BLUNDER HOLE

By re-ridgewalking areas that have been ridgewalked once or twice, we have found obscure and not so obscure pits and caves that are as good as any of the caves found twenty years ago. For the past couple of years, Jerry Reeves has been doing just this. He has been re-ridgewalking the classic valleys again, again, and again. This is the story of discovery, conflict, and exploration of one of these new TAG classics Jerry Reeves discovered by looking where everybody else had already looked before.

It all started on December 16, 1973, when Dave Bradford, Lin Guy, Gerald Moni, and Jerry Reeves discovered Remote Pit way up near the head of Little Coon Valley. The next weekend of December 21-23, 1973, had Lin Guy leading a three-day ridgewalk starting from Bald Point just over the Tennessee line, all the way to Thunderhole on the north side of Little Coon. Lin Guy, Eddy Harding, Neil Lennon, George McCluskey, Gerald Moni, Jim Young, and Jim Youmans participated, but only Gerald, Lin, Neil, and Jim Youmans were there all three days. They discovered Cold Ear Pit, Corn Hole, Whip It Pit, Grip It Pit, and several karst features before they had a long dry spell up to Ike Hollow.

Just as they were rounding into the hollow they discovered Deep Throat, a 49-foot pit. Around the next ravine they discovered a 31-foot pit, which did not qualify. Going down off the contact thirty feet, they then discovered Root Sixty-six Grotto, not very far away. No other caves from there to Thunderhole were found by the ridgewalkers. Lin described one of the karst features found by the group as, "After stumbling upon two 20-foot pits on the ridge, we found Pop Pit, a non-qualifier, with a triple paralleled pit complex, with drops of 42, 26, and 26 feet."

Twenty-One Years Later

Jerry Reeves and Gene Reeves rediscovered this cave back in January of 1994. They discovered an undone pit through a high crack in a far wall. A "cast o ' thousands" trip on January 22, 1994, helped Jerry push the cave. Jerry set two bolts up in the crack and then he let Gene and I drop the pit. The official depth of the pit taped at 90 feet! The cave looked like it was going to go at the bottom past a 400-pound boulder. Marion, Gene, and I pulled it out of the way with rope and great effort. Unfortunately, the passage, which continued died in a miserable horror tube crawl. Gene named the cave Cold Pit, unaware of the previous name given by Lin Guy and crew.

Nearby that same day, Alan and I dug open Bobbit Lost it Well, a short little contortion cave with drops of 10 and 35 feet with a total depth of about 65 feet. It was these new discoveries found where good ridgewalkers had given it hell twenty-one years before that convinced me Jerry Reeves was onto something in Little Coon. Alan and I continued to join Jerry in other ridgewalks within Little Coon Valley finding other new caves but nothing significant.

Ridgewalk Redux

It was not until November 5, 1994, when Jerry Reeves, Marion Smith, Gerald Moni, Teresa Williams, Jon Brown, John Adler, Maury Benamy, Forest Platt, Andy Porter, Tonya Smothers, Doug Strait, Chris Hudson, and Alan Cressler, came out to ridgewalk in the Little Coon that we began to fill in the gap between Thunderhole and Cold Pit. The original objective was to look for a football sized hole in the vicinity of Thunderhole that was reported to go to the center of the earth. As the cast of thousands hit the mountainside we turned into casts of individuals.

I ended up finding a hole Jerry had found and flagged, but had left undone. "Boing" everyone over, I slid into the dirt hole. It was an eight-foot deep dirt filled karst feature. We began walking toward Ike Hollow. The contact was well defined, but no caves either old or new were to be found.

At the head of the hollow, Jerry, Maury, Chris, Forest, and Tonya continued walking the contact to go do two known pits that were nearby. Alan, Doug, Gerald, John, and I began hiking up the main ravine to go look at a sinking stream that Jerry recalled being up there. There was no sinking stream, but we did go up to the caprock where we discovered that there was hardly any water draining off into the hollow.

