Once more from the Claw Room...

Cassell Cave, WV

A survey trip with the Gangsta Mappers

The Cassell surveys have become pretty grim affairs lately. A few hearty souls show up and work on cleaning up leads and connecting the missing, unsurveyed parts of the cave. Cassell has broken the old distance of 6.63 miles and is assymptotically approaching the 8 mile mark. I've taken part in 11 previous Cassell Surveys and, since I'm moving to Colorado in a few months, this twelfth will be my last.

Karen Wilmes, Dave West and I arrived around midnight at our accomodations above the car wash at the in-construction campground. Miles Drake and Bob Zimmerman arrived shortly thereafter as did Edgard Bertout. Our accomodations were somewhat strange, but lovely and spatious none-the-less.

Looking down the Cassell Pit. Last fall, this photo would have shown you inky blackness and perhaps the point-like lights of cavers a hundred feet below. Now, a mass of breakdown blocks the pit about ten feet down. Normally, we rappell down the face on the left side of the photo. The rocks fell from the upper right. (Photo by Bob Zimmerman).

The morning was gray and rainy, continuing a trend in place for at least a week. Water levels were up and we figured there was no chance that the Cassell Pit entrance would be passable. Never-the-less, Miles, Edgard, and I arrived on the scene first and walked up to make sure. From a hundred feet away the sound of falling water made it clear that the pit was too wet for our use. By the time we got closer, water could be seen flowing down the normally dry stream bed and cascading over the lip into the 96 foot deep pit. But something wasn't right. I noticed that the water was splashing off a rock I didn't remember about ten feet below the lip. Furthermore, a shaly ledge of loose rock on the west side of the pit looked unfamiliar. Climbing down into the sinkhole itself, I peered down and found that the entire pit was blocked by massive boulders! Holy cow!
From what I remember, there were at least three large (refrigerator sized or larger) rocks balanced above the lip of the pit which are not there now. There is a tremendous quantity of rubble of all sizes blocking the pit and presumably these three rocks form the main support for the smaller stuff. I doubt the plug is more than ten feet deep or so, perhaps as much as twenty, but in any case, there is likely sixty feet of air below the recently fallen rocks. There was a small openning (visible in the photo at right) through which a rope might be able to pass. However, it seems unlikely that it goes anywhere and no one was eager to try it. This will require some work to clear. Time will tell.
With the pit entrance unusable, potentially for some time to come, we went to the default plan. Edgard, Miles, and I entered the horizontal Windy Entrance and proceded down the South Fork to clean up some leads. This was the first time I'd been back in the Windy Entrance since last April when I broke my ankle and I had a few issues to deal with. Fortunately, we bypassed the newly-named Danforth Falls and proceeded inward without incident.
The South Fork is far more sporting and strenuous than the walking passage of the North Fork and by the time we reached the Window Climb we had worked up quite a sweat. Edgard ascended the rope and dropped a ladder for the rest of us. We proceeded from there through the dusty upper level, over the 0,0 point and through a thousand feet of walking passage to the first belly crawl into the Waterfall Room. Here the real fun started! I've been through the dreaded Rolling Room twice before in each direction and it is more fun and easier each time. This is not to say that it was enjoyable, simply less aweful than the first time!
Once through the Rolling Room, we reached the survey head and broke out gear. As usual, I took sketching duty while Miles set stations and Edgard did foresights. The cave in this area is split between tight upper-level passage alternating between narrow canyons and slimy crawls. The lower level stream passage is narrow canyon with a flowing stream in the bottom of it. The two passages undulate back and forth connecting periodically. Neither passage is fun but only the lower one needed surveying.
In fact, once we'd started and gotten over the wet feet part, it wasn't so bad. Sketching was pretty easy as there were no side leads and the passage was narrow. The passage was generally I-shaped in cross-section with a wide, stream passage perhaps a foot tall on the bottom and similar wide ceiling channel above. We stayed in the narrow, vertical part occasionally walking on thin shelves above the water, occasionally splashing through. Miles and Edgar improved efficiency by shooting low through the wide stream passage rather than dealing with the sinuous canyon with its short sight lines. In 13 shots we connected to our tie-in point and were done with the major part of the survey.
