Adenture! Any cavers/spelunker

[rickster]

my girl and i are getting into caving, Just sent for grotto information,, gunna learn to work with the rope too.Any one else do this?Just seen tytoon a, headed to j4 soon..
check it out.

http://nodivisions.com/excursions/j4/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmD001mG6SE

[f.sciarrillo]

You want to be careful around tytona, There have been a couple of people who died in there.

[Slothkill]

there is a couple nice caves on the road to canoe creek just before meilinicks.

[rickster]

can you give me a better idea where at or what theyre called?general directions?

[Slothkill]

Its been over 15 years, as you leave Hollidaysburg on 22 just outside of the Burg on the left there is a cliff, I can remember two really cool caves there, Sorry dude thats all I can remember other than they do get really tight by tight I mean AT 150lbs I had to suck in gut. The Bad memory is related to B.O.N.G society membership with those caves

[thebattle]

i know where a sweet cave is right before you get into everett anybody know where cpaul ford and sons farm equipment place is well if you look behind it theres a spot with trees thats looks abnormal not the ones in the way back those are burials but theres a car that sits over the hole b/c there cows fell in it. The owner of the property told me they had some people in there looking around and they said it goes under the juniata river and its just a straight drop off she said the explorers ran outa rope and just called it quits. Always wanted to take my ass up there and see for my self caving would be sweet.

[thebattle]

heres a vid i found on tytoona
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GR5l04llhQ

[Ron]

The only person that I know of who died in Tytoona was the top female cave diver in the world. It took 4 days for them to find her body because visibility was almost zero. I remember that it happened right before I moved to California in Aug '88.

As long as you don't go into the water, Tytoona isn't dangerous at all. I grew up in Sinking Valley and have been in there hundreds of times, five of us once went in as far as we could (without going into the water) with just a mini maglite.

I went to a presentation once that some divers did after they went into Tytoona, and it was amazing. There is a unique species of blindfish and one of the largest cave rooms in Pennsylvania. The big room has soda straw formations that are 20 to 30 feet long, some of the largest ever recorded. According to the divers, you enter the room from underneath and the air trapped in there keeps the atmospheric pressure constant. They said that they could have shattered the soda straws just by entering the room and changing the pressure.

[f.sciarrillo]

The only person that I know of who died in Tytoona was the top female cave diver in the world. It took 4 days for them to find her body because visibility was almost zero. I remember that it happened right before I moved to California in Aug '88.

As long as you don't go into the water, Tytoona isn't dangerous at all. I grew up in Sinking Valley and have been in there hundreds of times, five of us once went in as far as we could (without going into the water) with just a mini maglite.

I went to a presentation once that some divers did after they went into Tytoona, and it was amazing. There is a unique species of blindfish and one of the largest cave rooms in Pennsylvania. The big room has soda straw formations that are 20 to 30 feet long, some of the largest ever recorded. According to the divers, you enter the room from underneath and the air trapped in there keeps the atmospheric pressure constant. They said that they could have shattered the soda straws just by entering the room and changing the pressure.

I been there quite a bit as a youth (filmed a home made movie there - Matt Burns will know what I am talking about there). I never went too far into the cave though. I was always told that if you go in at tytona you will come out at arch springs. I was just there recently, they have barriers up blocking it off and such. I had to go over them to get to it. - I grew up around there as well.

They used to have diving classes there. From what I was told, they had the classes then when a couple of the divers died they ended it. They also used to have some sort of rituals there? Or was that a little further up the road from there?

[Ron]

Nobody has ever been able to get through the whole system from Tytoona to Arch Springs, but they have done dye tests to prove that they are connected.
IF I remember correctly, the woman who died in there entered from the Arch Spring side and was trying to map the system upstream to Tytoona.

[songsmith]

Local soundman-extraordinaire, Zilly, is/was a spelunker, and has been in systems all over the Mid-Atlantic area. He used to try to talk me into it, but I'm the most accident-prone person ever, and it'd basically be me dying in the worst way imaginable. (Stop daydreaming about that, Joe! )--->JMS

[JackANSI]

I don't know if its still down in Tytoona, been 4-5 years since the last time I've been in that far, but there is/was a guest book in the far back left corner tucked away in a 3" piece of PVC.

[rickster]

I was in tytoona this past friday ,you can wade the water back to the logjam and although i didnt find the duck under to the next room, the local grotto club told me theres much more to see without having to sump dive.He said you do have to get wet however and I did, But will bring brighter headlamp next time..would like to get to the log book.Today we went to locate the entrance to J4, and after a 2mile hill climb in the wrong direction and realizing i had to get ready for work soon, we headed back to the car.On the way back,, my fiancee found the WARNING sign marking the overgrown trail to the quarry and Low and behold.. I had been standing on it as I soon realized as Peered over a 200 foot sheer.So tommorow, we Descend! ( Hope i can wriggle through the pipe without suffering from Phobia!ANyone know where deerbone or hippo cave is?I know hippo to be in Blair county but other then that,, Directions would be nice.Thanks.

