Posted by Jennifer Murray:

It is not often that Tennessee cavers such as Chris Kerr leave behind
their 7000+ caves with multi-mile passage for an excursion into the
cold, the wet, the muddy, and the miserable passages of Pennsylvania's
1200 itty-bitty caves, with only a dozen or so that are longer than
a mile. However, Chris made plans to come north, and I certainly owed
him a muddy belly crawl (I'm sure other members of the C&H Club owe
him that too, judging from the trip reports), so I invited Chris up
for our regional grotto weekend campout. Somehow Chris even got
hornswaggled into giving the weekend program, so he brought his cave
gear and his slides of Mexican caving and made the long drive north.
In the week that he stayed, he got a muddy belly crawl and then some,
as the brief report here shall show.

Our first cave was J-4 Cave, just a few miles from Penn State campus.
We went there the evening of September 27. J-4 is dry, with some sporty
climbs and traverses. One traverse, the Step-Across, is particularly
troublesome for me, because it involves stepping from one ledge on one
wall to another ledge on another wall, with the floor 50 feet below.
However, with a hand from Chris, I was soon across. Some highlights
of J-4 include the Wedding Cake (a column formation that looks like
its title), the Formation Climb (we rigged a handline here), and the
Dome Room (one very high ceiling).

Our second cave was Alexander Cave, which was the official weekend
campout organized trip. Alexander is owned by Old Order Amish, so the
visitation rules are strict, but it is a beautiful and highly decorated
place. Plus, it has quite a large stream passage, where we all got
into boats and paddled up and downstream. Caving/boating! Best of all,
it has a wonderfully muddy sticky gooey icky belly crawl that completely
slimed Chris, so he finally got what I have owed him for 2 years!
At the completion of the trip, Chris and I made the all-important Dairy
Queen stop before going back to the campground for dinner and Chris's
program.

The next cave on the list was Woodward Cave, a commercial cave that
just happened to be the site of our campout. The owner himself gave
us the tour on Sunday morning. He was a very entertaining showman,
plus since we just finished the mapping project, I could point out
all the off-the-tourist-trail passages to Chris as well as provide
survey trip stories. That afternoon, Chris and I went to Deerbone
Cave, which is only 400 feet long, but has a 20-foot entrance rappel
(there is not much vertical caving in Pennsylvania). Chris and I
spent very little time there, because of the pervasive smell of gas
on the surface (we didn't want to die in a poorly ventilated hole in
the ground). We also stopped by Penn's Cave, which is another
commercial cave, but we didn't pay the $8.50 to take the tour.
Instead, Chris just bought a bunch of postcards.

On Monday, September 30, we stayed above-ground and drove to Kinzua
Bridge, which is an old railroad bridge that stands 300 feet high in
the center and is about half a mile in length, spanning the Kinzua
gorge. It's pretty impressive to walk across, and the trees that far
north were a beautiful red, but unfortunately we had no way of, or
permission to, rappel. Then we went to Punxsutawney, my hometown,
to see the famous weather-forecasting groundhog Phil. We even ate
dinner at Punxsy Phil's Cakes and Steaks Restaurant! Of course
Chris could not leave without Punxsutawney Phil postcards (as if he
hadn't collected enough postcards already).

On Tuesday, October 1, I turned Chris over to my boyfriend Keith
Christenson (never a C&H Club member, but he gave a program once),
and they ventured to Hineman Cave in the western part of the state.
This cave is excessively muddy, excessively maze-oriented, and
excessively red from all the iron in the rock. It is also quite a
bit of crawling, as the limestone is only 15-30 feet thick. As Chris
said after he hosed down his coveralls, "just follow the kneeprints
down the passage."

Later in the week, Chris did a solo trip to Mt. Rock Cave, another
400-foot long cave in central Pennsylvania. Altogether, he saw well
over a mile of cave, maybe close to 2 miles, in his few days in the
state. Given the itty-bitty survey lengths of our caves, this is an
admirable feat.

Of course, on Saturday we were in Virginia, and Chris and I took a trip
to Breathing Cave, which is several miles long. He remarked that his
goal for Breathing Cave was to see "as much passage in this one trip
as I saw all week in Pennsylvania." Boy, you'd think he didn't
appreciate our little caves! Actually, Chris said he had a great time,
and he even photocopied some maps of caves that he didn't see, for
"the next time."

Caving Trip Reports