We'd only been surveying for three hours and the day was yet young so we headed farther in to clean up a couple leads left over from my April 2002 trip near the Claw Room. Getting back there was quite a challenge, however, and it took a lot of energy to keep moving in the right direction without falling down the canyon. At length, we reached the "New" Claw Room (station CH19) and took a break. I compared my old sketches with Bob Alderson's and determined that most of the leads I'd left had already been "killed". However, there was one notable lead which had not been "killed". Furthermore, I wanted to look around a bit and check on some things.
We surveyed three shots through an upper level bypass of a stream meander and concidered our next options. The ceiling was composed of massive breakdown wedged on top of bedrock pillars. Edgard wormed his way through a tight crack and disappeared into the voids above. I travelled upstream to the "Old" Claw Room ... so named because of its numerous claw marks in the mud walls. The number and size of the claw marks (some of them are from a creature at least the size of a human; a bear perhaps?) suggests to me the presence of an old entrance in the area. There is a lead heading north up a steep mud slope which the old map lists as a mud choke. At the top of this slope are claw marks on the bedrock itself; some ursine and many others of smaller size, perhaps racoons. Alderson et al. surveyed it up to a series of tight passages connecting again to the main stream level via a 10' drop. Could this be the location of the old entrance? A surface investigation may well show an old sinkhole in the area where some digging would produce interesting results.
Edgard performed a dig in his upper-level wanderings and connected to the top of the mud slope. I wormed through his dig and found myself in a very scary 3-d, unstable breakdown maze high above the stream bypass we'd just finished surveying. Everything was covered in slick mud and I was profoundly unhappy. Ideally, we'd run a few shots into this area, but fatigue and concern about the stability of the pile kept us from proceeding. We'll leave this pseudolead for more daring parties.
At 9:20pm, we turned the survey and started making our way out. The retreat was no more fun than the way in and it seemed to take forever to reach the Rolling Room again. The slime and pools were even less fun on the way out and I was comforted in the thought that I'd never have to come this way again. There was a brief reprieve in the Waterfall Room and then we continued the belly crawling through the upper level bypass (mercifully dry). We gained the south fork upper level and caught a quick power nap. Then lots of hiking to the Window climb. Miles and I took the ladder down while Edgard rapped. Back into the Windy section and, after another hour of sporting work, we made it to the entrance area.
It was here, after a similarly exhausting trip that I fell while downclimbing the last drop. Given my very shaky, weak state on this trip, I'm amazed I even attempted it on the last trip. All three of us took the safer route down the ladder and, much relieved by an uneventful trip, emerged from the entrance around 12:30. It was quite dark and raining lightly. We gratefully changed into civilized clothing and headed back to the car wash, choked down a couple of pop tarts in lieu of dinner, and collapsed for the night.

It was a nicely uneventful survey and an exhausting bit of caving. All in all we surveyed 432.7 feet in 18 shots. There are no more going leads in the South Fork beyond the Rolling Room and that part of the cave can be concidered done.

This trip gave me the chance to reflect about caving and my skillset. In two and a half years, in a dozen Cassell survey trips, I've progressed from enthusiastic neophyte project caver to a sketch-qualified, vertically proficient surveyor capable of 12 hour work trips in challenging cave. Caving has also changed from a fun hobby to a full-blown obsession. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to all the Gangsta Mappers who have taught me most of these skills and with whom I've enjoyed many wonderful and memorable trips. It is with great sadness that I bid Cassell and the Gangstas farewell, at least for now. But that doesn't mean I'm not dying to learn how it all turns out!

The Wilderness Journal

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