Copperhead Pit
Tymme Laun, Brandon Stephens, Sean Lewis
Eventually, we were ready to hike to Copperhead which was .75 miles away as the crow flies. Sean and I took the lead occasionally waiting up for Brandon, Kari, and Tymme. The last two times I’d been to Copperhead the GPS wasn’t working properly but it didn’t seem to have a problem today. This point was actually only around 60’ off. We spread out and Brandon ran across it first. I was starting to feel like I’d done a lot of hiking and not enough stretching but a little bit of stretching remedied that. I rigged the pit and Sean went down first. The late afternoon sun was making me feel kind of lazy.
Sean yelled up that there was another rope already in the pit but it wasn’t attached to anything. He thought to himself that it was odd that there would be another rope just like mine down there already. We discussed the possibility of there being a dead body down there and wondered why Sean was climbing back up the rope. I knew there was a enough rope for the pit. We later found out that the rope had doubled over around a rock or something near the top and Sean had to ascend back up to detach it when he didn’t have enough rope to bottom the pit. I let Brandon go down next. Sean climbed up and it was my turn. The first 15’ of the pit is rather tight but it soon opens out. There is a rather large room that you could pendulum over to and also two leads that the map doesn’t show have been checked. I met Brandon at the bottom and he started up the rope. I played with the mud and some rocks while teasing Brandon about having seen a snake near the top of the pit where it was kind of tight. Tymme came down and I climbed out.
On our way to Beech Tree, we looked for Bawer Pit II and Bricker Pit. We found a short pit near where Bawer should have been but I’m not sure I could have fit with vertical gear on. It was covered with a large rock. There was another spot nearby that Brandon said looked like it could have been a filled in pit. We were losing sunlight so we didn’t spend much time on either of these. Bricker wasn’t anywhere near where was supposed to be either. Sean happened upon it as we hiked to Beech Tree. It didn’t look very nice and we didn’t have time to drop it. Continue to Beech Tree Cave
By Brian Killingbeck © 2005
