The Cassell survey trips for me have settled into something of a routine. Nevertheless, I was excited to put together a team and continue work on my personal project area of the cave. I'd optimistically estimated that one good push could finish the Bratwurst and I was eager to get started. Gangsta turnout was sparse but I was joined by Tom Kornack, Bob Robins, and Edgard Bertout for the third foray into the lovely and remote Bratwust Passage of Cassell Cave. We were the only team was using the pit entrance today; the others were planning shorter trips to other parts of Cassell or to survey Willis-Cassell cave. The Bratwurst is profusely decorated and the two trips so far have been extremely rewarding. Sadly, all good things must be balanced out by some not-so-exhilarating experiences. We do this because it's fun... most of the time.
Edgard and I modelling nice, clean Meander Helix caveralls. (Tom Kornack photo) |
Edgard descends the pit. Still clean! (Bob Robins photo) |
After the fall: Mike Masterman sitting pretty as the rescue starts to mobilize. (Tom Kornack photo) |
Tom's Perspective
(by Tom Kornack)
It turned out that it was very fortunate that we turned in anomalously
early. We made great time going back to the pit, driven by delusions
that some luscious pizza awaited us in Dunmore. (The pizza place was
certainly closed; it was enough to simply imagine the possibility.) I
was bringing up the rear out of the miseries when I heard the news that
there was a party of three in the pit and that one of them had suffered
a broken leg. It was immediately clear that we would have to
participate in the rescue. When I finally reached the bottom of the
pit, I found a chipper and embarrassed Mike Masterson sitting up in the
middle of the room, just out of the waterfall. Both bones in his left
leg has obviously been broken because the angle of his foot did not
correlate with the angle of his kneecap. They had applied an effective
splint using two straight 4 cm dia. sticks on either side and copious,
tight wrapping of some red webbing. His friend Todd was nearby, trying
to stay warm, but actively feeling cold. Just as I reached them, I
heard Mary at the top of the pit, getting off rope and heading off to
find help. Charles immediately ascended to get us some clothing. Edgard
followed him up. Bob replaced the clear plastic sheet that was covering
Mike's legs with his space blanket. Bob ascended soon thereafter. I
spoke with Mike continuously while we were down there and I could not
detect any evidence of hypothermia: he could divide 90 by 11 and was
able to explain and defend the physics of his company's products very
clearly. At this point, it was myself, Todd and Mike at the bottom of
the pit. Mike's injury did not seem to bother him too much. While we
waited for the rescue folks to arrive, Todd became increasingly cold.
Wayne Cassell was lowered into the pit by the team of rescuers
assembled on the surface. He was directly attached by a carabiner at
the waist to the railing of a Stokes basket. He was simultaneously
rappelling off a second safety line. Unfortunately, he came down
through the waterfall, which eventually disabled his radio. The rope
was also placed in an unfortunately tight pinch in the rock, ultimately
making it difficult haul. It was determined immediately thereafter that
we were required to use a back board and other immobilization so we
waited while the back board was obtained and lowered into the pit.
Meanwhile, Wayne covered Mike in a wool blanket and checked the leg for
bleeding, sensitivity and other signs of trauma. Wayne's radio suddenly
went to static due to the water from the waterfall. We finally got the
back board and Mike was able to move himself onto the board and we
wrapped his tightly in the wool blanket. A neck brace was applied and
his head was immobilized using foam blocks. We put a `zipper' over his
body, which firmly strapped his body to the board in about six places.
Once he was firmly affixed to the back board, we could lift him into
the Stokes basket. We tightly laced some webbing across the basket
railings, thereby affixing Mike to the Stokes basket. We fashioned a
foot loop for his good foot, so that he could hold his body up and keep
weight off his broken foot when the basket was vertical. He was ready
to go up.
We connected the haul line to the railing at the top of the Stokes
basket, near to Mike's head. Wayne attached himself directly to the
Stokes basket as he had done before and the surface crew began to haul.
They could lift the Stokes basket relatively easily but as soon as they
had to lift Wayne, they could haul no further. The surface crew tried
several times to no avail. It was then decided that I should ascend in
parallel with the Stoke's basket and guide it along the way. I should
mention here that I have no experience with rescue work, so I did my
best and probably made several mistakes. I thought that I should follow
Wayne's example and guide the Stokes basket from the bottom. This
worked well while we were ascending through the first 1/2 of the pit,
where our lines were roughly vertical and the sled was not in contact
with the wall. We were ascending directly in the waterfall, which gave
both of us some discomfort. We first got stuck when we reached the
point where both the haul line and my line were channeled through a
tight pinch in the rock. At that point I found that I really needed to
be above the basket in order to guide it out and away from the pinch.
