Cagles/McBrides/Ellisons Crossover

[Chads93GT]

Yes its long but it encompasses trips on Thursday night, Friday, Saturday and the weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee hours of Sunday. Most of my pictures suck, as the place is simply too damn big to get shots in with a point and shoot.

TAG, August 12, 13, 14, 2010.
Cagles Chasm
Edmund Tucker and I headed out from Southern Illinois at noon and headed to On Rope in Chattanooga, TN, to get some last minute items for the weekend. We then drove over to Cagle’s Chasm and rigged the Jeepside entrance. As this was the 2nd time we had been in this entrance, we noticed a hole directly behind the flowstone ledge. I rappelled down the 110ish foot deep pit to the floor while Edmund inspected the hole in the wall. If I remember correctly he said he saw another dome/pit at this point. He continued on to the floor where we took off our gear and headed down the horizontal passage to a wall that Edmund found on our last trip in. We climbed the wall, rigged another rope for a hand line then dropped down to the floor. We planned on exploring the downstream portion of the cave, a goal that was met almost immediately as the cave pinched out too tight for Edmund to fit into.
After Edmund explored a room he found in the ceiling of this small area, we returned to the large dome at the base of the wall to take some photo’s. We then traversed up the rope and across the narrow ledge, jumped across the ravine and climbed another wall into an alcove. Moments later we were standing at the base of the 3rd entrance to the cave, a name which I forget at the moment. We returned to our gear in Jeepside and rigged the 90ish foot balcony drop down to the bottom of Cagles. Since I rigged it, I dropped first, got off rope and got out of the fall zone. I immediately discovered that a fawn had fallen into the chasm and was lying in a contorted mess on the floor of the pit, 186’ below the ledge that it plunged over. It must have been a recent accident as there was no sign of decomposition yet.
We then made the decision to climb the hand line rigged on the wall at the base of the pit, up into a dry area of the cave that neither of us had been to. Immediately we were into a dry meandering crawl which was beginning to remind me more and more of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We found several holes in the floor, a hand line traverse over a pit then finally a second hand line that we down climbed to the base of yet another short pit. Edmund climbed into an alcove and I dropped down a hole into a lower level and into a large room filled with breakdown and large flowstones. We then turned and headed down a passage that looked like it was heading back towards the base of Cagles. After a few minutes we decided to abandon this passage and return promptly to the base of the pit where we climbed back into Jeepside. I de-rigged the drop while Edmund continued out of the cave to the surface. Minutes later we were both on the surface and hiking back down to the truck. It was a hot evening and we threw our gear into the back of my Tahoe, jumped in and took off for the Comfort Inn in Kimball, TN.
As we pulled into the parking lot and began to change clothes, a man in a lifted red Ford F150 pulled up and asked if we were with LJ Tognetti. As we were, we laughed about the coincidence of “cavers stripping in the parking lot” and being with LJ who was currently en route from Peoria, IL. Unfortunately, this weekend was quite the mind job so I do not recall this man’s name, however he and his wife live 15 minutes from Ellison’s and he works at PMI. A friend later informed me after we got home that It was Peter and Jane; however, he didn’t include his last name. The night ended with the rest of our crew arriving from northern Illinois. LJ and Andrea Tognetti, Todd and Laura McCartney, Bill Morrow, Ralph Sawyer, and Jason Kern arrived right around Midnight.
McBride’s Pull-down
The 9 of us met Bill Putnam at the Cracker Barrel restaurant in Kimball, TN at 8:00 a.m. for breakfast before heading to McBride’s cave for what people argue is the best pull down trip in TAG. We arrived at the farm house and began to pack our gear for the trip. Bill had a 300’ PMI 9mm that we cut in half, and we also had a 3rd rope that was of a good length for this trip. After the brutal hike up the hill in the exhausting heat, carrying wetsuits, gear, food and water, we finally found the entrance. Bill had not been here in 10 years but we were able to find the hole fairly easily none the less. While searching for it we also found a pit that appeared to be 20-30 feet deep.
