my TCS alphabetical
listing. Is this a new cave? I recently saw three vehicles parked
in Fentress County. One had a North Carolina tag and the other
two were from the Knoxville area. Was that your group?

[Ralph E. Powers]

Scott, you should write to the company and give them a testimonial... bet they'd love to hear how well their light had survived.

Hmm, now if I can have the same kind of luck with my rack that'd be great... sigh.

[Scott McCrea]

Lonesome Pine is a new cave, not in Fentress Co. We just started the survey. I'll post more about it in the future.

Actually, I already sent the company a testimonial. We'll see if it makes the web page...

[Amazingracer]

Hmm, now if I can have the same kind of luck with my rack that'd be great... sigh.

Did you lose your rack in a cave?

[b@t]

Sorry to all in advance, I just had to post this. . . .

Last weekend at TAG Cave-In, our family went into Tumbling Rock. This was only the 2nd cave for my 9 y.o son and 11 y.o daughter (each of whom are doing great, by the way with this newfound interest). So, the formations are quite interesting and intriguing to all of us, especially the kids.

In Tumbling Rock we saw a couple of examples of stalagtites that had separated from the ceiling, fallen down, and then subsequently been concreted to the floor.

When my daughter lost her flashlight (a mini Maglight) somewhere along the way (we never did find it), we were kidding around about what might eventually happen to it. Our conclusion was that it would eventually become a new cave formation ----

a Mag-la-mite



d.b

[Squirrel Girl]

Scott,
I don't see Lonesome Pines Cave listed in my TCS alphabetical
listing. Is this a new cave? I recently saw three vehicles parked
in Fentress County. One had a North Carolina tag and the other
two were from the Knoxville area. Was that your group?

Wahhhhhh-aaaa-yyyyy cool about your light, Scott.

But, hey. This just jumps out at me as a cross between two threads. There's that other thread going about publishing cave locations. I *know* Scott isn't going to publish a cave location here. But it just seems so weird to be reading about complaints of published cave locations in one thread, then over here, reading about wanting to know where a cave is.

[tncaver]

Barbara,
If you are referring to my asking Scott if he was parked in Fentress
County recently, that was not a request for a cave location. I was
simply curious as to who the North Carolina Cavers were. They
were a long way from home while most cavers were attending a
regional caving event.
If you noticed, I did not ask Scott for any more information about
the cave he mentioned, once he said it was not him parked in
Fentress County. I do respect people's projects and secret
cave leads. There are many cavers out there who do not have any
respect for other cavers' projects though.
I hope this clears things up for you.

[Squirrel Girl]

I hope this clears things up for you.

It didn't really need clarifying (at least not for me). Did ya notice the tongue sticking out in my smilie?

It was an irony/timing thing. Not a gotcha thing. It wasn't meant as a precise analogy. Just as an opposites thing and the timing was funny (to me anyway).

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled thread programming. Let us know more details about your light, Scott.

[CKB69]

Go buy a lottery ticket now ....

Actually , thats pretty darn .
Usually when anything like that is lost in a stream crawl , it's gone for good .
I did however find one of those 6 volt , plastic , "hand lantern" lights on a recent trip , although , I doubt it'l fire up anytime soon .

[Wayne Harrison]

I found a mini-mag flashlight that still worked on my last trip to Groaning. I don't know how long it had been in the cave. It was at the bottom of a pit I was checking out.

On the other hand, I lost a GRMS two-way radio in the same pit and couldn't find it. That's why I was checking out the pit. I had knocked my two-way into it. We looked for quite a long time and never found it. It wasn't on, so I couldn't key the speaker to give me a hint of where it went to.

For you Colorado cavers, I lost it near the beginning of the JC Shortcut, if you happen to find it.

[melody]

Good story Scott... love it.

Hey this could be a neat place to post other gear "finds" in a cave. Once I found a double footloop for a frog system down in one of the Rattling Pit drops. I was glad to add it to my system, and wondered what the caver who lost the gear had to tie together to ascend the main pit. I got home and found out that it had belonged to my husband! (I got to keep it, though)

[potholer]

The last year or two, since getting a brighter light, I've been finding lots of stuff underground. I hardly ever used to find anything, but a spell of luck started when I dropped a maillon derigging a solo trip and went back to look for it but couldn't find it despite an extensive search.
After that, I seemed to start finding stuff all over the place, starting with a nice stainless knife I found the next day in a crawl (which the people ahead of me all missed), and I then began actively looking, especially at pitch bases.

Since then, amongst various trash I've found and removed, I've scored about a dozen maillons, only 2 of which weren't usable, two krabs, (including a large HMS screwgate which was in shop condition - no sign of even the lightest use), a Headlite battery box from the bottom of a dark pool and various deviation slings.

However, the best find was earlier this year.
Going down a long-ish vertical trip, I was second-to-last out of 8 people. While waiting for the final person to descend one of the later pitches, I looked around at the floor and saw a piece of black nylon tape sticking up between large cobbles in the floor. Thinking it was a piece of trash sling, I went to pick it up for the sake of tidiness and found it was the footloop of a Pantin, which once the film of mud had been rubbed off, proved to be almost new.

The context for that find was that some of my kit had previously been taken from a hut by mistake, and when it was returned, my Pantin was missing from my vertical gear, but I hadn't wanted to replace it in case it reappeared (which it eventually did). All down the cave I'd been cursing my missing gear