Cavers: Vera, Eugeniya, Zack, Charlie, Ali
By Zack
We set off from Cambidge at 8 am on Saturday, the Sunoco parking lot rapidly disappearing into the morning behind us. Driving up to Albany County was riveting, I'm sure, but I was fast asleep for said drive and thus have little commentary to offer regarding its passage.
And at last, we were there. Parked on the side of a county road, we changed into our gear and enjoyed a light half mile hike through a wooded area to the cave's entrance. The entrance was fantastic, much taller than the average caver and seemingly cut into the side of a large sinkhole in the middle of the woods. Descending into the tunnel, it sloped along rock and mud providing a natural slide into the cave. A massive wooden ladder allowed our party to fully climb into the cave, and from there we began to explore.
Beginning passages were cavernous, allowing us all to walk comfortably, marveling at the large rooms we found ourselves in. The dome was particularly nice, and a muddy rope hanging into the room provided a teaser for a possible ascent (though one should not actually climb it).
Pressing on, we found our first squeeze. It was tall, luckily, so we were able to shuffle along the wall standing, dropping slightly, until it eventually culminated into a short crawl through muddy water. Surfacing at the end of the squeeze, we found ourselves in a small room that just barely fit the five of us (with a great deal of creativity with our leg positioning). A brief bout of cave darkness then segued into our exit from the squeeze. The way back was slightly more difficult because of the small amount of chimneying it required, but it was conquerable and we emerged victorious in the room we started in. It was time to continue on towards the gunbarrel.
There were some other smaller passages we investigated on the way to the gunbarrel, but most ended in dead ends relatively quickly. For the gunbarrel, we chose to take the bypass on the way there and investigate what it entailed first. After some examining of the passageways following the gunbarrel, we prepared ourselves for our return to the surface and steeled ourselves for the gunbarrel. It required some crawling turned over to one side, but about halfway through it opened up more. At some point it was possible to somewhat crawl on my hands and knees, though it would probably be on the tighter end for more people. At this point, the end was in sight, and we escaped the gunbarrel, victorious once again.
It was late enough at this point that we chose to exit the cave, and we crawled back out the looming mouth of the entrance and reentered the humid woods. Another short half mile walk back and we returned to the car and the joy of all the cleaning of our equipment we then had to do!