[RFBuck]

I thought going thru the self explored section of Laurel Caverns in Uniontown was cool...but these sound wayyyy more fun.

[thebattle]

i wanna go with you sometime rickster hit me up!

[Big Jimi Cee]

Back in the day there was a gang of us that were hard core. We would travel hours get to go caving, finish the cave then drive home. I don't know if it the book is still in print but in concert with the National Geological Society we set out to map all of the caves in Blair County, hence the name Caves of Blair County. We had pretty much completed what we had known at the time and we were starting to work on Bedford county. There are more caves than you can imagine in Blair, Bedford, Centre and Huntington counties if you know where to go. Over the years I know that some have been closed due to vandalism and rare species of bats.

There are several standard rules of caving that are quite important:

Don't cave alone!!!!!

Always take more than one source of light. You do not know what dark is until you loose a light in a cave. Find a comfortable place and have everyone shut off there lights. The first time will blow your mind as you have probably never experience complete and total darkness

Until you are accomplished cave with someone that has some experience. Although a natural cave is not generally dangerous you can get in trouble and cave rescues are not the easiest thing to pull off.

Always tell someone where you are going and what time you intend to return. If your plan includes multiple caves let someone know your itinerary. You can yell and scream all you want in a cave and if no one knows your there you can be screwed.

Remember that a healthy cave is a wet cave and the fact that the ambient temperature is around 50 degrees there is a potential for hypothermia. Normally not a problem, but again if something happens it can be an issue. This also means that you will need more clothes than just walking down the street. Layers. Winter caving is great as it is actually warmer in the cave, the down side is you freeze your ass off until you get into dry clothes.

Take some snacks, because of the environment, it will drain your energy if you are going to be in a cave for a long duration.

Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but foot prints.

I hope this is helpful, I really enjoyed the times we were caving and when you start doing vertical caves or caves that take more that 12 hours to go from one entrance to another and with rooms bigger than football fields it is incredible. Mother Nature at her best.

Author's Note: Pennsylvania caves are notoriously tight, wet (which is good) and small in comparison to the caves in West Virginia and Kentucky, but there are still some wonderful cave in PA that will leave you in awe.

[thebattle]

how about we get rp spelunker group together im down

[f.sciarrillo]

Now I want to go to Penns Caves, or Indian Caverns ..

[thebattle]

Now I want to go to Penns Caves, or Indian Caverns ..

those are two i actually wanted to see especially Penns Cave thats the one with boat ride right?

[rickster]

pm sent battle.Made some progress in j4 today, but foind that although im not scared of bats outside.. Its Terrifying to encounter a swarm in a tight space and your blocking their only way out.. Wish you could have seen how fast I came out.!!
Mentak note>> work on bat phobia......

[thebattle]

http://home.paonline.com/saltzerm/caving/j4_cave.htm

[RFBuck]

I would have enjoyed Penns Caves more had I not been made high by the exhaust fumes of the little motor on the boat. More annoying, really. But that was years ago. It was funny how they started pointing out formations in the shapes of things, then said "here we have a family of beavers" and when they shone the light, it was actually beavers!

I had the pleasure of experiencing Mammoth Caves in Kentucky and I was overwhelmed...and I took the shortest tour. I can only imagine the splendors that cave holds on the longer tours. If only I could walk that much...

Laurel Caverns in Uniontown may not thrill many people. It's a limestone cave, so no stalactites or stalagmites, no flowstone, or anything of that nature....just rock. It's just cool how the cave follows the slope of the hillside...they demonstrate a golf ball rolling uphill (well, not really...you're just at that steep of an angle). The self explored region is much more fun. When you stand in the Ballroom and look down the shaft and the angle its at, it's impressive. Not as impressive once you work your way to the bottom and have to climb all that to get back up . My favorite experience was belly crawling thru a passage into a cylindrical room, only to find the way to keep going was to get to the hole in the wall...8 feet up. There was a point where we squirmed upwards to thru a crack to keep going, and when we tried to get back we couldn't find the hole. They tell you not to follow ANY of the arrows people draw on the walls...and they're right. That particular area had hundreds of arrows drawn everywhere, and it made finding the return passage a bitch. And there was no other way down...you had to get down that crevice because otherwise you'd have to jump 25 feet down...not happening.

God, now I have to go again...it's been too long......

[thebattle]

Rf ever been to lincoln caverns thats a preety sweet one i musta been 15 or so the last time i seen that cave but durring halloween they do it up and try to scare you i think it was called lincoln caverns ghosts and goblins anybody else ever go to this? I remember one room they had a strobe light going and techno haha

[PanzerFaust]

I remember this wet, tight little cave I used to go spelunking in back in the day....

She never calls anymore.... Probably good she'd have a couple of rug rats and be fat as hell .....

Oh sorry you guys were being serious.....

Go ahead my bad...

[RFBuck]

Oh yeah, been to Lincoln...and Indian, too. Great tourist caves.