As we got dressed, high heat and wetsuits do not mix, some of us began to enter the cave. We down climbed down to the first rig point where Todd and Bill were rigging the first drop. After they dropped down to the first ledge, I got on rope and rappelled right past them, down through the floor, to the next level 20 or 30 feet below. As I untangled the ropes and threw the tails off to the side, the rest of the crew began moving down. By this time I was burning up and I found a small pool of water to lay in to cool down. Moments later I climbed down a water chute to the next rig point. We rigged this rope and the group immediately began moving down this next drop which was a fairly tight joint.
A refreshing pool of water was at the bottom of this drop which allowed for cooling down. By this time, Todd, Laura, Edmund and I had moved on to the next drop which was fairly short, but we were dropping in through the ceiling. It was a pretty cool drop, and Todd immediately headed downstream to find the next rig point. He found a large pool of water, a permanent rope, and a waterfall so most of us began moving up to jump into the water to cool down. Edmund floated around in the water while I climbed the extremely rotten rope up into the waterfall room above. I tied a butterfly knot in the rope to bypass a frayed portion that bent at a 90* angle then moved on. Since none of us had been here but Bill and LJ, and both of their trips were over or almost a decade ago, details were a bit fuzzy but they did know we had to climb up into an upper level, traverse dry passage and find a breakdown pile to climb down through. We made our way up this waterfall stream, and eventually I found a bone dry passage.
We figured this was the right way, but to make a long 2.5 hour crawling session short, it obviously wasn’t as the passage ended (for us) in a large dome with a rope hanging from it. Apparently this was the Alabama dome. We immediately made our way back downstream and began checking all leads for this hidden upper passage. Frustrated, I returned to the plunge pool that the rotten rope hung down into and searched for the path of the water. Not being able to find it, I headed back towards our last drop and noticed a high ceiling channel which I climbed up into. After scrambling around in some dry passage, I located a couple cairns, flagging tape, a survey station, followed by large breakdown boulders and another large cairn. I returned down the path I came through, extremely tired and burning up from the wetsuit and dry passage.
As I got into ear shot of the group I began yelling while heading towards them till LJ heard me yelling. I told them I had found the way through the cave and the group began heading towards my location. We took a break and headed down the breakdown pile and into the stream passage below. The water dropped under a large breakdown passage and Todd and I continued ahead to find the route. After another wrong turn as I followed the elephant tracks, we noticed a cairn that we passed on the way in. I dropped into the hole, followed by Bill Putnam, and we began passing ropes through the tight crawlway till we were at the top of a small drop where a permanent rope was rigged down into a deep ankle breaking plunge pool below. I sat for a few moments in the deep water for a much needed cool down then I moved down to the top of the largest drop of the day, a 90ish foot waterfall chute that reminded me of a friend’s pictures of some canyon’s he just did in Utah. Bill and I rigged the rope and I rappelled down first, carefully paying attention to the rope placement on the way down as there were sharp ledges from the water that has carved this impressive passage. I passed a sharp spire sticking out of a ledge about half way down the drop and moments later I was in the plunge pool.
Bill came down moments later and he told me a story of how he was coming down this drop once and someone below fireman belayed him so he couldn’t rappel, and the guys up top plugged the water flow with their bodies and released it all at once, showering him with the cold water. Moments later Todd was on rope, there was no water flow then all the sudden a gush of water came spilling over the waterfall’s ledge, pounding Todd and soaking him to the bone. We heard bursts of laughter coming from above from Bill and Ralph. It was quite amusing, but we then moved onto the next drop at the end of this impressive dome room. Due to the poor condition of the aluminum rappel ring on this anchor, Bill backed it up with a locker, and I dropped first, followed by the rest of the group. The horn corral in the walls was quite impressive in this portion of the cave.
