Kecks Pit
Ryan Moran, Sean Lewis, Tom Duselis
We had pulled our coveralls / pants around our thighs for the car ride so upon exiting we were almost immediately heading down the hill to Kecks Pit. The entrance was obviously visible and quite scenic. A nice rigging tree stood to the south of the pit. A ~3’ high bedrock shelf made up the northern wall and curved to the west where it made a fine spot to sit and sat gear. The leaf covered ground opened into the 3’ W x 5’ L entrance. Ryan rigged one end of my rope to the tree leaving the rest coiled on the ground. He turned and began confidently walking away as he flicked the other end of the rope into the pit. We watched the leaves flutter about as the rope perfectly uncoiled and zipped down the pit. It was such a bad ass move!
Ryan got on rope and posed briefly as he rappelled down. I was next to rappell the 77’ pit. The entrance shaft was pretty neat. I remember it as an offset half circle that steeply sloped and opened into a much larger room. I really liked looking down into the room just after emerging from the entrance shaft. I rappelled the rest of the way and got off rope. Ryan politely asked if I was ready for the others to come down. I felt kind of dumb because I’d been forgetting to call Off Rope today. Earlier, in Seitz, I’d felt rather out-of-it which I attributed to not eating much for breakfast. Anyway, I called Off Rope and photographed Sean and Tom as they came down. I noticed that my lens had fogged up so I quickly grabbed a piece of lens tissue and cleaned it. Then I took a picture of the ground to make sure the picture was no longer foggy in preparation for Tom’s descent.
Sean and Ryan had already begun to explore the cave. They climbed up into a dead end passage. I followed as they headed to check out the passage on the other side of the pit. We found a tight pit and a ledge with few nearby anchors. Ryan suggested going back to the entrance pit and climbing up to a ledge 20’ off the floor. He ascended and rigged a rebelay so the rest of us could climb up. We climbed up the flowstone wall onto the ledge which overlooked the entrance room and also continued ahead to an irregular shaped pit encompassed by flowstone. Ryan pulled the rope up from the entrance pit and placed it in the new pit. He rappelled down noting that the lip was undercut making it rather tricky. I went down next. I managed to hold myself between the flowstone as I fed enough rope through my rack to get it over the flowstone edge. The hyper bar caught but was easily dislodged and I rappelled 20’ down into a room.
The left wall and some of the floor was composed of neat flowstone globules. Ahead, darkness could be seen through an awkward shaped hole in the wall. A flowstone climbdown led off to the right into a small room. As I climbed down I noted that a couple of the flowstone globules reminded me of soccer balls (not photographed). There was a too-tight canyon that led into the next and lower room. Ryan and I told Sean we had a lead for him to push. We climbed back up to the hole in the wall and Ryan rigged our other rope on some naturals, contorted backwards through the hole, and disappeared. He changed over and “flailed” back up sarcastically telling us that it was definitely worth seeing. Tom looked “excited.” :) I rigged in and worked back into the room and rappelled down nearly to the reflective mud pool. Ryan had told me to thank him ahead of time for keeping my rope clean. I thought he’d been joking but he had actually coiled the end. It looked rather funny suspended above the mucky pool. I changed over and climbed back up. Sean then checked it out as well. I can’t remember if Tom did.
Ryan de-rigged and he and Sean ascended back up to the ledge. The underside of the flowstone encompassed opening was very pretty. When Tom got to the top, Sean coached him on how to get over the lip. I climbed up and watched Ryan pendulum Sean out from the ledge and knew thought that would be a good picture. I snapped a couple as Ryan fed rope penduluming Tom out from the ledge. Then he did the same for me and I ascended up to the surface. Ryan had concocted a cool way to lower himself out from the ledge using a pull down concept. He didn’t mention how well it worked but it seemed sound in theory. I took a couple more entrance pictures and we hiked up to the car.
A medium sized dog joined us as we changed. He had the funniest walk. His butt quickly wobbled back and forth as he walked. He kept jumping up on us and really wanted attention. When we were about to leave I noticed that the dog had disappeared and joked that he was probably in the car. Then I saw that the driver side door was open. Sure enough the dog was sitting in the passenger seat ready to go. We got him out and I drove off. The dog ran around Sean’s car as he tried to drive away. Tom, Ryan, and I got quite a kick out of it. Sean said the last he saw of the dog it was nearly being hit by a wave of oncoming traffic. I hope it survived. We drove to Ryan’s (the restaurant) for dinner and then drove home. It was a long drive. I remember at one point both Ryan and Tom were snoring softly.
By Brian Killingbeck © 2005
By Brian Killingbeck © 2005