John and I decided to go do the two known pits most everyone else had set off to do. With Gerald and Doug, Alan went to look for caves on a lower bench. At the contact, John and I found Jerry, Maury, Chris, Forest, and Tonya, just coming out of a large open-air pit. The pit was 31-feet deep and had a little waterfall pouring off into it. It did not qualify for the Alabama Cave Survey. They were trying to find Root Sixty Six Grotto.

Jerry found a small hole thirty feet to the south of the 31-foot pit that needed checking. Chris squeezed into it and requested rope be sent down. Meanwhile, I found a very small crack in a small bluff outcrop of the chert contact zone only ten feet away from the 31-foot pit. A rock rattled on down so I decided to check it out. I rigged a rope and slid in. Maury and Jerry were both shaking their heads in disbelief as they supported my effort. Jerry said, "Hell, it don't look like ya fit. I replied, "Where's the tight spot?" The pit got bigger and belled out to 20 feet long by 10 feet wide. Climbing down to the bottom of the pit, I got to a very tight squeeze where I could see a waterfall pouring into a small pool.

Once I got back to the surface I found out that Chris had apparently found a pit over a hundred feet deep in the hole Jerry had found. A rock hammer was requested, so I followed Forest into the hole to see what had been found. The entrance was a 2-foot wide hole underneath a slab of limestone. Sliding down vertically through a squeeze, the cramped space became wider at the floor. The pit was immediately found six feet away. Two very sharp chert ledges were padded to prevent the rope from cutting in two.

The pit was 15-20 feet in diameter and had a waterfall coming down the opposite side. Below the chert ledges, the drop was free fall, 80 feet, down to a small ledge platform, and then 18 more feet to the floor. This 107-foot pit was very pleasant.

On bottom, I found Chris soaking wet. Chris had tried to push into the downstream crawl, but did not fit. Water from the pit formed a small stream and drained 'into a clean-washed bedrock tube. The entrance to this tube was blocked by a flowstone mass that went nearly to the water level. I began excavating gravel and silt out from under it, but I quickly came to the bedrock floor. This was not going to be an easy obstacle to pass.

Chris, John, Forest, and I climbed out then Jerry, Tonya, and Maury went in to do the new pit. Chris wanted to name the new cave after himself and call it Studson's Horror Hole. This was dropped in favor of Studson's Water Well. At the time I did not think much of it. Normally someone else can name a cave after you, but not usually yourself I began looking around the area for other caves and I found a light Maury had lost. That piece of booty was worth a Free dinner that night.

In the ravine to the north, I checked out a small one-foot deep karst feature. I then noticed a water line going up the ravine. This can lead to Pennington spring caves occasionally. There were definitely springs, but not a spring cave. Instead I found a steeply walled sink nearby that was 20 feet deep.

Climbing down to the bottom I found a small hole, which had to be dug open. Slithering inside, I could hear water in the distance. Slithering forward I was able to squeeze down through a hole and come into a 30-foot high dome with a waterfall coming down it. The water went into a very low crawl I was not willing push. At 100 feet long and 30 feet deep, I named this new cave Penngington Cave after the bastardization Alan and I have for the Pennington formation.

Back at the pit, Chris went off and finally found Root Sixty-six Grotto. We bounced this very nice 66-foot pit and then Chris and I headed off to find Deep Throat. This was found on the bench to the north of the new pit. I t turned out to be a 48-foot blind pit that was only six feet across. Hiking straight down the mountain from Deep Throat in the ravine led right to a parking area for the new pit.

At the trucks, Alan came along riding in Mr. McCary's truck. He had taken Marion, Teresa, and Doug to tour a cave he found sometime back called Hidden Cave. Mr. McCary had told Alan about a cave behind his father's house. His father, Mr. Bob, had died and the house was uninhabited. Pulling up in the yard, we began searching around in the backyard. In the woods behind the house, in a small' ravine, we found a hole covered with cedar logs. We uncovered a pit! This was definitely going below the valley floor.

Getting ropes and gear, we returned to find Marion scooping us by trying to free-climb down the thing. He was forced to come out and use much safer SRT methods to get to the bottom. Alan went down, and then I followed. The 31-foot pit landed in a room with a concrete cistern in the middle. Various pieces of wood used to build some sort of structure were lying about. Immediately leading away downstream into a small sinuous canyon was a small stream. This went into a four-inch high crawl, but the passage continued in stooping directions.