As we waited, we began to get cold until a rope was finally passed up from the back. I dropped down the toilet bowl chute, onto the extremely water cut floor below, and rigged the next drop. We dropped down below and waited until LJ came down with one of the 9mm ropes. LJ, Laura and I headed into the crawlway to the end of the passage where we uncoiled the rope in the constricted passage, which ended up being a group effort as I grabbed the wrong side of the rope and pulled it the wrong way, causing a jumbled mess that looked like a large bowl of spaghetti. LJ was the first one over the ledge to the plunge pool below. Unfortunately there was only 1 bolt at this point and we were all a bit wary of this. As I am larger than LJ, I couldn’t get out over the ledge as far as he could to rig my rope, so I had too much slack. When I rolled over the ledge I shocked the bolt with a 6 or 8” fall but it held steady and I quickly rapped to the bottom. Laura came next, followed by the others. We waited for everyone to make it through as this was one of the most interesting drops of the day, even though it was only 24’ deep. Something about laying in a 10” air space, over a 12’ ledge, rigging a rope into your rack on your side and rolling over the edge to get on rope, made the entire experience an amusing show to watch.
At this point we moved on through the cave through some of the most jagged pot hole riddled crawling I have ever been in. While it wasn’t very long, I was already tired from the 2.5 hours of needless crawling and route finding earlier, to put it plain, it sucked. Todd and I were the first to the last drop of the day, where he rigged the rope and dropped down into the deep pool below. Others were moving through and we began heading up the stooping and crawling passage towards the entrance. After we had moved up quite a ways, I was in the front and I made the decision at a choke point to stop and hold everyone up while we regrouped. I have learned in Missouri not to leave anyone behind because anything can happen in a cave, and a scattered group is much more vulnerable than a close group. After all, no one wants to get out of the cave early, change clothes, only to find out someone fell in the cave and got hurt, forcing them to put their wet and dirty gear back on to help attend to the injured person.
As we began to get cold from standing around, we were finally grouped back up to 10 people with Bill Putnam bringing up the rear. We made our way past the most amazing chert nodule ridden passage that I have ever seen in my life. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, so to speak. After 7 hours of being in the cave, all 10 of us finally emerged to daylight and a group photo. It was a very memorable experience but the best was yet to come. We were tired, hungry and thirsty, but this was only the beginning.
Ellison’s Crossover
At 6:30 a.m. we got up, got ready and began heading to Blue Hole, the spring resurgence for the entire Ellison’s Cave system. We began getting gear together, packing packs, changing clothes and getting ready for what was projected to be one of the most physically and mentally challenging adventures of our lives. Andy Zellner was waiting on us at the parking lot and Gary Resch had joined us at the hotel for the night before, bumping up our group total to 12 people. Bill Putnam was to lead Todd, Laura, L.J., Andrea and myself through Fantastic Pit, and Andy was taking Gary, Edmund, Jason, Bill and Ralph to the Incredible Pit side of the cave. Our goal was to meet somewhere in the middle of the cave, cross over to the other pit, ascend out while derigging each other’s ropes on the way out.
Andy led his crew to the other entrance while the rest of us finished up packing gear. Two more people were also at the parking lot. Patty, the land owner to the TAG Fall Cave-in, and Chris Green. Both were extremely nice and had plenty of stories to entertain us with while we were getting ready. We gathered our gear, and headed up the hiking trail towards the entrance of the cave. Andrea started carrying the 600’ rope up the mountain, followed by Todd and Laura. Bill with his great sense of humor told us that the steepest part of the hike was ahead after we passed the Gross entrance to Ellison’s. Since I had just met Bill, I took him for his word and after a couple hundred feet we were at the entrance. Ok, you got me, I fell for it. Drenched in sweat, we changed our clothes, slowly then began to make our way into the cave as we said our goodbyes to Patty and Chris.
