Peipers and Carnegie on July 23, 2005

John decided it was time to go to Peipers and Carnegie caves. So the call went out for anyone who wants to take a day to get underground and beat the heat.

The morning started, for me, meeting the group at the Morgantown MickyDee's. John was there with his son Mike. Bob and Steve as well as Hana were there, too. There was a reporter and photographer from the Courier Post looking to do a story on caving. Dan popped in right after I arrived. We divided who was riding with whom, distributed direction, and off we went.

I've been to Peipers a few times before. It's a good cave to take beginners too. This was going to be a little different. I wasn't leading a group of Scouts. I was going to be able to go into the section that beginners aren't supposed to enter. I was also going to be able to take my time and stop and look at stuff at my own pace. This seemed compatible with the others in my little group in that they liked to poke into every nook and cranny they could fit a finger or toe, and try to fit the rest of their body, into. I'd also like to thank Bob, Don, and Hanna for talking me through a couple very tight passages. Tighter than I've ever done before, and I'll try them again someday. You really start to learn what you are capable of when doing things like this.

After our little "advanced" group finished up with the decorated passages, we decided to go find the others and see what they were up to and explore the rest of Peipers at our leisure. It was fun to poke around with these guy who have considerably more experience then me and pick up a few pointers on technique.

Pepiers is a muddy cave. And as usual we were caked in the stuff when we exited. And as suspected, the photographer's equipment was caked with mud. The small digital point and shoot wasn't too bad. The video camera was borderline at best. But the nice, high end, still camera will never be the same. Steve and John made it a point to avoid as much of the small crawls as possible, but mud is inevitable.

After the cave, we all talked for a while and the reporter wrote down a lot of what we discussed. She asked questions about how a non-caver could get involved, gear, and training. We answered the best we could about the grotto and the NSS. Here's the link to the artical.

They had fun. We had fun. Any day underground is a good day, but it's not over yet. On to Carnegie.

Check out the full photo album.