It ended in fifty feet at a flowstone constriction, which Alan furiously hammered open. Backing in, Alan popped through into a much smaller extension of the passage. The small canyon was blocked by another flowstone and appeared to truly die after that. We looked upstream at a dome, but came to the conclusion it was blocked with breakdown in the ceiling. We named this new fine Mr. Bob Cave. That night we had great fun socializing on Scottsboro Mountain, laughing and telling famous stories about Gerald and Marion late into the night.

Scuba Squeeze and Beyond

In the morning, a group consisting of Alan Cressler, Terry McClanathan, John Adler, Marion O. Smith, Teresa Williams, Jonathan Daniels, and John Williams wanted to go and see the new pit. I wanted to push the flowstone blocked lead, if I could fit. The parking area was directly below the cave, next to Skyline property.

We had just started heading up the mountainside when I came across a strange looking mass of large karst breakdown. John Williams and I started poking around, finding holes going down which looked pretty deep. John went in and came to a tight spot.

I followed to see what he had found. Shimmying down twenty feet through the breakdown, I came to a tight spot, which dropped straight down to a large lake below. Carefully slithering down, I had to span across the deep, clear lake on two very small chert nubbins. The lake was 30 feet long and 10 wide. It was so deep the bottom could not be seen. If you fell, there would be no way to climb back out without a rope. Climbing out of the cave, I decided to name it Chimney Lake Cave.

At the pit I geared up and went inside to clean the lip of loose rock and hammer away the overhung chert ledges. At the constriction, I tried to dig as much gravel out from under the flowstone constriction as possible before I backed in and used my feet to push gravel further down the crawl. I took my light off and went for it. I was forced to hold my breath and force my body through a squeeze under the flowstone under water. Struggling to get my head above water and get through the tight squeeze, I gasped for breath.

Regaining some composure, I pushed forward through a low belly crawl and into a clean-washed bedrock tube. I had to go forward where a fairly large stalactite blocked the way. There was no way to turn around and I was not about to try to go back ward through the Scuba Squeeze. Going cave beyond made the decision to bend it out of the way easier.

Next the passage broke open into a series of wet climbdown cascades of 2, 4, and 7 feet to the top of a 34-foot deep pit! Very excited, I went back to got my bolt kit, a rope, and dig out the crawl for the others. By digging it out, the water lowered making the Scuba Squeeze a very low eardip instead of a free dive.

John came through next and waited while I set two bolts on the right wall at the pit. Alan showed up with Marion and an extra push rope. The 34-foot pit was wet and landed in a chamber with a clean-washed bedrock floor. To the right a dome was found with a waterfall coming down it. Downstream the combined water flowed into a stoop passage, which ended at a short 12-foot pit, only 25 feet away. Luckily, the end of Marion's rope could be dragged over to rig this pit.

Below, a short piece of clean-washed canyon led to a 12-foot wet climbdown chute. A small room below was decorated with formations. This was great! This is every TAG caver's dream, a wonderfully wet, fun, deep cave. This cave had to be going to the valley floor.

At this point, John Adler gave me the last push rope. I began dragging it forward into a beautifully sculpted, clean-washed, hands and knees crawlway following the stream. The stream passage went gently down gradient for the next 500 feet in a series of pleasant passages, mostly hands and knees crawls with two short belly crawls in the middle. The Hartselle was passed hardly without notice as a one-foot thick shale layer. Beyond, a scary looking death boulder wedged in the canyon intimidated everyone who had to crawl under it.

Just around the comer, formations started covering the walls and the passage became bigger. "Wow!" Another pit was discovered. As I began uncoiling the rope, John, Marion, and Alan caught up. We rigged to a big column on the left. Going down the wet 14-foot pit, the water flowed ten feet across the bottom and into the next pit. All I could see was water vortexing into the abyss. All of the sudden, Teresa unexpectedly showed up, catching up to us on her own.

