| The
Kentucky Caver Quarterly
Proceedings of the
Bluegrass Grotto: the North Central Kentucky Area Chapter of the National Speleological Society |
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Page 02 [contents] || 
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vol. 41. iss. 4, December 2006 |
adjustments to
their gear, six cavers struck out into the larger passage to the left
of the main entrance. The rest began the climb up the muddy
break-down
on the right side.  The picture is of the crew that went to the unnamed cave overlooking Buck Creek. Back row (left to right): Bill, Brittany Huron, Kasey Webb, Matt Simpson, Sarah Bell (author) Front Row: Bill's daughter, Lori and Bob Dobbs I, of course, forgot my knee pads in the truck and had to race up the hill to get them in time to join the last of the cavers disappearing over the crest of the slimy rocks. Jamie and Matt graciously waited for me and we quickly caught up with our cohorts in the peanut-butter sludge of the aptly-named “Muddy Crawl”. The gasps and exclamations echoed back to us as each member of the group gave up trying to stay dry and wallowed in the cold mud. Finally, we all oozed out into a maze of canyon passage and began jogging after Jamie and Bob, who alternated leading us through the labyrinth that is Wells. The route we sought was the loop |
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that would allow us to avoid the
bat
hibernaculum, yet still make it down to see the river passage.
After a
few wrong moves, we took turns sliding down a ten-foot chimney into a
room that could hardly accommodate the size of our group. After
the
last caver made it down the chimney and we stood there for a few
minutes getting our bearings, we realized that we were back at the
entrance. Few in the group were interested in making the climb
back up
the chimney in order to get back on track, so our trip ended abruptly
right where we started.
Many members of our initial crew were ready to return to GSP and start preparing an early dinner, so we slid our vehicles around much like one of those infuriating picture puzzles, where you just want to pop out a piece or two and arrange the picture outside the box. We managed to let them escape the parking lot without fresh scratches on their clear-coat. The remaining cavers weren’t satisfied to stop caving so soon, so Bob Dobbs donned a stunning plastic shawl that he fashioned from an everyday trash bag and six of us piled into the back of Matt’s Ford Ranger to huddle through the frigid trip to Dykes Bridge Cave. While poking around the sandy entrance, we met up with a couple who had brought their grandchildren to do some exploring with flashlights. Soon we discovered that they were NSS members and that they knew of a cave that overlooked Buck Creek. Back we |