Leap Up, Dig Down, Cotton a New Idea

"Crap! No holds! Just mud!" Wedged against a vertical mud and rock slope in front and smooth muddy rock slabs on either side I know my only piece of protection, a nylon runner now at my knees, will probably slide off its rock horn if I move up. I'm not sure it would hold for a downward fall either since it's probably just a small boulder packed in by mud.

I rethink my inital excitement when my compadres suggested this as a great survey trip for me since they needed a "climber" here in Lover's Leap Cave.

Wedged into the crux halfway up this 40 foot climb on the left side of a long narrow room I still feel as much joy and excitement about seeing what's at the top and overcoming the climbing challenge as I feel fear that this might be a colossally bad idea. If I fall from this vertical section onto the 40 then 30 degree slope below I'll probably just slide through the mud, bang against the walls, perhaps sprain or break something minor but doesn't seem like a risk of death or long term injury. I have added incentive to stay healthy being committed to an international alpine trip in 4 months.

I've already stepped back down a couple of times, half hanging on the sling, half resting with steps kicked into the mud with my rock shoes which have 6 pounds each of mud caked on them. Downclimbing to my belayer would be just as treacherous as moving up or staying. Above me about another body length across a 50 degree mud field is a level ledge with what appear to be two small flowstone slopers that should serve as decent protection, maybe even enough to rappel back down. I fling one glove onto the unseen back of the ledge. The second I toss right onto those flowstone slopers. If only my hand were still in that one to grab the only decent looking hold in sight of my headlamp. Now the gloves are literally off and my determination is renewed.

Bare handed I now find a small crimper indented into my left hand wall. The right wall I can reach with my foot with my knee stradled across a boulder outcrop that juts out towards me. The seemingly good hand hold on the right wall broke off cleanly when tested- glad I didn't trust my foot to it.

The crimper and some small uppy motions inch my hips up further to the top of the vertical section where now the slope seems plausibly angled to stick to. Digging with my bare hands I carve out a fist sized left hand which compresses when I weight it. Dig more to make it usable again. Right hand digs through to a rock I can barely pinch with fingers. Don't dig enough to make it a jug handle, it might dig loose from the slope entirely. These are my life line as I fish-flop onto the slope. A previous failure getting over a traditional rock climb roof taught me that grace isn't always part of the best solution. Dig, pull, wiggle, flop, dig, scramble, (slope collapsing as I go,) up to the flowstone slopers. Brush the glove aside, Crumble! It was just mud, not stone. OK, getting used to this now, at least ledge is pretty flat. Fling both gloves down to my belayer, who has retreated into the passageway from the hail of mud and rock I loosened. He was kind enough not to add to my stress by telling me the sling around my one "safe" spot came loose and fell back to him. Gloves I was willing to dedicate to the cause are safe below, but myself I'm still worried about. (Even if my one piece of pro 15 feet below was really there it would only slightly lessen the impact if I hit the bottom from this height. The ledge I'm on is slowly collapsing around the edges- time to move on!

Up a few more feet around a big boulder I find a small alcove that's even flatter, and seems more stable, though till just mud for a floor. I bang on everything to guess what is real and what is mud. Digging with my nut tool I thread a runner around a real stone again, possibly held just by mud. Clipping in I yell down that I finally have some pro. Breath. Rest. whew, that was intense. look around. If I stand there may be one passage to my left, one above, and one to the right. Yay, the cave appears to go! That's why we risked this climb!

After catching my breath I drop the tape measure. 35 feet to the belayer's station. I mark a spot on the big boulder and Dave and Ken both take readings from below to confirm my inclination. They are back in the room beyond where the climb started so it's only a 47 degree angle to them, but the climb must have been more vertical than I thought given that reading.

I feel safer about my ledge and the closeness of the walls than the one piece of pro I have, but I'm happy Dave has me on belay even on a static rope. I finally relax and stand up. Yep there's tight crawling passage just above my head to the right. Snaking up and around the upward spiral I find lots of what we presume to be racoon skat, some of it very fresh. I don't want to crawl through the freshest of it to explore that right hand crawl which is almost square. Besides, if it continues like that for long I'd have to back out through it again into this high vertical channel.

Up is easier and slightly cleaner and opens into a 20 by 8 by 4 foot high room. There are two passages that continue through the other side, what would be left from my piece of pro below. One is squirel sized, the other racoon sized and has racoon like fur stuck in the spider webs on the top of it. Possibly diggable to human sized were one so inclined. I call this room the Smart Car Show Room as other than the height you could fit about 2 of them in here. I had to untie to get fully into the room as the static rope drag was too much. I re-tie, check my knot, and down climb back to my pro. I chose a rapell strategy talking with the more experienced cavers below and rap down, leaving the runner to mark our progress for some future caver.

I name the route "Racoon Ridge" and estimate it to be about a 5.10 R in the rock rating system. Meaning it requires rock shoes and a few advanced techniques to deal with the hard to find or create shifting holds and is Run-out with little opportunity to protect.