The anxiety of the tasks ahead began to set in and I was getting very nervous. Todd passed the rope to me up a breakdown scramble to the top of the warm-up pit which was 120’. LJ began to rig the drop with my 140’ rope, and I put on my gear and simply caught my breath. As the rope was now rigged, I was the first on rope and I stopped at the ledge where the main rub point was and Bill tossed one of my rope pads to me while he tied it off at the anchor. As the pads were set I dropped down the 120’ ledge to the breakdown below. My heart was racing and the adrenaline was flowing. Not because of the 120’ drop, but because soon I would be on the edge of something much bigger. We made our way up the breakdown slabs and began to make our way to the bottom of the 30’ nuisance climb. I went up first, followed by LJ. After he got up we pulled the 600’ rope up with the nuisance rope, then I carried the rope forward to the edge of the traverse.
By this time Bill had led Todd on an alternate round with a lot of deadly exposure, climbing up past the nuisance climb and into the attic. I passed the rope off to Todd and he carried it around the traverse and handed it off to Bill. By this time my heart was racing out of control. I clipped into the hand line and made my way around the 2’ ledge to which hugged the wall on the left, and a 586’ drop was on the right. We were now at the top of Fantastic Pit, and it was simply a large hole at the top of an extremely tall canyon. Bill explained how it was made from two intersecting streams punching a hole through the fault line, plunging almost 600 feet below. Bill then began rigging the rope that L.J. and Andrea supplied for the drop. Laura decided to be the first one down, and the anxiety for me began to set in. Laura got on rope with instructions on how to make the trip down easier, and we all paid attention. Soon Laura was on her way down and after approximately 6 to 10 minutes, she yelled. Since people were talking most thought she yelled Off Rope! Unfortunately I heard her yell 15-20’ short. That’s right, she was short roped. She then had to do a changeover and climb back up, while we figured out what to do.
The decision was made for L.J. to go down with the 90’ rope he was still carrying, tie it to the end, down climb past the knot and signal us to come down. As this plan was put into action, L.J. was on rope for quite a while, but finally yelled he was off. I was nervous, anxiety was full blast, adrenaline was gushing and made the move to clip into the rope. As I opened the bars to my rack and pulled the 600’ rope up and into the bars, the full weight of the rope was fully apparent as 42 pounds of rope was trying to pull me over the edge. As I sat down after looping the rope over the hyper bar the gravity of the situation was fully apparent. I removed my safety’s and lifted the rope back over the hyper bar and immediately dropped a foot. I am sure I said a few choice words, but the memory of the situation is a bit fuzzy.
I began pulling the rope up between my legs and sliding down on 5 bars a few feet at a time. Paying attention to my rack, I didn’t really look around too much at this time. As I spread the bars, pulled the rope and began to slide down the rope freely, I had my headlamps on high, throwing out over 370 lumens of light into TAG Hall. I noticed the walls were dotted all over the place with white scars from boulders and rocks hitting the walls of Fantastic Pit. Apparently the Attic was dynamited years ago to remove lose breakdown and the shower of rock, raining down the 586’ drop at terminal velocity, did quite a number on the walls on the way down. I then dropped further into oblivion and I spun slowly on the rope as I was dropping at approximately 1.5 feet per second. Controlling the speed with my rack, I took time to actually look at where I was. I could see the walls as I spun like a corkscrew all the way down the shaft, and after a couple minutes and probably 150 feet, I noticed what looked like a sky scraper, leaning from one wall of the canyon, to the other wall. It was as if God himself peeled the wall off and threw it into the other. It reminded me of the Godzilla movie where the skyscrapers were falling over and leaning into each other. It was at this point I realized just how insignificant I am on this planet. Looking up I could see nothing but haze and rope. Looking down I could see the rope between my legs falling down into oblivion. Building sized boulders wedged between both walls, and the sheer size of the chamber apparent, I felt like an ant under the boot of life. Feeling both helpless and powerless to do anything, as I had already made my decision only moments before to trust my life to a handful of steel, aluminum, nylon and bedrock, I continued on down the rope for what seemed like an eternity.
