Well, me and my friend Ross just completed Varnadoe Cave in Alabama on 3-19-11. After A grueling trek down a mountain for half a mile we dropped our first load of gear and headed back up for our ropes. Finally we got all our gear down to the cave (we brought 800 ft in three sections, and needed most of it) The entrance was spectacular, one of the more impressive pits I've seen. Our map showed a vertical drop of about 73 ft. That was one of the many failings of our map. We dropped it with a 400 footer he had, and it turns out its about 100, 100 + feet depending on where you land. We soaked in the view on the bottom, a majestic pit with sunlight easily streaming inside lighting it up bueatifully. From there we grabbed all 7 million pounds (a slight exaggeration I'm sure) of gear we had and squeezed into a walkway to our next pit, a 20 foot drop to the floor from a large hole in the floor. Nicely, there was 3 bolts (2 in great condition) already waiting for us. We used the rest of his rope from the initial drop on that as a back up and used the bolts for a straight shot down. Very easy. After that things started going sideways quick. We explored the 2nd level, and found it was wet up to our knees in one room. Personally, I generally dont mind getting wet, but IT WAS FREAKING FREEZING!!! After a few dead ends and failed pushes, we found a passage downward and dragged our bags with us. I believe we were on the top of the (Rain Room) at that point To our left was the creek running from a hole in the wall over a very deep (100 ft???) cliff. We desperately wanted to bounce that pit, but the bolts in the wall were not up to our standard. There was only 2 bolts, both rusty and loose, and no natural back up we trusted enough to make the plunge. We decided to save it for later, and went right, to a tight, but not arduous crawl way. I scouted the tunnel, noticing several bats roosting in the passageway about head level. Amazingly, most just squeaked at me and flew higher up out of my way. I made it to the end after about 60 foot or so and located another pit. That one was about 40 foot or so, but despite the small drop it was damn treacherous with holes all over the place just waiting for some one to fall into, and very, very, very slick. I went back with the news and we started pushing our (4) bags of gear down that crawl way. It took forever. We did find a very sturdy natural bridge to hook to, and after about 11 tries got the rope over and tied in. Easy decent down, and we explored a short distance to (Fox Pit??) This pit was easily 120 to 150 foot. We found another natural bridge and tied in. Ross took point on this one and headed over. A few minutes later I heard screaming. Fearing the worst I ran to the edge to hear him cursing and spitting. Apparently he was decending through a water fall, and got soaked. He He He. He made it to the bottom and found the caves register, and explored a bit. No worries until the climb up. Halfway up he had some kind of catastrophic gear failure, made worse by the fact that the rope had started to eat into the rock(mud) lip on the over hang. The padding we had failed completely, and I started yelling for him to make post haste back up the rope. Later he would tell me all he heard the word "die" (my bad) and that scared him more than the acend. He was already 50 foot up, about halfway, so no point de rigging and going back down. I'm not sure what his gear failure was, but it shook him up something fierce. He made it to the lip to find him self stuck on the edge, with 120 + feet of caver killing nothingness below him. After a very long time we managed to pull him panting and cursing petzl over the ledge. He swore he was selling his vertical gear the moment he escaped the cave.
Exhuasted, we climbed back out of the cave to the main room, swearing like sailors and vowing to travel lighter next time. Being the idiots we are we devised a time saving pully system to pull all of our gear out at once. SIGH.....Anyway after climbing that beast we cheerfully pulled our gear out until it hit the ledge and wouldn't budge. We ended up having to rappel back down and unhook gear piecemeal and toss it up. Anyway, heres our summary:
Visuals: Magnificent. Utterly wild. Breath Taking.
Difficulty: Hard to Very Hard (Mostly due to heavy gear loads being needed, very physically intensive)
Danger: High to Very High: Numerous pits, holes, precariously perched large rocks ready to fall if you bump them even slightly.
Advice: Travel with a good sized group of experienced vertical cavers. If you can bolt, take your bolting gear. Most important in our humble opinion, WATCH THE LEDGES!!!! Most are very sharp, and have nothing below them to get a foot on when your trying to get back over the lip. Take lots of pads, tie them better than we did. I think I'll probably loose a very expensive cave rope due to wear and tear on this one trip.
I'm sure Tim and his crew wouldn't really want to rescue you, even if they're ready. Going in there with just two guys, IMHO, is asking for trouble. And, you seemed to have found some of it; thus, you expressed that to some degree at the end. Going with a minimum of three and better, yet, four...would have made more sense. I won't go through all of the possibilities that could have happened, for you already figured them out. 
Being with a grotto, so that you can learn more safety techniques, more about what caves are all about, learning why we're protecting caves so much, and learning how to work with other caves is what a grotto is all about. 
Hope that we can see your name as an NSS Member in the next monthly membership report and cave softly, but...cave! 
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