Story and Photo’s by Scott Thomspson
Noooo, not THAT Crossover Trip. Sadly we were nowhere near Ellison’s, rather at a cave much closer to home but that is still one of my favorites. It’s got two entrances and a pair of pits allowing you to do a crossover trip or a through trip, or just a horizontal trip. It’s basically the Swiss Army knife of caves.
We had folks along that did some or all of the options, though I spent most of my time over in the vertical part of the cave, which was fine with me.
The Gang enjoying the warm summer sun. Not sure why, it’s hot out! Let’s get underground where it’s still hot but at least it’s also dirty!
We had a usual good mix of folks and with a few people that had been before we were able to send most of the group on a nice explore of the horizontal part of the cave while the ropes were rigged.
After rigging and doing a quick run through to check all was well it was back through the ropes in reverse with William for some of his first in-cave vertical. This is one of my favorite Florida pits. It feels like a pit. I’m not sure I can explain it better than that.
Some of our drops feel more like glorified cracks, but this one opens up nicely and looks like a pit should look. It’s also nice that the second drop has the sculpted feel of a proper pit as well making for a really nice quick through trip. They’re really good for training because of that. You can rig them a couple of ways and depending on which direction you run people through they’re going to be doing different things on rope. Great cave!
Carrie, for example, was trying out the Kid’s bobbin, so we ran her “backwards” so she could stand and rig in clean on the lip of the in cave drop with the new to her device, then get a bit more of a challenge ascending out of the main drop with its slightly funky top.
The other group came down the main drop because they had never been here and didn’t seem to believe me that it was one of the prettiest drops in the state until they wiggled through the entrance and saw it bell out beneath them.
A little crawling later and they got to ascend the flutes of the in-cave drop and derig while we did the same at the top of the main drop. It was about the most relaxing crossover trip you could ask for!