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Name: | Hubert Crowell
(hubertcrowell@comcast.net)
| | Date: | Tue 07 Jun 2005 03:32:54 PM EDT | | Subject: | Welcome | | | Welcome to the Pettyjohn Cave discussions. I would love to hear about your trips into the cave, were you visited and what you found. I have been caving in Pettyjohn from the 1970's and have not seen all of the cave. If you have any pictures that you would like shown on the Virtual Tour please e-mail me a copy and tell me were they were taken in the cave.
I plan to start taking 360 deg pictures of the main rooms for the tour. If you find one of the registers in the Virtual Tour, please sign the Guestbook so others can see who has been there. | | | Post Reply | Display replies to this message
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Name: | Ryan Cunico
(Koko4@comcast.net)
| | Date: | Wed 07 Dec 2005 11:36:18 PM EST | | Subject: | Lost in Pettyjohn Cave | | | Hello, I'd like to register to use WinCAPS cave mapping software. My friend and I got lost in the Pettyjohn Cave last weekend for 24 hours without food or water. Luckily, we found a waterfall and drank the water. Eventually, we heard voices and we yelled for help. They showed us the way out and provided us with food and water. We are very fortunate to have survived this horrible situation, and we will be well prepared in the future if we go caving again. I would like to use your cave mapping software to map out further places in the cave, ones that your cave map did not go to. We got lost in these areas, and ended up at a second, smaller waterfall. We didn't know our way back from here, because we were even unsure that another waterfall was in Pettyjohns, but we were lucky to have heard the voices the next day.
Dear Mr. Crowell,
I am extremely grateful that we are able to tell you this story today. I am honored that you are going to post it on the forums. Do you think you could send me the internet address of the forums you will be posting it on? I was also wondering if there is any way to get in touch with the Dogwood City Grotto, specifically the members Pete and Chuck. They saved our lives. I hope you enjoy reading about the experience.
We entered Pettyjohns cave at 3pm Saturday, with headlamps, a bottle of water each, and no food. We were not planning on being long, only about 2 hours or so, and we had been in the cave before. We were trying to go to the main waterfall, the one where most people go to. We had been down there before, and we thought we knew the way.
We progressed down the stream tunnel towards the main waterfall. We made it to the waterfall, and that's where we ran into trouble. We had to find our way back. We were pretty familiar with this area though, so it wasn't that bad. We took the Z-Bend, which I had never taken, but my friend had. He said that it's another way to get to the waterfall. After that, we got lost.
We kept trying to follow the arrows, thinking that they would lead to the entrance. The arrows kept changing colors and directions, though, making them almost impossible to figure out. We would go into a large room, trying to find the way we came from, find a passage, follow it, and then about 30 minutes later end up in the same exact cavern. We kept running across places we had been before multiple times. We found a spray painted part saying "Don't smoke weed in the cave" and we also saw "US Soldier" spray painted on the wall, I believe.
I'm going to try to describe the part we got lost in, in as much detail as I can.
We ended up in a huge cavern where there were MANY ways to go. There was a very small hole that didn't even look like a passage at all. It was shaped like a triangle, and you had to squeeze to get in it. Once you got in, in front of you was a white arrow and a circle, pointing down. There was a way to go on the right, a way on the left, and the previously mentioned white arrow. There was also an orange arrow pointing a different way. After following the white arrow, we had to get on our hands and knees and crawl for about 3 minutes. We ended up in a huge room with 3 huge formations. There were large obstacles you had to go over, and a cliff on the other side. On one side, there was about a 10 foot drop into a small creek passage. I fell into this by accident. A little bit down the creek, there was a huge rope, about 40 feet high. Downstream from that was a small waterfall with a rope next to it and ways to go up there. By this time, we were exhausted, dehydrated, and thirsty. We started drinking the water from the waterfall to get hydration and energy.
Now we had to find our way out. We couldn't stray from the waterfall too much, because it was our "safe place" where we could get hydration. We didn't want to get going in the wrong direction, either, because the cave is over 7 miles long. That's only the explored passageways, though. We kept following passages that we thought we took and we kept ending up in the same couple of spots. We kept coming up to a place where it looked like a pancake squeeze all around, but there was NOWHERE to go. We went back to that nasty mud area...the "bigger, muddier" pancake squeeze. It took us 3-5 minutes of crawling on our hands and knees just to get through the damn thing. It was extremely muddy, too. We kept going until we reached the dreaded "white arrow room". We kept ending up in that one big cavern, where there was nowhere to go. We kept trying to find passageways to go up, because we were trying to get to the ground level, and we really didn't want to go farther into the cave.
We kept staying close to the waterfall, because we figured if anyone comes down here, they'd probably end up at the waterfall. We had to keep moving, though, to keep our blood flowing. It was freezing cold, and the roof was "raining" on us. Apparently it was raining pretty badly outside the cave. We kept wandering and wandering, making sure we weren't staying too far from the waterfall, so we wouldn't get even more lost.
