Cavers: Caleb, Pari, Pablo, Rez, Grace, Hana
By Caleb
Pari, Pablo, Rez, Grace, Hana, and I met up early in the morning and left at roughly 7:30 AM for Vermont. Travel went smoothly, but it turned out to be rainy the whole day, which, while not completely prohibitive, could prevent us from going as far in the cave as we wanted later on. Nonetheless, we started towards the forest containing the cave.
While one of us had already been to Morris Cave, none of us were fully sure about the exact location at first, so we started by crossing a river (we would later realize that this cave was on the side of the river that we had started on, and we had taken a scenic route). Then, we walked around through the forest, which looked especially pretty as it was raining. Eventually, we looped around to reach the general area of the cave, which contained a tall rock formation, a waterfall running down it and, because of the consistent rain in the area over the past week, what was essentially a pond surroudning the cave entrance. This was more rainfall than expected; we became concerned about whether the cave would be accessible in these conditions, and since the pond was too deep to walk through, we sent a couple people to check out the hole. It turned out to be dry, so we changed into our gear entered the cave!
Despite how wet it was outside, when we got in it was actually still quite dry. It was a marble cave, so it was super pretty; the walls were filled with orange, white, and brown hues, which made the formations quite visually interesting! After crawling through a good amount of bat poop, we ended up at the first pinch, which went smoothly for all of us. After between 30-45 min we came up to the next pinch, which Pablo expressed particular concern about earlier due to its smaller and wetter nature than the first. Indeed, while this pinch usually had some level of water, it proved to be notably higher that day. At this level, getting through the pinch would entail having more than half of our faces covered in water, so if we wanted to get through we would have to bail for a while. Conveniently, there was a bucket and a bunch of cut-off 2L bottles for scooping right next to the wet pinch. We started bailing water just to see how much we could improve the situation, but we found that 2 buckets' worth didn't make much of a difference -- only half an inch at most. We then reconvened to discuss our options. Erez and I were up to going through the wet pinch, but Hana wasn't sure. Eventually, we decided not to go through because, by the time we all made it through, we would have only 45 minutes tops to keep exploring beyond it, which wouldn't be that far. So, we turned back and exited the cave.
After the cave, we meditated and washed ourselves off in the waterfall, which was much stronger due to the rain, which was really fun. We were also able to collect pretty white chunks of marble lying outside the cave! We then headed back to the parking lot beside the street, changed, and started to head back. We stopped at a diner in an old train car, where nearly all of us got a burger, and then continued back and did decon. Overall the trip went very smoothly and it was really fun to explore the cave! (Note: a couple days after the cave I found a deer tick on me, so try to be more careful than me when you're in the forest.)
-Caleb