I rest and snack before joining the surveyors again. It's late but we want to finish the known leads before indulging in Mexican food and beer. Before my climb David had dropped more than 60 feet into a pit on the opposite end of the large room from my climb. He found a possible small lead and a flash light we guess is from the 1950's well down that narrow pit. Ken and Rob rigged a cable ladder down a smaller pit that we all had to step over on the way in. Dave's pit continued but got too tight for comfort with no one else able to descend and help if he got stuck. Ken's pit also seemed too tight to continue, even if he'd been on rope instead of ladder. Above Ken's pit we climbed into a large room with sloping walls telling of major geologic shifts long ago.

"That seems too tight to go, but feel free to poke your head in and see what you think." - words Ken and Dave's stomach would soon regret. I snaked around with a few yoga moves and dropped into a room I could stand in with crawling passage continuing 14 feet till it turned intriguingly to the right. We surveyed only another 10 feet past that turn where it would have been a dig to get into a tight canyon 20 feet high by 20 feet long by about 8 inches wide. Once in the computer we were intrigued to learn that this canyon runs back towards my climb and the Smart Car showroom and both of them are only about 12 feet below the entrance elevation.

We added more than 1/3 of the total 543 total surveyed feet to the map of Lover's Leap cave that day. Outside we carefully night-scrambled down the extremely steep hill that had required rigging rope to retrieve a dropped pack on the way in. Only Pizza Hut was open so late but we happily chowed down with our host Tanya and Rob's friend Beth who'd just driven from Blacksburg. Never a germaphobic caver I did not balk at sharing a slice with Tanya, but I may never live down commenting that after climbing 40 feet up through mud and crawling through fresh racoon droppings and guano that swapping spit with Tanya would the most pleasant thing I'd done all day.

Pizza Hut fed us impressive amounts of food for which we tipped well before retiring to Tanya's to stay up way too late discussing endless options for Sunday. Only when we woke at 10 did I learn our goal. We missed breakfast at the only Sunday morning table service restaurant but lunch fared us well instead.

Dave's truck and Beth's SUV earned their stripes (literally from several tree branches) on the "road" into the Cotton cave hillside. We split into 2 teams, Ken and I mainly focussed on the intriguing "Easy Way Down" dig, while Dave, Rob, Tanya and Beth checked out 5 Goat cave nearby and Cotton Cave.

A truly beautiful autumnal day enhanced staying outside to dig. We progressed hugely, the highlight of which for me was fashioning some opposing slip knots to grip odd shaped boulders with webbing so that Ken, Dave and I could haul them out with webbing. I was disappointed that none of them were large enough to justify rigging block and tackle to really practice vertical rescue techniques. We opened up the right side of the 10 foot long slot enough to poke head lamps down and even willow thin Beth agreed she could not fit between the slabs it exposed. Straight down seemed perhaps more promising but a final large boulder slab halted progress for the day. Left seemed also unlikely to open up into large enough passage. We all agreed the progress was impressive, but from here it would be much slower and perhaps a few winters of freeze/thaw would help.

Five Goat cave had turned out to be only about 12 feet long, perhaps the easiest map ever. Ken and I wanted to at least check out nearby Cotton, which even with the help of those who'd just come from there was hard to find only 100 yards from "Easy Way."

I was newly stunned by the immediate beauty of Cotton in the entrance. Back of the main room a climb I'd started up last year intrigued me even more. I was tired from digging, yesterday's climb and short sleep, but only a realization that it was 6:30 and we had food and 3 hours of highway to consume before we slept deterred me from starting up it anyway.

We allowed a few minutes for reconnasaince of the climb. Beth chimneyed up a narrow section further out in the room that I had thought might lead to a ledge for traverseing back to the water-fall of flowstone at the far end. She got up enough to report the ledge was not as flat or deep as hoped, and we watched nervously as she figured out how to down climb from that awkward position with some aid from Ken and me. The hard part about the climb at the end seems to be an utter lack of opportunities to protect it. It was drier now in late August than it had been on our first visit, and plenty solid and rough. The problem for me is the fall consequences and how to get back down. Everything solid stone but the rimstone pools below meant a much harsher landing than the mud climb in Lover's Leap would have been. I'd rate this one maybe a 5.7 as a rock route, but one never knows for sure until it's climbed.

Extra headlamps from 6 people made the space above the climb more intriguing than ever. It appears to open into a large mezzanine where 20 people could stand and then leads further back beneath a large archway. How much more passage it could contain carved by the water that formed all the beautiful flowstone decorations intrigues me!

We'd brought a telescoping squeege pole in hopes of hooking webbing through a high formation which turns out to be infeasible. Instead I tied my camera and a light to the squeegee and Ken and I carefully extended it as high as we could reach. The video was poor, with the light too inconsistent, but as a proof of concept it is an idea worth improving for future explorations. Getting ideas for a future adventure above the stone falls was our main goal so we declared victory, retrieved some old trash from the cave, and headed for the Mexican food Saturday had denied us. Properly rehydrated by Margaritas we discussed the diminishing returns of light over distance on the ride home.

Lover's Leap map has only a few areas where further surveying might be possible, mainly down the long pit Dave explored. Racoon Ridge may remain a once-climbed wonder for decades. Easy Way Down digging may get harder if it can be opened into cave at all. So the intriguing but hard to protect climb at the current back of Cotton remains our most enticing remnant of this excellent early fall trip. Perhaps it goes no further than we see, but my imagination dreams of glorious hours of surveying unmapped miles.