Bitch, bitch, whine, whine. I’m sure you’ve heard me moan about how Northeastern caving sucks as I long for the good ole days of caving in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia (TAG). Returning to my roots in Alabama is a refreshing getaway from the chaos of the City.

On Wednesday, October 9th, I headed to my old home of Birmingham, Alabama to meet up with some old TAG caving buddies. Flying in from their new home in Arizona, Chris and Julie Hudson met up with me at the Birmingham airport. They also brought along a new Arizona caving friend named Brett Cook in order to show off some TAG caving.

After huffing and puffing and shoving and tugging, we managed to get all of our gear into the back of a rented Jeep Grand Cherokee…only to find that the right latch was defective. UGH! So we pile out and shove and tug gear into the back of another Jeep. We’re off to Huntsville!

We met up with Tim White for a little socializing and gathering of even more gear. When Chris and Julie moved to Arizona, they left all of their ropes with Mark Ruocco with the understanding that when in TAG, they could use them. We hung with Tim till Mark came home from class then headed over to Julie Schenk’s to spend the night.

Ah! Fresh air! I was so excited to breath in some good clean air that I slept outside. I could never fall into a deep sleep knowing that a full day of TAG caving awaited me the next morning. At 5:00AM, we stumbled around and loaded up the Jeep in the dark.

After stopping for a quick bite and some cave snacks at the Super WalMart in Scotsboro, we headed off to the Little Coon Valley to meet up with Alan Cressler and two of his friends. The plan was for us to rig Blunder Hole while Alan and his crew rigged Thunder Hole. We would tag team bottom the caves.

Blunder Hole was found in 1994 in Eureka, Alabama while ridgewalking with Jerry Reeves, aka The Old Rockeater . That day I didn’t bring any vertical gear. “We’re not going to find anything today,” I replied when asked about my light load. Lo, and behold, we did. Lesson #1: if you want to find a pit, don’t bring your vertical gear.

Chris Hudson was the first one down the 107 foot entrance drop later to be called Buffoons’ Well. Not having gear, I took a nap on top of the mouth of the cave while the others took turns dropping into the hole. Finally somebody took pity on me and loaned me their gear, including a rather stylish houndstooth polyester jumpsuit complete with brasstone buckle.

Much discussion about what to name the cave kept us busy as we made our way out of Little Coon. Since the cave was walked past many a time during ridgewalking, the cave was finally donned the name of “Blunder Hole.” With passage remaining to be explored, return trips followed to enlarge the entrance and enlarge the passage at the bottom of the first drop. However, I never made it to the photography or survey trips so returning to this find some eight years later proved rewarding.

After the Buffoon’s Well, we slithered through a wet belly crawl to find drops of the following depth: 34 feet, 12 feet, 14 feet, 41 feet, 24 feet, 26 feet, 24 feet, and 17 feet. The drops became wet at the 41 feet pit and were titled the “Wet Willie’s.” Parallel drops of 13 and 9 feet are after the 26 foot drop. However, we had to abort before bottoming the last few drops due to light failure of both Chris and Julie.

As we began our ascent out of the cave, we ran into Alan and his crew dropping the Wet Willies. Alan was on one of his “cave till you drop” adventures so we tried to pick up pace to not be too outdone by him. Once out of Blunder, we headed back to the vehicles, reparked, and headed up the mountain once again to find Thunder Hole.

After dropping the first drop, Julie and I decided we were exhausted. We opted to rescue a turtle wandering around on the bottom of the drop while the guys derigged the multidrops. Back at the Jeep, we chatted with Doug Strait and found out that Alan and crew were already out of Blunder Hole and had headed up to Stoned Well. We’d had enough and with heavy eyes, we drifted off into nap time.