Unfortunately, we were still in the waterfall at this point. I managed
to ascend up behind the basket from the bottom and was able to push the
basket out from the pinch. We were in a very tight area and I needed
the haul team to provide just one tug at a time. Of course, the haul
team was eager to haul up, so they always tried to keep pulling. Twice
this resulted in the basket being wedged against an overhanging bit of
rock before I could guide it away. I think that we were eventually able
to communicate the need for small tugs, though I later understood that
the haul team was nonetheless frustrated by the lack of good
communication. After we escaped the first pinch, the basket turned
sideways and slid into a vertical crack, threatening to crush Mike's
face if it slid in any farther. It was clear that a face shield would
have been a very effective and welcome addition to the Stokes basket. I
was helpless to pull the basket out because my rope was stuck behind
the basket in the crack and I could not let go of the bottom of the
basket to ascend because the basket would have leaned further into the
crack. Todd was just above us on the ledge at this point, and I asked
him to descend down to pull the basked out and away from the vertical
crack from above. He undid the rebelay and came down and did this. This
was immensely helpful. Again, I could have been a lot more effective if
I had been above the sled. The last bit of the haul went flawlessly. At
this point our ropes began to diverge, but I was nonetheless able to
pull the sled over and away from the last of the overhanging rock. I
was discharged of my duty and ascended up to the anchor tree. I
followed the group carrying Mike back to the Ambulance.
Others on this list have provided some decent explanations as to how
the fall originally happened. I will not speculate further. I did
ascend on the rope from which Mike fell and found absolutely no
problems, puffs or other concerning spots. I was particularly impressed
with the professional behavior and patience of all members of the
rescue effort; I directly benefitted from their responsiveness to my
needs and commands while ascending. I would appreciate any constructive
comments to learn how we might be able to have done things better with
the resources we had.For the first time since I had begun surveying with the Gangsta
Mappers, our survey team decided to quit early. We were awfully cold
and tired after worming around in the newly annointed `Hodag's Lair'
mazework: Charles Danforth zipped around, above and below us trying to
get a handle on how to sketch the maze. Bob Robins stoically managed
the survey data and drew cross sections. Edgard Bertaut (foresight)
pushed some particularly tight and muddy cracks and managed to slime us
all merely by proximity. I took backsight was particularly pleased with
the performance of my prototype electroluminescent panels on the survey
instruments. They really improved the comfort of the surveyor by
obviating the need to hold a light far and above the dial window. I was
nonetheless fatigued by surveying the nontrivial, nonorthogonal, and
nonplanar passages in the Hodag's Lair. As it was still early, we
decided to generate some body heat by exploring back towards the end of
the Bratwurst. The passage continues quite a ways back and pinches out
when it rises sharply over and into piles of breakdown. The passage
splits several times and makes some curious turns at odd angles. It
will be very interesting to see what the survey back there looks like
on the final map; I think this is one place where the survey will
really elucidate what is happening in the rock.
Further Aftermath (Sept 24, 2002)
According to Todd Leonhardt:
The details on the incident with Mike are basically as follows:
At approximately 8pm on Saturday evening, Mike Masterman, Mary Schmidt, and
myself descended into the Pit entrance of Cassell Cave in Pocahontas County
with the plan of doing a Pit-to-Windy through trip. As we were suiting up
at the cars, it began to rain. The rain continued to increase in intensity.
I was the last person in the cave. I was completely soaked to the bone
before I started rapelling, by the time I was at the bottom I was cold and
shivering. Given that I was alreay completely soaked, hadn't slept in about
36 hours, and it was going to be about a 6 hour fairly rigorous trough trip,
I thought it would be best to bag the trip, ascend up and call it a night -
I didn't want to risk getting hypothermic. The others on the trip agreed.
Mike decided to ascend up first, in case I needed any help getting over the
lip at the top. Mike got up the rope a little over 10 feet and said he was
tired - he had helped someone put the roof on a barn that morning, plus I
think his ascending system wasn't tweaked quite right and it was taking him
longer to ascend than it should. So we told him he needed to change over to
rappel and come down and we'd figure things out from there. He started to
switch over to rappel, but one of his ascenders was jammed and he couldn't
get it undone (the torrential downpour had coated the ropes with mud). This
was a very bad situation because the bottom 30+ feet involves ascending
through a small waterfall, which was made significantly worse by the hard
rain. There was a 2nd rope from the gangsta mappers who were surveying in
the cave, so I ascended up that to help Mike. On the way up, some of Mike's
gear feel and hit my helmet, causing my light to stop working - fortunatey
it was a duo and I just switched bulbs. It turns out that one of the things
that fell was his footloops - don't ask me how they managed to come off his
ascender - I don't have a clue, maybe he purposely took them off, maybe not
- at this point it was obvious that he was getting severely hypothermic and
not thinking straight. I knew that without his footloops to stand up in,
the situation had just gone from very bad to truly frightening. We tried to
get Mary to throw them up or tie them to the rope or something so we could
haul them up, but the communication just wasn't working (it was hard to hear
because of the waterfall). So I told him to put his feet on me and stand up
and get the ascender off. At this point, he was really not thinking
straight, first he just tried undoing the cam on his ascender, so I told him
he had to move his ascender up first - he did just that - moved it up and
tried to undo the cam, I explained again that he needed to undo it while
moving it up a little bit. At some point Mike said he was losing it and
couldn't hang on much longer and asked for a kife to cut himself loose. If
we had one, we would probably have cut him loose, but none of us had a
knife. After a few more tries, we were able to get Mike's ascender
un-jammed. Problem is, he was rappeling with a figure-8 and hadn't locked
it off (and I hadn't bothered to check). So as soon as his ascender came
off, he dropped like a rock.
Regarding Mike's condition:
Apparently it is a rather nasty break that Mike has. He had surgery around
8am Sunday morning and some pins got put in. He will probably need another
surgery at some point.
The Wilderness Journal
Neithernor