We had her back up the rope as I set a bolt on the left wall to act as a redirection. I then went down what was to be a wet and wild 41-foot pit. It was extremely wet and cold. Again the water flowed across the bottom of the pit and into the third one of this series. Not knowing if the rope would reach bottom, we just pulled the rope over, threw it down the pit, and Alan went down. It was another very wet pit. I decided to call these three pits the Wet Willies. On bottom, a nice formation gallery surprised us. We were out of push ropes, so I abandoned my gear and followed John through the formation gallery where a wet 10-foot cascade was found in the back.

Beyond, a series of hands and knees crawls and walking passage continued downstream. It ended abruptly in a formation choke. Alan let me push a very low stream crawl. It lasted only 20 feet and got bigger again. We lost the water in a small vortex and continued into an overflow route. About 150 feet farther, a 20-ish-foot pit was encountered. Out of rope, we pushed into a fossil overflow canyon passage across the top of the pit. This led through some dry, crusty canyon passage to a series of old fossil pothole climbdowns.

At last we came to another pit, which was about 18 feet deep. Out of rope and staring into a great big virgin passage, I almost free-climbed down it. That would have been unfair to the rest, so I reluctantly turned back. We began routing toward the surface.

At the bottom of the Wet Willies we found out Marion was only wearing boxer shorts, slacks, a polypro shirt, and a T-shirt. He had not planned on having a trip like this and he was turning kind of blue. Marion barked, "Goddamn it, this is how we used to push all caves before you were even born!" John and Marion were on the last dregs of their batteries. I elected to be last since I had the most water protection and had a very dependable light.

Even with these difficulties everyone made it out of the cave with a few photons left. I staged de-rigged the drops in preparation for a push trip. The next available date everyone could attend was the first weekend of December. It was discussed between us that we could talk about the new cave, but we were not to advertise the location.

Controversy

The next week was full of controversy. First, everyone did not think it was right for Chris to name the cave, let alone after himself since Jerry discovered the entrance. In addition, the push trip had to be moved up a week because Chris blabber mouthed the exact location of the cave, including that the cave was still going, over the caver computer network TAG-Net. Gerald's been replaced by a computer of all things!

Since Jerry Reeves, Teresa Williams, and John Adler were unable to go caving that weekend, they were rightly unhappy. Alan was thinking ahead and tried to arrange for Jim Smith to come and blast out the flowstone constriction below the 107-foot pit so the cave would not be "virgin to warthogs. " Jim was working on his thesis and almost backed out. Virgin booty prevailed and Jim showed up. The usual cast of millions decided to come along also.

Second Push Trip

The weekend arrived and the cast included Paul Aughey, Don Coons, Alan Cressler, Scott Fee, Chris Hudson, Shari Lydy, Gerald Moni, Andy Porter, John Roth, Jim Smith, Marion O. Smith, Karen Sotona, Shirley Sotona, Doug Strait, and John Stembel. Jim and I went in first to set up the blast.

A 5/8-inch wide, 16-inch deep hole was drilled into the left wall and then packed with explosive. We climbed up to the ledge 25 feet from the bottom and cowered under an alcove to set off the charge. KABOOOOOMMM!!! It rocked our world. The shock wave bounced up and down the hundred-foot pit a hundred times in a just a few seconds. Each time it passed, we felt it go by. It was the most intense reverberation I have ever experienced in my life.

On the surface, nobody expected the blast because Jim and I had been working for an hour to set things up. Scott was sitting on the entrance slab when the tremendous blast went off. It made him jump straight up in the air and almost run down the mountain. It was said leaves were blown out the entrance. I climbed up the pit to communicate with the rest and get my gear.

At the bottom, I excavated the blast site and pushed through. Jim did a great job of blasting out the left side of the wall, but the right side was still intact, forcing you to go in on your belly and squirm through a constriction. It was a major improvement because it allowed you to go through without having to force your head under water and hold your breath while you negotiated the squeeze.

Jim and I re-rigged the cave and went to the last Wet Willy pitch to set a bolt. Jim and I continued to the undone pit to look for rigging. After searching for a while, a natural, thirty feet back up the passage, was found. To redirect the rope, I set a bolt directly above the pit. Just as I finished, Alan, Shirley, and Doug showed up with push ropes. We rigged the 24-foot pit and I was the first down. The pit was a very nice, clean-washed, scalloped drop with a big pothole full of clear green water on a ledge.

