Freeman Pit & Green Eye Pit
I met Sigrid and Tom at the Taco Bell. It was kind of cold this morning. I guess the warm weather couldn’t last forever. No one else had said they were coming so we took off right away. I was re-touring pits today. I’d tried to get into some new caves but didn’t have much luck with the landowners. I really wanted to see Mccarts Pit Cave and I really did try pretty hard to get the owner to change his mind. He told me to call back next year, so I intend to. I also wanted to see Ratkovich but drove out to it the day before and determined it was likely on a tree farm that had lots of no trespassing signs and such posted. Anyway, we drove to the Freeman parking spot. I was glad that there weren’t hunters parked there. The bounce was uneventful. Sigrid forgot her helmet in the car so I let her bounce it wearing mine. I had intended to do all the pits today with weights but didn’t feel like messing with my pack. After coming up my stomach felt rather crummy and I hoped that drinking the leftover water in my Nalgenes the day before wasn’t going to catch up with me. We stopped by Krogers and picked up a little grub and some batteries. I felt better after having a couple wheat bagels.
Sean was lucky enough to catch up with us as we stopped for gas and our 3 cars caravanned to Green Eye. I’d talked to the Green Eye owners the night before and he’d already given me the ok. We parked by the pole barn and walked to the pit. Sigrid was doing all the rigging today so she rigged the pit. I got out my blow torch and cut, fused, and taped the loose ends of rope on her new frog system now that I’d verified that everything was the correct length. I only ignited a couple leaves in the process. I also burned through a piece of rope that we’d been trying to get off of Tom’s ascender. The rope looked real cool afterwards. Anyway, we bounced Green Eye which was better called Blue Eye on this particular day. I knew that I should have climbed down the breakdown because I seemed to remember a map showing that it went a little farther than I could see but I’ll be back again someday. On our way out we said thank you to the landowner. She’s so nice! Continue to Gory Hole
By Brian Killingbeck © 2005
