Trip Report (with lessons learned)

by Doug McCarty

(Photos by Doug Mc and Rich Finley)

         This trip occurred during OTR 2002. It was to be a joint Mon Grotto/Cleveland Grotto trip, but in the end only Jeff and Cynthia from the Cleveland Grotto came with us. The idea was that one team would rig and drop the Carpenters Pit entrance while the other team did the Swago Pit Entrance. We would meet in the middle somewhere and climb out using the other team's rigging--a great way to do a through trip.

          We got off to a slow start. I wasn't feeling so hot and hoped a healthy dose of Imodium would ease my distress. It did. We were delayed somewhat by the Doo Dah parade too, but finally got off, telling our friends that if we weren't back by 2am they should start worrying.

          As we were passing through the mountains, Rich Finley, riding in the backseat of my swaying van, got car sick. We stopped at the little restaurant where you turn off to go up Snowshoe Mountain. After kicking things around we decided to eat a sit-down lunch--something we hadn't planned on doing. When Rich was finally feeling a bit better, well over an hour had passed. Our next delay occurred in Marlinton where we were looking for a copying machine so both teams could have copies of the relevant parts of the map. We finally found one in the post office, made our copies, pasted them together into coherent maps and went on our way. Another delay. Then, we somehow lost Bob Griffith and Mary Davis out of the caravan. Some of us had to go back and find them. Then we had to find the cave entrances and rig them up.

          My team consisted of Rich Finley, Kenny Petrice, Jason Thomas and me. The other team was Jeff, Cynthia, Bob and Mary. I can't speak for the other team, but we didn't start into the cave until about 5pm--about four hours later than we had originally planned. It was a nice trip and we encountered no problems along the way. We finally encountered the other team at the mouth of Swago Creek and took the group picture I have posted below. My team continued on and prussiked up the other team's ropes and de-rigged as we finished the climb.

        We climbed out of Swago Pit at about 11pm--it had been about a six hour trip.We packed our stuff up and got cleaned up, but the other team was still in the cave. It occurred to me that because we got started and got out of the cave so much later than planned it would be prudent to send Rich and Kenny back to OTR to inform folks that we were going to set the panic time back to 4am. I will take the blame for what happened because I should have specified to Rich that he needed to seek out Jeff's wife, Jody, and tell her about the delay. I assumed if she started to get worried she would go to the Mon Grotto campsite and ask folks if anybody had heard anything. That was a miscalculation on on my part. At one or two am everybody at our campsite was asleep.

         Jason and I sat by Carpenters Pit smoking cigars and waiting for the other team. They appeared about an hour later. They had gotten turned around in the Devil's Tower Room and it had taken them a little time to backtrack and find the correct route out. We got packed up and took off. I figured we would get back at about 3am--cutting it close, but putting us well under our revised deadline. 

          Unfortunately, Rich had only told the Mon Grotto folk about the revised panic time and then went to bed--still a bit sick. Nobody told Jody. She went to security and asked if anybody had heard about the Carpenter Swago trip. The next thing she knew she was in a tent being interviewed, and Rich was hauled, unwillingly, out of the sack, taken to a tent and "grilled". He cooperated though because he assumed it was after 4am, the revised panic time. It was only after he was questioned for a while that he found out that it was only 2 am. He went sort of ballistic and told them I had sent him back to revise the deadline.

         The moral of the story is that from now on I will give myself a bit more wiggle room in setting a safety deadline. You need a larger margin of error than we gave ourselves, especially since we weren't sure how long we would be in the cave. Also from now on I will have a single person back at camp who is reponsible for keeping track of whether or not we're back--that person will know who all they need to contact and vice versa. Of course, I should have done that in the first place.