Off the bottom, a tube began going downstream. It was scalloped and orange colored. The tube began making drastic switchbacks forming tight "V-bends". A tight spot was encountered, then a few short climbdowns. As the floor began to fill with gravel, the ceiling abruptly plunged to the floor killing the passage. A vertical chert dam along the floor blocked the way. I started busting it away and looked underneath to see a four-inch high crawlway continuing. The sound of the main water that was lost before the 24-foot pit could be heard in the distance.

I began digging on the right side to try to get into a small tube that could continue around the low crawl. The dig progressed for a while until the gravel bank became layered with progressively thicker and thicker layers of flowstone. The gravel became liquefied with the consistency of diarrhea or wet cement. Alan worked on digging out the crawl, but gave up after determining that it was going to take all day to get through.

We then decided to go push the other fossil overflow route to see if it would bypass the dig Jim got up the pit first, and when Alan and I got to the fossil overflow pit we found that Jim had free-climbed down it, scooping everyone solo. All I could hope for was the cave to become a version of size exclusion chromatography. Alan and I waited for the rope to arrive. We rigged to a good natural on the right wall.

The 15-foot pit landed in a large canyon passage covered with black flowstone. Forward, a 10-foot climbdown dropped into a continuation of the old canyon. The bottom filled up with ponded muddy water, which became waist deep. This choked up with massive formations and I had to climb up into a formation grotto. Going into the obvious passage I came to a room filled with massive sandstone boulders and shale blocks. They were all covered with thick layers of flowstone.

A small stream coursed below out of a boulder filled passage. Traversing down stream, a climbdown into low wide passage was found. Flowstone terraced passage went downstream as a hands and knees crawl. At this point the cave had to be directly under Ike Hollow. The cave made it past without dying in breakdown.

The passage turned into a canyon where the water from Ike Hollow joined. An overflow canyon led to a 10-foot pit. Jim had to have down-climbed it, so I did too. It would have been extremely difficult to free-climb out because the walls were devoid of any holds. Off the bottom, a sinuous slot tube began snaking around after a short water crawl. The tube was just big enough to fit and I could hear Jim grunting up ahead. After 200 feet of passage, I finally caught up. Jim had just been size excluded by the cave. I gave it a try.

The cave continued as a low belly crawl in a 15-foot wide by 7-inch high passage. A thin film of water had been slowly depositing a sheet of flowstone in this passage, filling it up over time. I barely scraped through and around a series of columns. It was helmets off or forty feet before I finally got up into a side alcove that continued. This went twenty feet to a squeeze and into a stoop passage. It ended at a vertical flowstone squeeze, which finally filtered me out. I tried to squeeze through multiple times, but got too scared.

At the floor, I could look down tens of feet of passage that was 15 feet wide and 5 inches high. It continued off into darkness, taking all the airflow. It undoubtedly goes to Coon Cave. I was able to sucker Alan into coming down to where I had stopped. We had reached a definite end, but not the kind we had desired. We wanted a nice blue sump.

Doug appeared out of a side passage and reported that he found a dome and an animal skeleton on a ledge. The rout had begun, so I headed for the surface bypassing a group of people who were going to bottom the cave. The last pit was a very awkward climb even with the rope. When I saw what Marion had rigged to, I exclaimed, "The Horror!!" This drop really needs two bolts. I would have routed immediately except Alan made me be a photo-hog. In the process I explored the upstream passage underneath Ike Hollow. It died in flowstone breakdown after 300 feet.

Alan and I then met up with the survey crew of John Stembel, Don Coons, and Paul Aughey. We convinced them to continue to leap frog the survey toward the deep point so an approximate cave depth could be calculated. As Alan and I went toward the entrance pit, we passed a few people taking their time. Shari Lydy ended up taking her time in the worst place, the Wet Willies. It was not her fault, nor her intention, as her climbing system gave her a fit while she was in the middle of a raging waterfall.

