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NEST TRIP REPORT
Scott Hollow Trip Report 26 May 2000
The Northeast Sump Exploration Team, NEST, conducted exploration efforts
In Scott Hollow Cave in West Virginia on 26 May 2000. NEST is a formally
recognized Project of the NSS and consists of a team of sump divers and
dedicated support personnel who are pursuing original exploration efforts at
several caves in the PA, Virginia and West Virginia areas. The team surveys
and further documents these sites through the use of still and video
techniques as well as engaging in biological surveys and water sampling at
these locations. NEST is also available to support the NCRC in situations
involving flooded passage and beyond sump rescues. These efforts were in
support of the Scott Hollow Exploration Project, another ongoing NSS effort
headed up by Mike Dore, the discoverer and owner of the cave. Below is an
account of the Teams most recent explorations.
Several years ago, long before I had taken my first scuba class or even
considered the idea of cave diving I had the opportunity to visited the
upstream sump in Scott Hollow. I was fortunate to have been on one of the
early exploration trips to this area. During this period there were still
a large number of dry leads just waiting to be pushed. Even back then water
filled passages attracted my interest. Wearing only a regular cave suit and
floating on my back with my nose pressed tightly against the ceiling I had
attempted to pass this obstacle only to be defeated by the cold water and
low airspace. Many times since that trip I had wondered what lay beyond
this point. A few years later Mike Dore, and several friends, wearing wet
suits had returned to this location. They had picked a dry period for their
push and succeeded in passing through the first sump to discovered 70 feet
of swimming passage which unfortunately ended in a second sump. Before the
silt wiped out the visibility, Robbie, who was in the lead at the time saw
what appeared to be an under water continuation. After numerous efforts to
find an upper level bypass to the sump Mike had ask me to dive it. I would
finally have the opportunity to answer the question that had been nagging at
me for all those years, was it a short duck under with massive going cave on
the other side, an extensive sump or the end of the cave. There was only
one way to find out.
With the Pig Roast, at Friars Hole, coming up in two weeks we decided
that we would meet that Friday. With little time to prepare and since it
had been several years since I had been to the sump we planned on an
orientation trip to allow me to relearn the route. Reaching the sump would
not be easy since it lay a solid two miles from the entrance and required
the negotiation of some of the most challenging caving terrain you can
imagine. In order to safely dive the sump I would have to be able to reach
it without becoming worn out, something you can only accomplish with
practice in learning how to efficiently traverse the cave passages involved.
The entrance is a man made one and you access the 24 mile long cave by
climbing down a 30 inch diameter 26 foot long galvanized pipe and chimneying
down a tight fissure into Mastodon Avenue named after the upper jaw bone of
a juvenile of this species that was discovered at this location. This 20 by
30 foot trunk passage then takes you via Patty Lane through the junction
room, a series of up and down climbs, in Middle Earth, and eventually to
the main trunk in the cave, Mistic River. During this trip you loose over
400 feet in elevation, some of it more than once. On the way out the route
is referred to as drag ass hill.
Mystic River is where this large cave becomes huge with the passage
dimensions being on the magnitude of 40 to 80 feet wide with 100 foot high
ceilings. Several thousand feet down stream from this point lies a series
of sumps that John Schweyen had cracked back in the late 80s to reveal an
extensive new section of cave. Upstream lies the sump that had attracted my
attention. The cave from this point to the upstream sump although huge
also comes filled with extensive sections of massive breakdown blocks, some
the size of small houses.
When I got up on Thursday mourning the though occurred to me that I
might as well take along a tank transport tube so Mike could get a better
idea of the type of loads that would need to be moved through the cave. I
had already packed my vehicle the night before with all of my dry cave gear
and still had plenty of room left. As I placed the tube in the car I
decided that if I was going to haul it with me I might as well take a tank,
and heck if I was going to do that why not take the rest of the gear as
well, no sense gong to West Virginia with an empty vehicle. Three hours
later I hit the road with a full sump diving Kit and four hundred feet of #
72 line on a new ultra light weight reel I had recently built.
My ride took me down route 81 and on the way I stopped off at Inner
Mountain Outfitters, one of our sponsors, and found Alex away at a caving
event and Drew manning the store. My dry cave rig for this trip was
designed to be as light weight as possible and for illumination I was using
two Princeton Tech 40s mounted on a Petzel helmet. I needed a second wide
angle reflector for this to be useable and once again Drew went out of her
way to make this happen for me. After a 7 hour ride I arrived at Friars
hole and the next mourning. Andrew Kipe and I drove the 50 miles down to
Scott Hollow and Mike and Pat�s home. Although I had left a number of
messages that I was bringing gear I had not been able to get in touch with
them since I left on Thursday. The announcement that I had a full sump
diving rig with me was well received and while I headed down to the cave
entrance to lay out and double check my equipment Mike got on the phone to
two friends who he had been discussing this trip with for several weeks.
