ScoobieDooo once bubbled...
Oh I see you have been a Clarksville and Knox. Have you done the 'Gun Barrel' at Knox? I hear its now gated by the Conservancy.
And Clarksville is a great cave. More beginners have started their spelunking careers in that cave than any other.
I've done them Wagon Wheel, Bethlehem Cave, Schoharie Cave, and Jamesville Cave.
Are you a DIR diver?
Knox isn't gated, but it requires permission from Emily Davis and is closed during the winter (after a few incidents involving icefall).
I've done essentially every part of Knox and even last year explored a newly discovered section that had probably never been seen before... we pushed 300 feet through a stream passage to a room where we found some bad air and turned back. I've done the Gun Sight... not sure if you know what that is, but it's a small hole 5 feet long near the ceiling in the room right before the gun barrell. It's maybe 10 inches in diameter and 4 feet off the ground.
Wagon Wheel is closed. Never heard of Bethlehem or Jamesville. Schoharie is nice... one day I'd like to dive the sump at the end and see the other half of the cave.
Clarksville is very nice. Strangely enough no good map exists of the entire Ward-Gregory cave system.... my friends and I keep tossing around the idea of creating one, but we haven't quite gotten around to it yet.
No, I'm not DIR. I recently started diving a Hogarthian rig, though. I love it. I'll take DIRF eventually, I'm sure, but no one else I dive with seems interested. That's fine by me, they all have good attitudes towards diving. They're the same group I go caving with, kayaking with, skiing with, etc. They take these things seriously and we trust each other in all sorts of fairly dangerous situations. I guess I'll never be DIR because I don't follow Rule #1, but that doesn't stop me from admiring the thought behind the system and the style of diving it really embodies.