As I approached the bottom, L.J. turned on his head lamp and walked to the bottom of the rope. As I neared the end of the rope where the knot was tied, I noticed I was only about 3’ off the floor by time the 600’ rope had stretched out. After a few moments I passed the knot, sort of, and I was on the ground. I yelled off rope and Andrea made her way down. I immediately found a bent delta rapide, and a large steel locker that someone had dropped, as well as bits of cordage and other trash. I piled the pieces up as I made my way to L.J.’s area out of the fall zone. As each person reached the bottom we made the decision to weight our bodies on the rope, to stretch the rope even further, so the person on rope could simply get off rope while L.J. held the rope down with a munter hitch. After the person was off rope, the rest of us would remove our ascenders from the rope, remove our weight, and L.J. would let the rope feed back up. Each time the knot sprang back up 15 feet from the floor.
As everyone was now down, it was 3:00 p.m. and we began making our way through TAG hall. We signed the register book which was completely soaked, and made our way through the breakdown. I was up front and Bill was right behind me, and I was paying attention to every word he had to say about the route. I wanted to learn as much as possible on the route through the cave, so I was very attentive. He explained how the cave basically ran from east to west along the fault line, which was filled with calcite. It was a pretty amazing thing to see all the way through the cave, and we even saw evidence of the faults slipping past each other and grinding on each other. We met Andy and his group in a meandering gypsum stream passage. As words were briefly exchanged between friends, we moved on as it was now 4:00 p.m. Edmund explained that they found a bat, encrusted in gypsum, in the Angles Paradise area, and took some awesome photos of it. We ate lunch at the North Pole, which was named after a stalactite formation that was crystal clear and looked like ice. After lunch we headed out, and continued the route finding lessons that Bill had to offer.
While the cave was amazing, it was depressing at the same time to see how much it had been dumbed down by the permanent hand lines rigged on things I could climb with a broken leg, and the sheer amount of flagging tape. There was flagging tape every 5 feet in some areas, in passages that only went one direction. I am beginning to think that some of the people that frequent this cave completely suck when it comes to paying attention to the cave and learning the route. After 3 hours we were at the bottom of Incredible Pit and the water pouring in from the dome was quite an amazing site, even though it was only a “trickle.” After a breather, L.J. and Todd were the first to climb up, followed by Laura and Andrea. Laura had already climbed out of Fantastic and rappelled it twice, now she was climbing out of Incredible. She’s an iron woman I tell ya.
After the four were up and it was just Bill and I, I walked over to the rope and began to get on rope. Luckily I had a rain coat to wear, which was to save me a lot of misery on the climb out. The rope hung mere feet from the waterfall, and I could stick my hand out to the water while climbing next to it. If I wasn’t careful while getting started climbing, I would swing into the waterfall, which would repeat its self over and over until the swinging stopped as I climbed. Luckily I didn’t do too bad.
Incredible Pit is much less visited than Fantastic due to the water and the remoteness of the entrance. The pit was rigged with Bill’s 475ish foot patriotic PMI pit rope that looked just like an American Flag. As I began climbing, all I wanted to do was to get out of the water safely as the death of a caver a decade ago who went hypothermic and died on rope in this same pit was definitely on my mind. My ropewalker rig was fine tuned for maximum efficiency for me and I made good use of it climbing out of the pit in 18 minutes. It wasn’t a race or anything, but I trained pretty hard for this trip and climbing that quick wasn’t even an issue. It was simply the pace that I was able to climb at. I stopped a few times when I would spin past the fault joint, which ran all the way up the entire pit. I wasn’t bouncing at all on rope and the spin was very minimal. Even while climbing out tandem with Bill Putnam, I couldn’t even feel him except with the