After months of planning, many hours of rope practice, two, 700 foot ropes being purchased the seasoned crew headed to Georgia on the evening of December 6th to drop the largest pit in the area (586 Feet). This is NOT that story, but if you want to read it-go to Scott Thompsons awesome Facebook writeup . Well, here are a couple of photo’s anyway.
After spending 9 hours in the main cave (that this story is not about) we planned on doing a shorter, easy cave the following day. After breaking down camp, we drove to the parking area. The plan was to hike up the dry stream bed to the cave entrance. We would enter and rappel 8 (or so) drops, pulling the rope down after every drop then walk out at the bottom. There had been a drought, and no water was expected to be in the cave. When planning a cave trip always plan for the unexpected.
The group! Also, Maggie and Adam because they make such a cute photo.
Remember, this is during a drought. After desending the first drop we noticed a LOT of water.
Father and son (Scott and Stricker) watch Jeff Rose head on down a beautiful drop. All the drops in this cave were beautiful with no climbing.
During the first couple of drops we stayed fairly dry, notice the water is on the other side of the pit.
The nice thing about Richard’s is no matter how far the floor drops, the ceiling stays about the same height. This is very evident about halfway through the cave in addition to the nice water flow.
Notice the chain on the anchor where Scott is rigging. On a pull down, you can only use one rig point. So, that rig point is secured to another rig point by a chain.
The deeper we got, the wetter we became. Even damp and cold, we all had big smiles on our faces.
This is kind of a split waterfall. There is someone on rope on top and another person at the bottom.
On a pull-down trip it is always nice to be able to locate the exit. We had a little trouble locating the exit, but we did find it. This is not Fantastic Pit, but this cave is Fantastic. The water made it really fun, but a bit cold. We all changed and headed back to Florida, with an arrival time of 2:00AM.
Story and Photo’s by Philip Walker