Kooken Cave at MAR
or
I think I need a bigger light
Every Spring and Fall there is a Mid-Appalachian Region Field Event. Spring 2007 was at Woodward Cave Campground. It seems the most frenzy time of the whole weekend is when the sign up sheets for guided cave tours get posted. Every one is trying to get on their favorite cave. I really wanted to get in the Alexander Cave trip. You guessed it. That’s the first trip to fill up. I didn’t make it.
Nate suggested I try Kooken Cave. One of my goals was to try a vertical trip. This was a vertical cave entrance, so I took Nate’s advice and signed up.
I didn’t know anything about this cave except that the requirement was to have at least two ascenders for this trip. That seemed normal to me. I went back to my tent and pulled out the MAR bulletin and read about Kooken Cave.
OK, so now I’m getting a little nervous. It has two drops. The first is an eighty-foot open rappel with a couple rock ledges. Nothing you can stand on, you just have to watch you don’t hit them wrong. The second is right after you get off rope from the first. It’s a twenty to thirty foot “nuisance” rappel. In other words, it’s not an open drop, but it’s too steep to climb.
I have been practicing, but haven’t done this distance before. That’s over one hundred feet total vertical drop. And you have to come back up it, too. I know how I am with heights, but I’ve learned I’m less phobic when on rope.
I met Brian at 8:30 AM at the pavilion to head over to Kooken. It’s about an hour drive, but Brian knows the area real well and gets us there to meet Dave and another gentleman, in a little less than that. Brian wants to get a silt sample and he and Dave talk about whether to do a through trip or not. They ask me and I tell it doesn’t matter and as far as I’m concerned they could decide after we’re in there. After all, they don’t know my abilities or me.
We suit up and walk through the farm field to the sink where the cave entrance is. It’s a thirty-six inch pipe with a locked gate, as is usual. Through the pipe I followed Dave to a metal deck that’s suspend in the rock with some rigging for the rappel. It’s set up real nice to make a simple rappel launch. I’m second to go down. I take a deep breath, run the rope through my Petzl Stop, and yell, “Oh Rope!” as I look into this black abyss.
Taking that step off the platform is a big leap of faith in your gear and abilities. Eighty feet down is a long ways if you make a mistake. But it wasn’t so bad. It was actually fun. The rope fed through my “Stop” nice and easy and I glided down and bounced pasted the rock obstacles, more or less. Landed on the bottom of the first drop, unhooked and yell, “Off Rope!” The second was a little more difficult in that it was a slightly thicker rope, and was muddy. I practically had to push the rope through to get down the hill. In hindsight, there is a better way and I will have to practice that soon. But I got down there and unhooked and I was finally all the way off rope and in the cave.
As I’m looking around I find it a little difficult to see anything, like my light’s not on. That’s when I realize just how large this cave room was. The ceiling was thirty feet high and the walls are seventy-five feet at the widest point.
I had decided not to bring my camera on this trip because I had forgotten all the stuff I use to keep the mud out of it. But if I had, there was no way I could have captured this room even with my slave flash. My headlamp just barely reached the walls. Not enough to really see, just reach them. The other guys had some serious light. Reach the walls, the ceiling, all over. Dave disappears through a small crawl so I follow him into the next room.
WOW!! Twenty-five foot ceiling and one hundred feet across at the widest point. I have never seen anything this big in a Pennsylvania cave. PA caves are notorious for being small and crawly type mud pits. You could park an airplane in this one.
The rest of the trip was pretty much the same. Brian got his silt samples, and we poked around and saw BIG cave. We didn’t do the though trip. Went back to ascend the rope back up the full one hundred feet. That eighty feet open back up was the most tiring part of the whole trip. It gave a new meaning to “cardio work out” for me.
Dave invited me back to do a through trip sometime. I guess that means he trusts my ability to do it. I’ll take my camera next time, but I need to bring a few slaves to light it up enough for you all to see. I think I need a bigger light, too.