drag on the rope next to my right foot. I learned quickly that Bill is a very smooth climber and I was very thankful for that. The anxiety that I had rappelling into Fantastic was completely gone and I was completely calm and at peace with the world while hanging on rope in the middle of oblivion. I tried to look up to see how far I was from the top, but all I could see was water pouring down in my face. I looked down and I was over 150’ above Bill. I stopped a few times just to admire the view and look at the tiny light flashing around below me. Finally I was within earshot of LJ at the top and the climb was almost over. I wished it could have gone on a lot longer as I had plenty of energy left and the view in this pit was quite amazing. You get to see so much more detail while climbing out, than you do rappelling in.
As I crossed the lip, L.J. was there waiting for me, while the others had headed out to the entrance. I then waited for Bill at the lip and snapped a pretty good photo of him hanging over the 440’ ledge as he emerged from the depths below. We then had to pull up the rope and stuff it into a rope bag, so we got into position and I was the main hauler. All I can say is a fully saturated 475’ rope is extremely heavy after the hard weekend I had already had. We got the rope up, derigged, and I carried it to the next drop where L.J. had switched to a frog system as he was having issues with his Mitchell system. After he got up, Bill tied the 475’ rope bag to the end of the 100’ drop rope and I climbed up. Bill came up minutes later on a frog system as well and we both pulled the 475’ rope up and over the ledge.
By this time Todd had returned saying that they couldn’t find the way out, as they were in a room with 3 ropes rigged, two which had debris on the bottom of them and one that was hanging from a dome. We set stations to get the rope up through the breakdown and tight passages and into the final dome room where the entrance was. Bill emerged and immediately said none of the 3 ropes were the right one, as the entrance was at the far end of the room. This area was full of logs over 2’ in diameter, boulders and tons of other surface debris which was washed in during the recent flooding.
As everyone made it out, L.J. and I were the last 2 up and we pulled the 475’ rope up to the first rebelay ledge to make hauling it out of the entire entrance sink much easier. As I got out of the cave, Laura and Andrea were already gone and heading downhill towards the vehicles. I saw the backpack that Edmund left for me so I immediately went to it and began stripping off gear. I picked up the pack to put my gear in it and I noticed it was unusually heavy. Checking it out, it literally had 40 pounds of rocks stuff into the pockets. A joke that us Missouri cavers frequently play on each other when one leaves their pack unattended on a recreation trip. We don’t do it on survey trips as we never have extra room. Kicking and cursing, I threw all of the rocks out of the pack, put all of my wet gear in it and 2 of the rigging ropes that we got out.
After briefly getting lost while bush wacking from the entrance, all the way to the road, we were finally in a large field that Bill said they used to be able to park in. Soon we were walking down gravel roads, heading toward the vehicles. At the end of the hike was our vehicle and the lifted red Ford F150 that Peter and Jane drove the other night. Sure enough they were hanging out and they offered me a bottle of water which I killed in mere seconds. After talking about the trip, changing clothes, and loading gear we headed back to blue hole where the other group was waiting on us. Gear was exchanged and returned, stories were told, dead batteries were jumped, and exhaustion was fully set in for most people. I admit, I was tired, and this was probably the hardest trip, both mentally and physically I had ever done. Luckily I had been training for this trip so it wasn’t that bad, but doing 3 caves and 2 hard trips 2 days in a row will have its toll. Our night didn’t end till about 4:00 a.m. but what can I say, it was worth it. I conquered the first and second deepest pits in the continental United States in the same day. I beat you Ellison’s, I beat you, but you didn’t give yourself up easily! One thing I learned, you can’t just train and prepare to do trips like McBride’s and Ellison’s. You have to train and prepare to do much, much more if necessary, because if you max yourself out on trips like these, you are putting your and your group’s lives at risk. Train and train hard, it definitely makes it easier, mentally and physically.

