Sorry it's taken me a while to get this written up. I've been having too much fun caving and camping since convention...
This year the annual NSS convention was held at the state fairgrounds
in Lewisburg, WV. Considering that
Greenbrier County is home to more than 1000 caves, we couldn’t have asked for a
more appropriate location.
The pre-registration stats show that there were 958 cavers
registered before convention so including the stragglers who registered during
the week, there were well over 1000 cavers (one cave in the county per person I
guess). In attendance from our
crowd were Carlin Kartchner, T. Robert Harris Phd, Ken Walsh, Peter Hertl, Mark
Daughtridge, Diana Geitl, Tanya McGlaughlin, and Ava Pope. We had several other cool people camping
with us too, Lee Olson and Irena Melnic from South Carolina? and Patrick and
Madison Craft from Roxboro.
I can’t speak much for the beginning of convention since I
didn’t arrive until Tuesday evening, but I’ll do my best. The bulk of the crew (everyone except
me and Diana) arrived to the fairgrounds campground on Sunday. Not sure who arrived first, but I do
know that Ken graciously brought along the enormous and bulky tritrogs canopy
and (I’m assuming) with the help of others set it up to stake claim to a lovely
campsite just downhill from the trees, beer tent, and bathrooms.
Monday morning Tanya gave her presentation on Sugar
Grove in the Exploration of the Virginias session. From the comments I’ve heard it was very well received. There is also Facebook evidence that
Mark Daughtridge was, “At NSS Convention watching Peter climb 120 m in 5:39 on rope.”
— with Ken Walsh and Robert Harris at Greenbrier
East High School at 4:05 pm Monday afternoon. Turns out Peter won both the 120 m and
30 m climbing competitions. What a
guy! Monday evening was the howdy
party. I didn’t hear wild stories
about it when I arrived so I guess it was relatively tame...or I wasn’t talking
to the right people.
During the day on Tuesday people did stuff, though I’m not
sure exactly what they did. At
some point Pete did some more climbing and Rob managed to set the men’s record
in the CaveSim which held through the rest of the week. Congrats Rob! In the evening Ken attended the new members/fellows gathering
complete with Mayan themed shot glasses and tequila. Mark Daughtridge headed home for knee surgery. Rob and Carlin explored a hole in the
ground until very late (can’t remember the name of the cave, but they didn’t
get back ‘til 12:00 or 1:00 am).
I
arrived at the fair grounds around 7:30 pm at which point Rob, Carlin, Ken,
Peter, and Tanya were busy having fun and not answering their phones, luckily
the canopy was easy enough to spot and Tanya happened to be strolling by it. She helped me setup my tent and then we
set off for the free beer including the convention special IPA, Cave Monster. Shortly afterward Ken joined us. I met up with some family friends from
Texas, it was great to spend time with them!
Wednesday was the international session and photography
lessons (that Ken attended). Several
people watched talks about caving in Mexico, Haiti, China, Tasmania, etc. Really interesting stuff. Things I learned: Caving in Mexico
right now is dangerous. If you see poppies in Mexico and want
to live to see another day do not admire their beauty, leave the area before
the drug lords come after you with machine guns. If anyone wants to go to Tasmania,
they’re desperate for decent sketchers, especially those interested in teaching
their skills to others. If you go
on caving expeditions in areas of drought China you have to use one single
bucket of water to wash all of the things for all of the people in your group
over the course of several weeks, it turns out to be one very very muddy
bucket.
Wednesday evening was the campground party with free beer
and live music by the Terminal Siphons.
Ken and Erika moved the party away from the main area to Erika’s
campsite for folk songs around the citronella candle (no campfire, so we did
the best we could). She has
an amazing voice and her friend Jay is great too!
Thursday Lee and I participated in the vertical workshop
where we got to try out rappelling on a petzl stop and a rack. Also, we got to try several ascending
systems including personal lessons from Dick Mitchell on how to use the
Mitchell system and more tips from the one and only Vertical Bill. Our very own Peter Hertl was teaching
the rope walker system, and we also got to climb with knots and a frog
system. Several instructors were
impressed by my frogging skills, much thanks to ample training with Ken and
Pete. Ken and Diana went on a
photo trip, as Ken wrote about earlier. In the evening was the
salon awards show with a few cave ballads, arts and crafts, and lots of pretty
cave photos. Free beer and more
singing and guitar-ing by Erika followed.
