Note: As this is definitely a work in progress, please bear with me if this changes format and content many times over the next couple of months. Also, corrections, suggestions, photos, links, etc. are welcome.
Being geeks, our idea of style may be different than some others. We couldn't just drive out and listen to FM radio all the way. Rather, we had to geek up Mike's fan. So, we had 3 laptops, 3 cell phones (2 of them high-speed wireless capable), a 400 watt inverter (with 2 backups just in case), 2 GPS, a Wireless Access Point, and a 10/100 4-port switch. We were ready for just about anything. Oh and we had a Blaupunkt MP3 capable stereo jerry-rigged to plug into the headphone jack of a laptop just in case we still didn't have enough music. About the only thing we didn't have was nuclear capability. And we joked about working on that.
We started off simply enough. In the dark. In the rain. One a highway closed down to one lane. We ended 36 hours later (we did stop to eat a few times after all) pulling into Washington Ranch seeing many folks who had already arrived before us.
We decided to check in. Two of us had dorms, two of us were camping. Speaking for myself, I enjoyed the camping. At night it was cool enough to be comfortable. In fact it was cooler than camping last year in Scoharie New York.
That afternoon we meet for the introductary meeting and other business. For me it was a joy to run into old friends from last year. One thing that was surprising was the make-up of the classes. Since National NCRC had not been held in the southwest in a long time, the classes were a bit mis-balanced. The Level 1 class was absolutely huge, 53 students I believe. The Level 3 class had over 20 students. Us Level 2's were the minority. There were 13 of us. Of the 13 students, 7 of us had taken it last year in NY. So it was definitely re-union time.
Note, I'm jumping around here until I fill in the details.
Folks from other parts of the country often mock New York caves as damp, muddy, small, etc. And they're right. But, most of our caves don't have cow pastures directly above them. And if they do, they generally flood enough to keep the cave fairly washed out. Well, let's just say there's a reason the BLM owns so much land in the desert that's used for grazing. It's in the freaking desert. No one wants to live there except cattle who don't have much choice. And cattle do what they do, drink water, graze and produce for the lack of a better term, "organic byproducts." Which, since the desert is fairly flat tend to seek the lowest place they can find. Now, put a cave under that flat desert and guess where that lowest place is. Now, combine that with the lack of much water to wash out the cave and you get Park Ranch Cave.
It looks innocent enough. I'll grant you that. Nice fenced in sinkhole. (Seems they don't mind if the cattle byproducts end up in the cave, but they don't want the cattle there.) From there you climb down and entire a nice little cave. And wander a bit. It's actually quite nice at the point. Then your team leader points down a tight crawl and says, "That's our route." Well, compared to a New York cave, that's WALKING passage. Which is fine until you start crawling, round the corner and the SMELL assaults your nose. That's when you really wonder, "what the hell am I doing here?" Then you realize you DID volunteer for this and it is after all much cooler in the cave than on the surface. So you plow ahead. And go up, down, around, through, into, and so on through the cave and its muck.
Now, you have to remember, the entire week the instructors had been reminding us, "You must bring piss bottles into the caves. You can't leave your piss in the cave." Now I know why. One wouldn't want to mess up the delicate pH balance the cattle have created. Jokingly we decided we could form the Cave Urination Squad. "We pH Balance the Caves for you."
Seriously, enough complaints. I will say that many sections of the cave were quite nice and the entire cave was NOT as bad as I make it sound.
The disappointment was that on the two searches I went on, we failed to locate our patient. Heck, we even failed to locate the correct passage. Our fearless leader Peter kept saying he had a nose for this sort of thing. I trust he did. But I think the cave had overwhelmed it at this point. Of course combine that with an illegible map that we then dropped into the water, further rendering it impossible to read made for an interesting time. We did eventually find another exit to the cave on our first search pass.
Later, after the final patient had been found I ended up leading a transport team. Fortunately there was no problem finding the patient. All we had to do was follow the phone line.
Ok, quick aside on running commo. The instructers correctly drill into Level 1's heads, "move fast, get in there with the IRT to the patient as quickly as possible." Which is good advice. I also know at some point folks are reminded, "Do not CUT the comm wire. Splice into it if need be, but don't cut it."
Now, in this case the folks running the comm were definitely moving fast. So fast that they didn't notice when the wire split at a location that had previously been cut. (I did mention how we're taught to not cut the comm wire?). So my team is booking along as fast as we can when we run out of comm wire. Uh Oh... there's about a 20' "air-gap" here. Well, figuring that the UC at the patient jut might want to talk to the surface from time to time, we took 5 minutes to form a quick splice.
Now, this would have worked MUCH better if there had been plenty of slack in the line. There wasn't. I think the comm team must have been sprinting down the passage at this point. The comm wire for the most part was about 2'-3' off the cave floor running the straightest possible path to the patient. Which meant very little slack and that we (and other teams) had to constantly duck under it or climb over it.
Anyway, once we got the splice in place we started moving again. I had two reasons to keep my team moving fast. The first of course was to get to the patient as quickly as possible and to relieve the other Evac team. The second was when I realized that I was often standing in water that the comm line from time to time dipped into. It dawned on me that if there's one splice in it, there's probably others. And who knew if and when one of the comm team folks would ring up the other phone. Now, 120 volts or so isn't enough to kill you, but I have it on good authority you don't want to be standing hip deep in water when the 120 volts hits. Fortunately we were avoided this experience. One I'll continue to try to avoid. :-)
As an aside, let me note, I'm not trying to bash the comm team in anyway. They actually did do a great job. But as anyone knows, in the midst of a Mock or a real rescue things always happen that aren't quite "textbook" and are often in restrospect somewhat funny. This was one of them. Once they had a working wire, they did a GREAT job of handling communications. So, if you're reading this, don't think I'm trying to put them down. I'm not. I'm just finding humor in some of the misadventures.
Now, Howard, our UC (underground coordinater) decided to do a little experiment. And we were the lab rats. He managed to cycle through 6 evac teams in getting the patient out. So we were in and out in a remarkably short period of time. Of course the worst part of this was having to leave the nice cool cave for the hot broiling sun outside. Oh, and getting no chance for my team to be the ones that brought the team to the surface to the waiting "TV" cameras. So, no televised glory for MY team. But that's ok. It was a hack News program anyway. :-)
Seriously, once we got the last patient out it was a matter of packing things up and heading back to Camp Washington for some rest and relaxation.
Well, R&R AFTER being completely hosed down 2-3 times. Gretchen by far had the muddiest clothing, but I believe Ken Nichols and I were running a fairly close second. Oh, and I would NOT recommend trying to rinse off in the "pond" behind the equipment cache. If anything it was worse than Park Ranch Cave.
I'll be adding more later, but I'll say this. Any sane person would have gone to bed soon after dinner. Then again, any sane person probably doesn't go caving. Being a bit insane a number of us stayed up to watch a thunderstorm that was 30+ miles away. After that the slightly saner ones did evidently head off to bed. Some of us stayed up and eventually made our way to the Alamo.
I think after falling asleep for the 3rd time in the middle of listening to a conversation I convinced myself it was truly bedtime.