[Chads93GT]

McBrides
Left to Right
L.J. Tognetti, Andrea Tognetti, Todd McCartney, Laura McCartney, Ralph Sawyer, Bill Morrow, Chad McCain, Bill Putnam, Jason Kern, Edmund Tucker.

more later

[Chads93GT]

Jeepside/Cagles






Fawn at the bottom of Cagles. Guess it didn't read On Rope.


Bottom of Cagles, too bad I moved my head. I guess I was trying to avoid squishing the fawn.

[Chads93GT]

L-R Ralph, Todd, Bill, Laura, Me, LJ looking for Mcbrides


LJ all nice and clean


Bill, Andrea and Jason


top of the largest drop in McBrides


Bill Putnam rigging the next drop after the large waterfall drop


Bill Morrow at the toilet bowl


LJ and Bill P.


Todd in the chert cobble crawl.

[Chads93GT]

Ellisons
Todd after traversing the attic ledge with the 600' rope around his neck.


Bill Putnam getting the 600' rope ready to rig.


Bills handy work


LJ on rope at Fantastic Pit


Me at the bottom of Fantastic


The North Pole


The Gnome Creamery


Laura getting on rope in Incredible


Me getting ready to climb out of Incredible with Bill Putnam.


Andy's handwork with Bill Putnam's patriotic rope.


Bill Putnam emerging from the abyss of Incredible Pit.


Gary Resch and Andy Zellner approaching Incredible's entrance.


Ralph rappelling into Ellisons on the Incredible side.


Gary on rope at the 2nd drop to Incredible.


Ralph, Andy, Bill M., Jason, and Gary ready to drop Incredible.


Edmund on rope at Incredible.


Crystalized bat in the Angles Paradise


another shot of the bat.


Gary Resch in Ellisons


Gary Resch on rope in Fantastic Pit

[batrotter]

Great report! Sounds like a lot of fun and work!

[graveleye]

Great report! The fawn in Cagles makes me sad though, and I hope it's done decomposing in two months when I get up there next.

Sounds to me like you ran into Peter and Jane Morgan in the parking lot. He has a massive truck, and the rest of the description fits him too.

[NZcaver]

Nice!

Thanks for sharing.

[JR-Orion]

Great report and I love all the pics!

[graveleye]

I like the pics, but now my wife won't look because she doesn't want to see the little baby dead fawn.

I told her, that if only Chad would have brought it out for us, then it won't stink so bad when we go next time!!

Thanks for nothin' Chad!!

[Chads93GT]

Lol I couldn't bring it out, if I did that all of the poor bugs would starve. Poor bastard, im suprised the doe didn't jump in after it. Could have been worse I guess, your wife will get over it. ITs not right at the bottom of where the cagles main rig rope would be, downhill a bit ;)

[graveleye]

hehe.. well I think it will probably be November before we're going there so maybe the little bugger will just be bones by then.

So did you guys not do the main drop? That is a blast. We rigged the main drop, Jeepside and the little slot from the bottom of the main pit up to Jeepside. That is a really fun through-trip. We also had Shallows rigged, and I could hear the voices from the bottom of Cagles, but it looked a little hairy to get down there so I climbed back out.

Next time you get down this way let me know!

[Chads93GT]

I bounced cagles 3 times in january and jeepside once. this time we wanted to see where the horizontal passage went over that wall in jeepside only to find the end 20 feet later. That was ouur main goal of that trip, didn't really think about rigging cagles as we had already done that a bunch.
You live in the area I take it?

[graveleye]

I wish I lived up there. I'm down here in Atlanta. It's about 2 1/2 hour drive for me from my house to Kimball, Tn. I'm used to it though. I'm also with the Dogwood City Grotto, so I know the characters you caved with this weekend. In fact, last night some of us were talking about how we have never caved in Missouri, so we're thinking about a road trip out to your neck of the woods.

[Chads93GT]

I can arrange that ;)