NSS Post Convention photos with Dave Bunnell

On Sunday, it was business as usual at camp. Ray Shaw did a great job at registration with people slowly straggling in and wanting to do trips. The night before, two Crevice trips went on to the Paradise Room with various results, but the end result was a photo trip with the NSS News Editor, Dave Bunnell, led by Edmund Tucker and Mark Brewer. This resulted in people slogging around camp on Sunday morning, which worked to my benefit. I inevitably led Dave Bunnell on a Blackfathom Pit trip with his two helpers (names?) and late comers to camp, Bonnie and Andy Armstrong from northern Utah. The three of us knew each other but never met. It was a pretty cool treat meeting them, and as the said an amazingly unexpected treat for them as they weren't expecting to get in on a cave trip today, much less a vertical photo shoot trip into Blackfathom.

The trip was fairly straight forward and we shot 6 specific areas in the Pillars of Hercules area of Blackfathom. Our trip lasted a total of approximately 7 hours and as we were packing up to leave at 5:30 p.m., we finally ran into Edmund Tucker who was leading a group of 3 up to Pillars from the Historic entrance. His crew was caving strong and eventually followed us to the bottom of Blackfathom Pit before turning around and exiting the cave approximately 4 hours later. After the climb out, Andy Armstrong derigged the entire pit for me and pulled the rope out of the pit. I coiled the rope up (Bradford’s 10mm PMI) and Dave's buddy from New Mexico carried the rope to the truck for me. Everyone on the trip was impressed with the cave and was very satisfied with the extremely small amount of the cave they saw.

Being one of the 3 cavers present on the discovery of the entire area, I was fortunate to be the main "model" used by Dave during most of the photo shoot. It was amazing watching him work and a pleasure to be the trip leader for this fine group. I got a kick out of the "Oohs and Aah's" that I kept hearing during the entire trip which only covered, realistically, 10-15 minutes of trip time. I was asked "What is this giant formations name" when photographing a massive flow stone that almost enclosed the entire downstream side of the Pillars of Hercules area. I didn't have an answer, and it got me thinking, why didn't we name this huge bastard? Then again, we have so many large formations in this cave that naming them all would be a major after though.

I truly hope that everyone's experience during their role in the convention was as magical as mine. Thanks everyone for the help during the campout. Everyone who helped definitely deserves a round of applause.

Chad McCain

Editor
SEMO Grotto

Nutella Falls, Downstream end of the room known as the Pillars of Hercules.