Satisfaction

We did not have to wait in a long line to climb the entrance pit, so we got out before sunset. It was a beautiful warm November afternoon. The push trip left a sense of being totally content. It is nice to know there are still a few classics yet to be discovered by those who dedicate their lives every weekend pushing into countless dud-holes with the never ending hope of finding the "Big One. "

In the end, Jerry asked Alan or I to name the cave. I named the cave Blunder Hole, after how the cave was missed by so many people, after how everyone handled the whole thing during the heat of the discovery, and after how Jerry ended up finding it. It is interesting how so many people ended up going to the 3l-foot pit only 50 feet away, but they missed the entrance to Blunder Hole.

In December 1973, there were four to eight people right on top of the entrance. On January 21, 1984, Marion recorded in his diary that he, Alan Cressler, Jeff Loehrke, Bubba Leben, Dan Twilley, Gerald Moni, and Doug Strait ridgewalked from Thunderhole past the 31-foot pit. Marion states, "From there [Thunderhole] we went to and around Ike Hollow without finding anything, then rediscovered a 31' pit (which Alan, me, Bubba, and Dan) did and Root 66 Pit [sic] which the same four did. " That was all Marion mentioned about the area.

This means that Gerald was there twice! Everyone missed the entrance to Blunder Hole when they all could easily have seen it corn the 31-foot pit. The entrance is small and required minimal digging to get in. If one is watchful, dedicated, and willing to ridgewalk all the old ridges again, then they may find the big one where everyone else has already looked before.

The Saga Continues

This story had almost been published when news came that Georgia Tech cavers, Andy Zellner and Carl Hlavenka, pushed through the dig below the 24-foot pit. They reported finding 600-800 feet of nice passage and another pit in the 30-foot range. Alan arranged a push trip for June 24, 1995. On this date, the cast included Alan Cressler, Jim Smith, Andy Porter, Brent Aulenbach, Pat Kambesis, Mike Ficco, Andy Zellner, Carl Hlavenka, Gerald Moni, Teresa Williams, Karen Sotona, and Marion Smith.

I followed Carl and Andy Zellner into the cave. On the way down, I replaced all the aluminum bolt hangers with stainless steel throughout the cave. This cave will see lots of trips because it is such a nice multi-drop. The bolts in place will now have a long service life.

At the dig, I could not understand how Carl squeezed through on the right side where I had originally tried to dig. Andy Zellner fit also, but just barely. Once on the other side they dug toward me while I began digging the front side out.

At about the time the rest of the crew arrived we connected the digs. Slithering through two body lengths in a near earwash diarrhea canal, a small space is accessed. Sliding into a vertical slot, another low watery mud crawl is encountered. Just beyond, a waterfall brings the main water in again and forms a stream way. After that, the passage becomes nice again as an alternating stoop and hands and knees crawl through a tube.

After 500 more feet the passage finally gets bigger as an alternating walking and stooping passage averaging ten feet wide. An incoming passage on the right contained a source of sandstone cobbles and a little bit of water. An incredible forest of pure white soda straws is found under a ledge at the incoming passage. Going downstream, a low bedrock stream crawl leads through a few 100 feet of passage to the top of a 27-foot pit. We hammered open the top and Andy Zellner went down.

On the bottom, the water went into chert rubble. Carl and Andy Zellner went off into an upstream tube. The tube kept going but it was in the wrong direction. Jim found the way on by crawling around an overflow and accessing the stream again. The stream ran along a thick chert layer and fell off into an 18-foot pit. This pit dropped into the middle of a large sump filled chamber, which formed a large lake. Finally, we got what we wanted, a nice blue sump. The cave maximized its vertical potential reaching a depth of 453 feet.

On the way out we passed Pat, Brent, and Mike surveying the new passage. Later, Pat would come back and finished the survey with John Stembel and Gary Chambers. They de-rigged the cave, ending the exploration of another TAG classic. The fact that the cave is on public land and it is such a sweet little multi-drop leads me to believe it will become a very popular cave. Please do not trash this one because it really has some pretty stuff in it.

References
1. Personal communication with Lin Guy.
2. Journals of Marion O. Smith.
3. Cave Journals of Alan Cressler, Vol. 4.