Ken Harrington wrote:
>In 1966 or 1967 four of us set off for a two day dig in Russell's Crawl. M=
>embers of the party as I remember were Gary Davis=2C Ed Glenn=2C Ed Snyder =
>and myself. We entered the cave on Friday evening and proceeded to the dig=
> face at the end of Russell's Crawl. At that time the Hoeman's Passage had=
> not been started and we were following the air straight ahead in Russell's=
> Crawl. We took turns digging and had been digging for about 24 hours so i=
>t was late Saturday night or early Sunday morning when Ed Glenn returned fr=
>om his stint at the dig face. He proceeded to tell us about the lovely you=
>ng girl that he had met and how enchanting she was. At that point in time =
>the rest of us determined that he was hallucinating and it was time to get =
>out of there. We exited the cave with no further problems except that Ed w=
>as firmly convinced that he had actually met the young lady and that he was=
> not hallucinating. On another dig trip with Ed Snyder=2C Gary Davis=2C Jo=
>hn King and myself we were digging in Russell's Crawl when we all heard a d=
>og barking. It was strange because at first none of us wanted to admit tha=
>t he had heard a dog barking. The source of the dog barking was never dete=
>rmined. =20
>I believe that the folding shovel with Gary Davis's name on it may have bee=
>n left there on one of these digging adventures. =20
Actually, Hoeman's Passage was first entered in December 1962.
Perhaps you were digging in the end of Hoeman's rather than Russell's.
That was not the only Russell's trip during which hallucinations were
reported. SW Cavers, Sept. 1965, reports on a camp trip by Jim Hardy, Art
Dunham & Don Harper on which bells were heard, and Harper, while alone in
Hoeman's, had a long conversation with three nonexistent men and a woman!
Of my most memorable crawls, three were in Fort Stanton. Hoeman's,
of course, was the first, notable simply because Vin and I spent so many
exhausting hours digging into it. Afterward, elsewhere in the cave, I
recall him exclaiming "Don, I'm tired of caving!"--the one and only time I
ever heard that superstrong outdoorsman complain of being tired by
anything. In 2010 and 2011, after learning from John Corcoran that
Hoeman's had never been surveyed, I led two attempts to go back and tie up
that loose end. I had no trouble with the "sand swim," but found that I
could no longer fit into Hoeman's; my rib cage seems to have gotten
thicker and stiffer. But the folding shovel that I presume was Gari
Davis's is still in the Twin Rooms, now too moldy and corroded to open.
The second, and most alarming, FSC crawl was when we had just
started digging what would become Babb's Burrow toward Lincoln Caverns. I
was backing out when my boot heel grazed the ceiling. A rock (very much
the size and shape of the one that trapped Floyd Collins, a fact which did
not escape me at the time) fell on my leg, but Doug Rhodes (if I recall
correctly) was right behind, and quickly freed me. A bit later, farther
in, I again grazed the ceiling, and that time several hundred pounds of
rubble fell and pinned my entire lower body from the waist down. It took
about 15 minutes to uncover me that time. That scared me out of working
in Babb's Burrow, and I didn't go through it until Lee Skinner called me
in 1969 to invite me down to see the Lincoln Caverns breakthrough.
The third, of course, and most recent, is the "Crawl from Hell" in
Snowy River. Size-wise, it's never small enough to be challenging, but is
impressive for its sheer 2,000'-plus length and how far in it is (which
requires large packs that must be rolled along), and it shares in the
grandeur of the passage it's an integral part of.
But the most truly intimidating crawl I've ever done is one that few
cavers have seen: the entrance to Silver Creek Cave in the Grand Canyon,
the source of half of Bright Angel Creek. I first saw that wind-blowing
bedding-plane opening on a solo hike in 1964, but ten feet in, I found two
inches of cold water flowing along the bottom of the crawl and dropping
into a floor fissure. I turned back then, and didn't return until 2006 to
survey the cave beyond. The entrance crawl is 90 feet long, as low as 10
inches, and most of that length has the frigid water rushing along it,
necessitating wallowing through. The ceiling is pitted, snaggy Velcro-
like Muav limestone. I was tense all night in camp beforehand, and even
with considerable protective clothing, I had to force myself to enter it.
I did make it through without getting stuck, the consequences of which
could be lethal. It reminded me of a miniature version of stories I've
read of the Grim Crawl of Death in Great Ex, Wyoming. (Silver Creek Cave
yielded about 1,500' of surveyed walking passage, but ended in breakdown,
blocking the potential for many miles of extension. Its ultimate source
could be farther from the outlet than the source of Snowy River is!)
--Donald
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