I also had my first first-hand experience with all of the old naked guys
in the hot tub and sauna at 3 am...
On Friday Tanya, Patrick, Madison, and I went caving in the
first cave I’d been in since several visits to Cold Sink. It was huge! Lots of walking passage, 2 cave salamanders, and 20 or 30
larval stage salamanders of some kind.
It was a blast! This
reminded that caving is awesome, and that there are caves out there that aren’t
as miserable as Cold Sink.
Everyone cleaned up in time to attend the banquet dinner and
awards in the big hall of the fair grounds across the road from the campground.
Ken, Carlin, Tanya, Patrick,
Madison, and I joined my Texas people at a table near the front. Dinner was great, but as the awards
began we noticed a large reddish (on the radar) storm headed straight for
us. Though the storm appeared to
be 30 or 40 miles away, several minutes into the awards the power began to
flicker on and off. I had left my
tent fly open so I decided to head back with Patrick and Madison to batten down
the hatches. Carlin had just
finished packing his stuff to head toward Germany Valley for a big trip on
Saturday. Within 5 minutes of
reaching the tents a huge gust of wind (apparently clocked at just over 80 mph)
came seemingly out of nowhere and took many things very very far away. Our canopy managed to fly up
and over Ken’s car luckily leaving the car unscathed, Rob’s tent is still M.I.A.,
Patrick’s and Madison’s tents flew away leaving their gear scattered in a line
for a hundred yards or more. Ken’s
tent was flattened by the wind but managed to hold its ground so I was able to
stuff it and everything inside of it into his car (luckily he accidentally left
it unlocked) before it was completely destroyed. I did the same to salvage my tent. Irena’s tent was also flattened so I
rolled it up with the help of a nice passer-by and put it on the downwind side
of Rob’s car, it seemed to survive pretty well. Patrick and I were running around in the storm like madmen
trying to recover everything and put it in cars or on the downwind side of
Rob’s car.
Once we managed to secure everything we headed back over to
the banquet hall to see how the others were faring. We found Carlin who apparently didn’t make it very far down
the road because of down trees and powerlines. Reportedly, Pete was running around scaring small children
by yelling about the Mayan prediction of the end of the world, not sad that I
missed that. Ken, Rob, Irena, and
my Texas friends were all alive which was really relieving. We spent some time helping to turn the
banquet hall into an emergency shelter for those who lost their tents, or didn’t
want to risk sleeping in the campground near downed powerlines. After the storm passed and the winds
had settled we went to survey the damage.
Ken and I found what was left of the canopy about 100 yards from where
it had lived happily earlier in the week.
Many of the steel poles were bent at 90 degree angles and the tarp was
destroyed. Incredibly, the
TriTrogs flag was flying proudly so naturally we took some photos, (and Ken went caving) see below.
After being told that we couldn’t resetup our tents in the
campground, Ken and Tanya headed to their respective homes around midnight to
avoid sleeping with masses of people on the concrete floors of the converted
banquet hall. Rob and Irena
resetup their tents anyway and stayed the night. Patrick, Madison, and I found a nice sleeping area with
carpet and restrooms in one of the other fairground buildings. As one might expect of cavers in a
disaster situation, the beer began to flow again around 1 am so a few of
us walked around surveying the damage with Cave Monster in our hands. Several cars were crushed (but no one
injured), trailers were turned over, and the main tent was destroyed. It looked like a war zone.
Saturday morning we took some more photos of the damage and
headed home. Carlin stopped at
Island Ford for a short cave trip. Luckily I had filled up with gas just before
arriving at convention so I didn’t have to worry about the lack of power and
gas for nearly 100 miles from Lewisburg.
All in all it was an unforgettable experience. I apologize for anything I forgot to
include, the lack of sleep and plethora of cave beer have left my memory a bit
hazy. Glad everyone made it out alive and well! It’ll all happen again in Shippensburg, PA next August. Be there.
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