Knox Cave

The entrance to Knox Cave

The ladder that gets you in

One of the many tight crevasses

I think they were taking some samples

Tight squeeze

Taking a look up at the dome

The view of the dome, highest in NY

Time to get dirty

The Gun Barrel

Nice use of some mud

The gun shoot, for small girls only

The waiting room

More crawling and climbing through some tough spots

Sitting room only and it's barely that

The climb up

The tough stuff comes next

Snack time

Yes, I'm having fun

A real tricky spot here leading to the Alabaster Room

The football field

Thankfully at the end of the football field

Climbing down to the stream

Good spot to chill

The stream

The look of exhaustion

Like Clarksville, Knox Cave is owned by the Northeast Cave Conservancy.  Unlike Clarksville, Knox is a far more physical or sporty cave.  I would be caving with the Hudson Valley Hikers and would be led by Caysey who has over 20 years of caving experience.

With an overcast sky and the threat of rain, it would be a good day to be in a cave.  A 30 foot ladder leads one into the cave.  Caysey led us into the old tourist section of the cave.  This part had steps and benches to chill out on.  It didn't seem like much of a tourist cave as the are was quite small.

After messing around in a small crevasse, we left the tourist area to the "wild" part of the cave.  It started out friendly enough, with a little crawling mixed with a walk in a narrow crevasse.  We then reached what is called the waiting room.  This was appropriately named.  The waiting room precedes the gun barrel, an extremely narrow passage which requires a massive amount of effort and that the average american could not fit through.  Luckily enough, today there is a fairly recently opened passage called the by pass.  The by pass was challenging enough.

Once out of the by pass, the most challenging part of the cave awaited us.  Chris Hiker has problems with heights and exposure.  This would challenge those fears more than I have in the past.  We faced a crevasse that we had to ascend about 40 feet.  We did rope up.  The rope was a bit sketchy though.  The lower portion of the climb was far harder.  The rocks were wetter and the crevasse was wide.  As the crevasse narrowed it became easier to press your body on one side of the crevasse and have you legs pressed to the other side.  I eventually made it after much agony.

Above the crevasse there was quite a bit of real tough crawling.  Very similar to the Thook in Clarksville with a little bit more room.  The end of this led to a spot with a bit of exposure.  Getting myself down this section required a bit of direction from Caysey.  Once down, we could relax and take a nice break in what's called the Alabaster Room.

From here we went through the football room.  It gets it's name since it's wide and long as a football field and  has the height of a football.  An exaggeration, but gives a fairly accurate image.  Though tough, I had a lot of fun going through here despite it being one of the sketchier parts of the cave.  One couldn't help but thinking the ceiling may come down at any moment.

The football field led to a muddy slide which brought you to a stream.  Knox Cave was quite dry in comparison to Clarksville.  One could crawl through the stream for a few hundred feet.  I passed on this, but one girl went in a little ways.  It was a nice scene.  I has not heard the sound of running water at all in this cave up until that point.

Leaving the Alabaster Room would be extremely challenging.  Thoughts crept into my head, "I'm really in over my head.  I'm not doing this again."  I eventually was able to maneuver myself and shimmy my self over the ledge.  The cave started to narrow again and soon I was physically exhausted.  Then one of the girls ahead got herself stuck in a crevasse.  Fortunately myself and another guy were able to keep her from panicking while we waited for Caysey to lift her out.  That was a somewhat tough moment, waiting about 45 minutes in tight quarters.

By the time I reached the top of the crevasse to repel down my physical exhaustion was complete.  Luckily, there also was a group of cavers from Colgate who went down a different way, called the lemon squeeze.  Caysey was able to help repel the others and I was able to drop the rope down and so I followed the college kids down the lemon squeeze.  It lived up to its name, but it was a much safer route for me to do at that point.

The rest of the way out was pretty much straight forward, with a good bit of crawling.  Looking at my watch, I was astonished to realize I had spent over 8 hours inside a cave.  The walk out to the cars in the rain revealed the amount of soreness I most likely would be feeling the next few days.  I'm most certainly going to be bruised on my legs, hips and arms.  It was a physical day.  Despite all this, I most certainly would do this again.



  

A Cool September Rain

 

The tower

Leaves are changing

Huge branch came crashing down

The tree

A wet trail today

I love trails with falling leaves

Kingston Rhinecliff

Burger Hill through the clouds

The Hudson

While driving over the Kingston Rhinecliff Bridge, I noticed that I could see the fire tower at Ferncliff Forest. So that should mean you could see the bridge from the tower, Right?

The trail was a bit muddy with some fresh blowdown.  When I reached the top of the tower, I was correct that you could see the bridge.  No mountains on this day.  But I could see the Rondout Lighthouse and barely make out Burger Hill.

Neversink River Unique Area

Needing to get out after a lazy week, I thought the Neversink River Unique Area would be a nice spot on a rainy day.  Located just off Route 17 in Sullivan County about 7 miles west of 209, Neversink is a bit off the beaten path.  But it's a little gem of a place.

I parked at the end of Katrina Falls Road.  Unfortunately I could not find the map I printed out from the NYNJ Trail Conference.  This was a shame since I only made it to Denton Falls which I suspect are the least impressive of the three waterfalls located here.  That's Ok though.  Early fall colors and a nice walk splashing through puddles was a nice break from the indoors.  I took a couple nice side trails to the river.  It looks like a fly fisherman's river.   

Clarksville Cave

The stream that runs through the cave

Time to walk like a hunchback

A nice spot for a break

It didn't take long to be in it above the knees

The Lake Room

Some more of the Lake Room

Like a subway tunnel, with out the trash

Rock formations, kind of like a jaw

The waterfall

A close up of the waterfall

Working our way down the slide

Looking up into the slide

The Sump

Not much room

At the exit of section 2

The Thook

This would be a return trip to a "cold, wet and dark place" with the Hudson Valley Hikers Meetup Group.  With this past weeks rain, it made for a much more interesting caving experience.

The walk is broken up in three sections.  The first section is the longest distance-wise, but does not require much crawling, just a lot of walking like a hunchback.  This first section is very wet and the crawling that is required is through water.  This part of the cave ends in what's called the Lake Room.  It's an amazingly beautiful spot.  Here, I took a dip in the water and passed through a tunnel with the water up to my chest.  Another guy, despite the water's cold temperature, thought it was a great time for a swim.

The second part is the longest section, time-wise.  There are many different spots to explore.  We first went to the Hammer Room.  Here there are crevasses that you can climb in.  We crawled as far as we could, then turned off our headlamps and enjoyed pure darkness.  No sunlight.  No Moonlight.  Not even any starlight.  Nada.

From here we made our way back to the main cave which brought us to some more water.  We followed the cave down to the stream.  This is where the walk became quite interesting.  The last time I was here the waterfall was a slight trickle.  Today it was roaring.  We walked along it (and sometimes underneath it) trying to find another route.  We then had to backtrack and work our way towards The Sump.  To get there, we had to negotiate our way down a slide.  It was as close to a natural slide as I've seen, except for the few rocky areas toward the bottom.  Once back in the water, we had to negotiate The Sump.  The water had almost reached the ceiling.  We all had to duck at least some of our head to make it by.  From here it was fairly straight forward, though there would be a deep water spot that did not exist a month ago.

The third section (The Thook) is the shortest, but the most exhausting.  Once inside here, there is barely a spot to even sit up.  Mush of this crawl is made keeping your stomach pressed against the ground.  The section that is especially tough is when you have to crawl above a crevasse.  Your left side of your body is on one side and your right side is on he other.  And not much room to raise yourself above the ground.  Tough stuff.  But still a place I long to go back to.