worst crawl

[VACaver]

Going into Windy Mouth in WV has got to be the worst crawl for me. Ungodly long and just kills your hands, knees, and neck.

[KENTO]

I cant believe there has been no mention of Great Expectations " Great Exit Crawl " out in Wyoming, Norm Pace always referred to it as " The Grim Crawl of Death"
because you can not afford to stop moving else the freezing cold water would fill up in your helmet.

[AlanCanon]

HKalnitz has commented on the entrance series to Sides Cave. It's not 3,000 feet long, though it might seem like it. 1450' in around 116 stations is my recollection (I found the cave, and was on all three of the trips required to map the crawlway, with (variously) James Wells, Chris Groves, Richard Zopf, Howard Kalnitz and Mike Yocum.) Chris named the crawlway "Bob", after the bridge in Colorado.

The section near the very entrance with the ratchet-like rocks piled up by stream action isn't called the "pigf*cker", but the Indonesian Fish Filter, named by Chris Groves, the pertinent image in Chris' mind being streams lined with Punji sticks to trap fish.

I agree that Wildcat Hollow Cave and Clap Canyon in Roppel have to count as the worst crawlways I've ever encountered. I believe I once wrote of Wildcat Hollow Cave that "If there's a pile of gold the size of Manila at the back of Wildcat Hollow Cave, it can rot by nuclear disintegration for all I care."

I might have been on the last (or next to last) trip to Clap Canyon, with Kevin Downs and Jim Borden, a dry phreatic lift tube. At the point we bagged the survey I crawled on ahead a little bit and found mud covered boulders. There were animal scratches on one of the boulders, doubtless evidence of surface interaction nearby....

[CaverCSE]

I've always heard that the sideways canyon crawl passage in Luminary Pit is some of the hardest and worse passage in TAG but I've never been there to experience it. The worse I've personally been through is probably the never ending wet bedding plane crawl with air roaring through it in the cave named "The System" in Marion County, Tennessee. Also, just about every cave up near Dorton Knob Smoke Hole or on Hinch Mountain has a never ending horror crawl somewhere in it. Blue Spring's crawls usually aren't terrible but they often are never ending.

[DawgsgoCaving]

Yeah I heard Blue Spring has like 6500' worth of crawls or something like that...I still haven't been in any real horror crawls. I'm finally going back to get through all of Bingo Cave a week from Sunday, granted it's only about 450' long. It'll be good prep for longer ones, though :)

[eyecave]

any virgin crawl that starts out as a flat belly crawl..when after a hundred or so feet you realize that you haven't passed a spot yet where you could turn around......

[eyecave]

...... ..........."I've always heard that the sideways canyon crawl passage in Luminary Pit is some of the hardest and worse passage in TAG but I've never been there to experience it.".........it was a five throw-up cave for me at the end of the last survey trip........

[Roppelcaver]

Alan.... there were TWO more trips after your trip with Kevin to Clap Canyon. The first was with the two Bills (Koerschner and Stephens) that surveyed in what they called "Velcro mud". You could not roll your pack or drag your body due to the tacky mud that covered every surface. They followed this to a dig (Diode dig), which they managed to get through. Pete C., Rick O., and I returned. I was routed due to cramps, but they soldiered on to the furthest point -- an elliptical tube crawl clean-washed and fine scalloped filled.

It is a long, long way back there.

Wildcat Hollow is shorter, but pretty bad too. It might be 1700 feet.

[CaverCSE]

Misery Crawl in Blue Spring is one of the worse as far as Blue Spring Cave (TN) is concerned. It has a floor of glued together stream cobbles that for some reason formed anastomosis spikes on the top of the cobbles with sand and gypsum in between the spikes. It's bizarre but horrible to crawl on.