Brandon Stephens, Brian Welp

After packing up, we decided on Ryan’s for dinner and drove back into Corydon.  It began to rain as we walked into Ryan’s.  Dinner was good.  After dinner, rain still drizzled from above.  I needed some new GPS batteries so we stopped by Walmart.  I called Brandon - who sat, hunkered down inside his Explorer in the Walmart Parking lot - and read the Schotter Pit Cave description: 

Entrance was dug open by Leo Schotter and his sons.  The entrance is a 2' diameter hole in sandstone.  It drops 23' into a small room in limestone.  A horizontal passage is reached by way of a wet crawl.  The passage goes down a 6' waterfall and around a mud bank before it became a very wet stream crawl, which was not pushed.  Two small rooms are located at the top of the mud bank.  The cave was surveyed on 11/19/78 by D.L.Black,  See BIG 14#3.  The cave was also known by the CIG as Five Rooms Pit (Old List # 13118).  The CIG group rediscovered the cave ridge walking along the I-64 right-of-way, when the highway was being constructed.

The description didn’t sound especially nice and I feared we might be going to a suck hole.  I watched the miles descend as I drove highway 64 west.  I pulled off when the GPS said we neared our destination.  The cave was very obviously on the other side of the interstate.  I called Brandon and we proceeded to the next exit where we turned around and headed back east.  I once again pulled off parking my car more than a car width off the interstate.  Brandon parked his truck halfway up the slope which seemed a bit odd.  I geared up and headed into the woods looking for the pit. 

We’d hoped for a good GPS location but soon found that not to be the case.  I’d already covered a lot of ground when Brandon and Brian entered the woods.  As Brandon and I walked along, he mentioned that he’d left his blinkers on.  I said that would draw attention and he said he didn’t want anybody to hit his truck.  I replied “who drives that far onto the shoulder!” and heard the nervous laughter so common of Brandon when he’s admitting one of his idiosyncrasies.  I quickly commented, Brandon!  You don’t drive that far off the road, do you?  His began “Well…”  We both laughed and kept looking.  I walked, and walked, and walked, and walked back and forth, up and down, long ago losing hope that we’d find this god-forsaken pit. 

The description described a 2 x 2’ hole in sandstone which meant the entrance could be wherever the fuck it wanted to be.  We’d surely trudged back and forth for at least 1.5 hours in the misty rain.  I’d covered all sorts of ground.  I heard a bo and started back towards Brandon and Brian thinking that they were ready to give up.  Then I heard a series of bo’s meaning they’d found the pit.  I trudged back up the hill and soon saw light.  Brandon and Brian stood above an indistinct, 2 x 2’ hole in flat ground.  I quickly commented “How could we miss this!”  There were no distinguishing karst features anywhere nearby! 

The rain picked up as we rigged the pit.  I dumped my gear and saw my rack missing.  I remembered hearing Sean curse the weekend before when looking for his rack in the back of my car and wondered.  I quickly spotted an eight strapped to Brian’s gear and asked if I could borrow it.  I heard Brandon call off rope from below and descended the somewhat tight, mossy pit entrance into a large room.  Brandon and I both exclaimed our surprise.  The cave had already exceeded our expectations. 

Brian rappelled down and I followed Brandon beneath a ceiling of sandstone boulders which Brandon didn’t like the looks of.  I bumped my head on one of them accidentally proving its sturdiness as we climbed down.  We reached a split.  I checked out the crawlway to the left confirming that it was a pit and we didn’t want to go that way.  Brandon climbed down to the right and we reached a ledge above a small room.  A steep climb down descended to the floor.  Brandon tried to bypass it through a tight crack which he was still extracting himself from when I reached the room's floor. 

We went through another brief crawlway into another room with a waterfall.  I looked up and saw the spot I’d peered down from before.  A hole off to the side of that room led down a short waterfall climb and over a mud bank into a large room with a drain to the left and a dug passage near the ceiling to the right.  After Brandon and I felt the drain for airflow, we checked out the dug passage which led to another room with a small hole in the floor.  Brandon and I encouraged Brian to squeeze down into the small hole while we played with the mud.  Then we routed back out and drove back to Brian’s house.  Seems like the clock on his wall said 3:00 AM.  We eventually crashed and awoke the next morning for breakfast at ___ Truck Stop.  Our waitress looked very pretty. 

After breakfast, we drove over to Messmore.  The road back was quite wet and muddy but my car handled it just fine.  We parked and walked the remaining quarter of a mile to the cliff.  Instead of turning left, we continued straight and descended to Little Indian Cave.  We then visited Arrowhead Arch and Papoose Cave.  We retraced our steps and visited Indian Cave, Indian Contact Shelter, and might have also visited Hermit Cave.  I’m not sure if we saw Hidden Arch Cave and Sentinel Rock cave but we may have.  We walked back to the cliff and each dropped Messmore twice.  It felt good to speed rappel.  It'd been awhile.  I climbed the rope once and then opted to race Brandon up.  He climbed rope while I climbed the hill.  Brandon's feet hadn't even left the ground when he began proclaiming his defeat.  Brandon hung about halfway up when I reached the top.  As Brandon climbed, Brian and I watched a group of Reds off-roading their jeep.  They'd gotten it stuck and the bickering between the fivesome provided entertainment as we waited to see if they'd be alright.  After that we retreated to our cars and I drove to the Smith’s Blowhole parking area just in case Sean had actually left his rack there.  I didn’t see anything so I headed back home.