I packed the gear into four separate loads, two OMS 45s in PVC foam core
transport tubes and two almost full duffel bags. All together we had well
over 200 pounds of equipment. While I was doing this at the cave entrance
a third caver, Robbie Kirk happened to stop by. We now had enough support
to try for a recon dive. Jim Heagy started out with a tank and was
followed by Robbie with the second. While the Mikes made their final
preparations I entered the cave and began the stroll down the large trunk
passage. It was more like climbing down a giant stair case since the
passage contained large pieces of breakdown. I tried not to remember that
this was the easy part. As I was entering the short crawl to the junction
room I was surprised to see a light approaching me. It was Robbie, he was
holding his left wrist out and in obvious pain. It turned out that his
carpal tunnel syndrome was acting up. He told me that he was headed out to
get his brace. I thanked him for his positive can due attitude but
suggested that he might want to abort.
I proceeded on to the junction room and did the climb up to Middle Earth
where I found the transport tube. I shut off my light and waited for Mike
Dore and Mike McFall to join me. Jim was ahead of us with the other tank
and we now had two large full duffels, a tank and transporter tube plus all
of the assorted cave gear that one packs for a trip of this nature. I felt
fairly sure at this point that the diving part of the trip was now over.
Most regular cavers would not even think about getting themselves to the
upstream sump let alone carrying a large pack. These guys just picked up
the extra load and kept pushing. Mike Dore was now carrying nearly 100
pounds.
The trip up Mystic proceeded smoothly until we reached the really big
breakdown, this stuff is the size of three story houses, if you can
imagine traveling over the ruins of a building that has been blown up and
then covered in mud you can get a rough idea of the terrain. At this point
it was decided to leave a tank and shuttle it on a second trip. The worst
of the breakdown ends thousands of feet past this point at Kansas. After
reaching Kansas we worked our way back down to the River level and they
dropped the duffels.
While the Mike Dore and Mike McFall headed back for the tank I
proceeded upstream toward the Sump. This part of the cave puts you back in
the river passage which for the most part consists of pleasant walking
stream with some wading and a small amount of breakdown. After 35 minutes I
reached the temporary base camp that Jim had set up just above and to the
right of the sump in a large flat area. He was crashed in a sleeping bag
in the middle of a huge blue tarp in a 40 by 15 by 7 foot high alcove
surrounded by several candles. I gave him the bad news that he needed to
head back for one of the duffels. With a grin on his face, these guys are
really hard core, he set off while I stripped down, dried off and crawled
into the bag.
I had entered the Cave at 12:30, it was now 5:30. It had taken me five
hours of hard caving to reach this point. A trip Mike Dore can do in a
little over an hour and one many other cavers would not even think of doing.
I had been traveling lite, I was not hauling anything other than some
emergency gear in my pockets so I could be fresh for the dive. I tried to
get some sleep but my mind was racing as I reviewed all of the details I
would have to consider in the upcoming push. It was taking an immense
amount of effort by the 3 cavers hauling the gear Mike, Mike and Jim to get
us to this point. I wanted to make sure that I would give them a stellar
diving performance but on the other hand I also reminded myself of all the
deaths that have occurred over the years when divers tried to live up to
expectations and pushed when they should not have. I resolved to treat
this like any other dive, I would give it my best shot but not take any
extreme risks. After about 30 minutes I began to develop," the camp
chill," so I broke out a space blank and wrapped it around the bottom of the
bag, a major improvement. Laying there in the dark listening to the river
in the background was a strange experience, I was over two miles from the
entrance getting ready to dive the upstream sump. It was hard to believe
after all those years I was about to discover what lay beyond this point.
At 6:40 just as I was getting ready to drift off to sleep I heard my
three support team members running up the river. It was time to dive and
while they went into camp mode I began the process of assembling my rig.
Despite the long haul to this point not a single item was damaged. An hour
later with a Disler spike in place on a gravel bank and the reel tied off
and sitting in the water I entered a deep downstream pool, performed an
equipment check, lit off my AUL HID and began the crawl into the sump.
Downstream of the sump is a large gravel plain, the result of sediment
being flushed from this area and deposited over the eons, it forms a
natural dam. I crawled forward past this into the water. At this point
the ceiling drops to three feet in height. After about 40 feet the water
became deep enough for me to float and as the ceiling and the water almost
met I submerged. Below me a pure white Cray fish waved his claws up at me,
this was by far the largest I had ever seen, he had to be over 5 inches
long. Every thing about Scott Hollow is large.
As I gently finned forward I found myself in a broad room with a flat
floor. The visibility was an excellent 15 to 20 feet. After about 80 feet
I decided that I needed to belay the line and I pulled a small plastic screw
spike from under my arm band and attempted to place it into the bottom. The
bottom was as hard as concrete and resisted my best efforts. The massive
flow that fills this passage in flood has formed an aggregate floor and
washes out almost all of the sediment except for a thin layer. This was not
good news since I could not clearly see the walls and did not know if there
were any potential line traps. Unless I could find some natural tie offs
this was going to be a very short dive. Based on Mikes description of the
first room I decided to finned forward and to the left. As I did so a
large piece of sculptured breakdown became visible rising up from the floor.
