Hmmm...definitely the most tiring crawl of my caving experience was returning from Harmony Hall in Snowy River. The 2 longish crawls on Snowy River are relatively easy crawls, but you have to be careful not to brush the ceiling to avoid getting manganese or mud on the white calcite floor. The trip to Harmony Hall was the greatest distance I've traveled in cave. When we finally exited, it was a 34 hour trip. I was definitely the slowest on the team. Traveling over 8 miles to the survey is a long way to go. All that darn hopping on Snowy River, putting two booties on would take too much time, so we put just one booty on to hop across on the far reaches of Snowy River. I think I would have actually been quicker putting both booties on, but don't plan to EVER try that experiment! Prior to that trip, the Doc had told me that I was clearly done with menopause, I found out the doc was wrong. And did I mention I was the slowest one? never fun. So imagine a woman with the last stages of PMS and menopause on a 34 hour cave trip. Not only was I slow, but I might have been a little testy.... On the last longish crawl on the way out I head Brian Kendrick say "Hey, there's a Starbucks Espresso in the middle of the passage." John Lyles had mentioned he'd let me have half of his espresso. I told Brian it was for me, and sucked it down. I'd like to say that gave me the energy of batman. But, nope, I was still kind of dragging. After that trip I realized I was NOT fast and light. It took about 2 months for the blisters on my knees to fully heal. 4 trips to Mount Airy or beyond are my limit. I certainly never need to see those two crawls again.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mark Minton Sent: Monday, March 10, 2014 9:03 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [SWR] A New Thread: Crawlways I was At 09:00 PM 3/10/2014, Michael Lorimer wrote: >I would like open up a new discussion thread. We have all had many >wonderful caving experiences, some of them bordering on the fantastic. >I would like to start the ball rolling with crawlways. How about >writing something about your best or worst crawlway experience? The >good, the bad, the muddiest, the most horrible, the funniest. You name >it. In Crump's Cave in Kentucky back in the 70's I was coming out of a long hands-and-knees crawl behind Joe Saunders (R.I.P.) after a 20-hour trip when he slowed and then stopped in mid-crawl. After a minute or so I said, "Joe! What's going on?" He replied, "What? Oh!" and then continued crawling. He had fallen asleep in mid-crawl. I can't recall ever being with anyone else who fell asleep in motion either before or since. Mark Please reply to [email protected] Permanent email address is [email protected] _______________________________________________ SWR mailing list [email protected] http://lists.caver.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swr _______________________________________________ This list is provided free as a courtesy of CAVERNET _______________________________________________ SWR mailing list [email protected] http://lists.caver.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swr _______________________________________________ This list is provided free as a courtesy of CAVERNET