We slept near the waterfall, and when I turned off my headlight, I saw lots of hallucinations and images. It was really crazy, and I guess that's what happens when you've been staring at the light for over 20 hours.
Sometime the next morning, when we had been wandering, crawling, climbing, and looking for the exit, we heard voices. At first, we thought we were hallucinating, but then we both started yelling as loud as we could. The voices got closer, and we eventually saw a light. We were so relieved and happy to be alive.
Apparently, we had made our way onto a huge cliff and we were on the wrong side of it. We were about a football field away from the other side. To get to the other side, we had to crawl halfway on a ledge as wide as a coffee table. We were about 40-60 feet up, and we had to cross this area on a small bridge about the same width. Once we got to the other side, we crawled on our hands and knees over to the muddy, steep hill on the side of the cliff. There was a rope on the other side, and we had to make our way down that muddy hill diagonally, making sure not to lose our balance or our foothold. Once we made it to the rope, we had to descend about 40 feet to the ground.
Once on the ground, we introduced ourselves and told them about our situation. There was a good group of cavers, from the Dogwood City Grotto. The two leading the group, Chuck, and Pete (I believe) were the most helpful. After that long of a journey, they helped us find our way back to the pancake squeeze and into the main entrance room. They made sure we were alright after we got out of the cave. We really owe our appreciation and thanks to those two members of the Dogwood City Grotto. Without them or their love of caves, we would not have found our way out, and we would have been another accident statistic on the charts. We are extremely fortunate for their help, and we can't even put into words how much gratitude, appreciation, and respect we have for those people.
We owe our lives to them.
Sincerely,
Ryan
Garrett | | | Post Reply | Display replies to this message
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Name: | Ryan C
(Koko4@comcast.net)
| | Date: | Mon 10 Apr 2006 08:38:38 AM EDT | | Subject: | Revisiting Pettijohn's Cave and Ellison's Cave | | | Hello, I just wanted to let you know that since my near-death experience in Pettijohn's cave, I have since revisited it. Last weekend, two experienced friends and I went into the Pettijohn's main corridor with a million candlelight spotlight and a camcorder to see what we could get. We ended up getting some great footage, but we didn't go very deep because we were exhausted and wanted to save our energy for the next-day hike up to Ellison's cave.
The next day, we made the hour-long hike up to Ellison's cave, and when we got there, we were already exhausted! We entered the cave and at the end of the main passage, there were two ways to go: left (downstream) and right (upstream). We chose to go left. After about another 15-20 mins of climbing through narrow passageways, the corridor got so small we would have had to lay on our bellies just to get through. We decided to turn around while we were still aware of exactly where we were.
What lies to the right of this fork, when you go upstream? We were trying to find the "Fantastic Pit", among other things that we have heard about in the cave, but we were unsuccessful.
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Name: | Grace RICHARDSON
(soullestghost@gmail.com)
| | Date: | Sat 12 Jun 2010 09:34:08 PM EDT | | Subject: | Nice post | | | Truly cool article u have here. It'd be just great to read more concerning such matter. Thank you for sharing this info. | | | Post Reply | | |
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Name: | Hubert Crowell
(hubertcrowell@comcast.net)
| | Date: | Sun 20 Jun 2010 09:03:11 PM EDT | | Subject: | Exploring Pettyjohn Cave Virtual Tour | | | After loading a new panorama of the entrance room, I thought I would try and link to the parking lot and Google’s street views.
From the cave entrance pan left and click on “Trail to parking and checkin.” Move the pointer below the notice board on the left and click on the arrow “To the parking lot,” that will appear. Aview from the parking lot toward the checkin board will appear.
You are now on Google Street View with all kinds of things to do. As you move the pointer around you will see squares for Zooming or positions. The road name will also appear “Rocky Ln,” along a line parallel to the road. Hold down the left mouse button to pan around and up and down. The parking lot is the area with the large boulders and the cars belong to cavers in the cave at the time the pictures were taken.
Right click will bring up a short menu of options. check out the 3D mode! Click on the square in the upper right for a full screen view. Press “Esc” to return.
Click on the lower right corner for a street map. Click on the upper left corner of the map to enlarge to split screen.
If you want to get out of the frame and explore with google, click on “Explore Cave” this will remove the menu’s. Follow the trail back to the parking lot and this time you will be in a new Explored window. Click on “View Larger Map.”
To get started goto: www.hucosystems.com/Pettyjohn Cave/Entrance.htm
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Name: | Lalavoina
(webtester69@gmail.com)
| | Date: | Thu 29 Jul 2010 02:45:11 AM EDT | | Subject: | hi everybody | | | hiya
Great forum lots of lovely people just what I need
hopefully this is just what im looking for looks like I have a lot to read. | | | Post Reply | | |
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