Clarksville Cave with the Boston Grotto - 11/10/2012

More photos from this trip

Much of the group preparing to head into the Ward entrance

We saw the Lake Room. Sally and Camille had a lovely swim. There was a tiny little bat hanging out with us! Only one bat sighting, but hopefully there are more.

The group in the Lake Room, and the bat we found

Groups split up, separating into crews taking on Thook or Gregory. Being in the Gregory group, from here on, this chronicles the experience of Mitch, Peter, Noor, Sally, and Camille.

Luckily Sally had to urinate, and so while we were searching the Big Room for the entrance to the Gregory side of Clarksville, she went back above ground to take care of business. Having searched for twenty minutes and seen Peter contort in interesting ways, we still hadn't found the passageway when Sally returned. She realized she had almost gone into a forking passageway when trying to reach the surface and upon inspection, that was the one, and we were off!

We came to a larger fork and found multiple thruways. Sally and Peter found a cairn in a large corridor, and a little ways off, Mitch was exploring what we came to believe was the Corkscrew. Once Mitch reported the tunnel opened into a beautiful room, all followed, twisting and turning, and we were birthed into the room. We looked at the narrow passageway when we finally reached the bottom and couldn't believe that we had ever been able to fit. The passageway had a stream running through it, and we followed it upstream. Eventually we found the cairn again, and this confirmed that we had found another route to the Bathtub. We returned the easy way back to the tail end of the corkscrew, downstream toward the fabled Gregory Entrance.

We crawled past a really neat waterfall that was maybe three feet high and spanned a big part of the passage, which was shaped such that we had to inch along at 45 degrees.

At Brinley's Sump, we faced neck-high water and had to squeeze through the passage with an ear underwater. We reached The Chutes -- a natural water(mud)slide! And almost free -- only five bucks and three hours of decontamination! There was a perfect pool at the end, and, although we wanted another turn, the clock was ticking and we forged on.

We knew we were nearing the Gregory Entrance when we started finding inscriptions all over the walls. We were searching for an 1811 inscription but the earliest we found was only from 1864. Manny had promised the person who found 1811 with initials a free dinner, so we were pretty bummed that we were 53 years off.

The oldest inscription we found

About a hundred feet on, we could detect the gentle waft of farm animals, and then there was light. Two of us bounded out, exclaiming how great it would be to live in the adjoining house. We slithered back in to join the other three who had found the true end of the cave, which actually led nowhere. Sally also saw a frog! A couple of us scrambled up the cliff directly above the Gregory entrance, and slid back down on the autumnal leaves. This was as close (not very close) as any of us came to injury. With so many doctors and medical students present, a little damage wouldn't have been a total disaster.

There was the chance for exploring an uneventful culvert under a road, but this operation was not completed. Turns out we were 100 yards from the parking lot, where we joined up with the other cavers from the Boston Grotto and MIT Caving Club. Pictures were taken, warm clothes were changed into, and then we filled the diner for a post-caving meal.

The Gregory group and the larger Thook group emerge victorious

And we didn't bump into any drunks or unprepared parties.

Trip report by Camille, Sally, Peter, and Mitch