A section jutted out like a giant broad sword and provided me a perfect
natural tie off, we were back in business. I looked behind me and could
see my passage had raised enough sediment to wipe out the visibility. As I
finned forward I followed the right wall along a ledge that provided a
number of chert nodules which I used to secure the line every 30 to 50 feet.
While I was doing a line wrap a movement caught my attention and I realized
that I was not alone. The beam from my HID framed a small white fish
hanging in the water column 10 feet away. We examined each other for a
moment before it darted out of sight. About 300 feet in I passed under a
low section into another broad room, 15 feet above me I could see the
reflection of a small air surface. I suspected it was the top of the room
and would dead end, If I surfaced at this point I risk destroying the
visibility and my ability to push any further down the main passage. After
making a mental note to examine it at a later date I continued on following
the main passage staying along side the right wall. I soon found myself in
a small mud walled dead end so I turned and recovered 20 feet of line before
heading down and to the left. I did a tie off on the floor and following
the passage found that I was headed deeper. After laying a total of 370
feet of line to a depth of 31 feet I tied the line on a protrusion on the
left, cut it and placed a figure eight at the end for future use.
It was now time to see how much fun going home was going to be. As I
fined out the visibility varied from 4 feet to almost zero in spots. At
one point I found that my line had been pulled into a low area about 2 and a
half feet high that I did not remember from the inbound trip, the danger of
using widely separate tie offs. I passed this almost line trap with out any
major problems and happily had a smooth exit for the remainder of the dive.
I surfaced and yelled to my support team for a second reel and headed
back in. The large volume of the sump and low flow left me with marginal
vis for most of the second dive. I reached the end point and as I shown my
light forward I could see that the passage was wide and low, about three
feet high. Numerous coubles covered the floor and large breakdown
appeared in the distance. It was possible that I might be at the low point
in the sump, rocks and gravel tend to collect at these points. After
checking my gas supplies and realizing that my vis would be even worse on
my second exit I resisted the urge to lay additional line and turned and
headed out.
We had exceeded out wildest expectations for the weekend. On our first
effort we had pushed the cave another 370 feet and it was still going
strong. Our elation was only slightly dampened by the realization that the
gear would now have to be hauled out. We were able to lighten the load by
draining the tanks and packing them in a cave pack and one of the duffels.
The tank transporters, two weights and a collection of Disler spikes were
left in the cave for future efforts. This dropped about 45 pounds off the
load.
The team emerged from the cave at 3:30 Saturday mourning tired but
elated, I had been under ground for 15 hours. I found it was a challenge
just getting my self there and back. My admiration for the support team
knows no bounds, not only had they hauled 200 pounds of gear two miles into
the cave, they had hauled 160 pounds out with the only damage being to a
plastic mask case. Truly an incredible performance on their part. As we
lounged on the deck of the building Mike has erected over the entrance the
really amazing part was they all wanted to know when I would be back for
another dive. These guys are incredibly hard core.
In discussions since the dive both Mike and I concluded that it had been
quite a unique turn of events that had led to this trip in the first place.
I had been expecting that I would do at least two or three practice trips to
the sump just to be comfortable with the route. Instead we had achieved a
series of goals in one trip that I thought would be months in the future.
We had also learned a number of lessons that we could put to good use for
future more carefully planned efforts.
We would like to recognize our sponsors and all of the supporting cavers
who helped make our efforts possible. A special thanks to Arnold Jackson Of
American Underwater Lighting who supplied our exceptional primary lights,
Meteor 4�s and HIDs, as well as other critical gear and Tom and Jon of the
Fifth Dimension Dive Center who have provided us with other vital support.
We would also like to thank Terry Brady, of the Brass Anchor who has
provided us with generous audio visual support. Additional sponsors include
Lamar Hires of Dive Rite, Alex Sproul of Inner Mountain Outfitters, Adrew
Kipe of Maryland Reproductions, and Robert Carmichael of Brownies Third Lung
and HALCYON, The Doing It Right Equipment Company, and our most recent
sponsor, DUI for our outstanding CF 200 series Dry Suits, Tim Walker,
Hank and Jane Anderson, and the Sovik and Mothes families without whose
support none of our efforts would have been possible.
Diver Explorer
Joseph Kaffl
Support Team Members
Michael Dore Project Director Scott Hollow
Mike McFall
Jim Heagy
Robbie Kirk
Surface Team Watch
Pat Dore
Tim Walker
Hank Anderson
Stand By on call Divers
Eric Tesnau
Dave Nicholas
Surface Base Camp Support (The Blue Room)
Bill Sheely
Curtis Reese
Don Reese
..
JOSEPH
KAFFL
SUMPDIVER@MS*.CO*
NEST
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