Trip Report: Eagle Cave
On Wednesday, June 16, six grotto members took a trip to Eagle Cave in the Adirondacks. We left Copper Creek Farm at 8:00 am in two cars: Greg Atwood and his daughter, Amberly, drove together and Dave Parker drove John Harrison, Kim Maley, and Pat Rapp.
The ride up to Chimney Mountain took about 4 hours. We stopped at the halfway point and bought sandwiches at a gas station/deli from a gentleman who really wanted us to buy “salamis.” Our plan was to eat at the trailhead, but at the last leg of the journey the bridge was out, so we ate our sandwiches on the road (literally) and then detoured around to the other side of the bridge.
Minutes before arriving at the trailhead, the rain began (perfect timing!), which made for a damp walk up the mountain. It was a steep hike, just as Greg said it would be. Still, John tried to run up the mountain–presumably to make the rest of us look bad. Along the way, Greg found an orangey-red salamander which Amber immediately befriended. After petting him for a while she put him off to the side of the trail and we made our way up to the Chimney.
The chimney was a very cool bunch of huge boulders. Unfortunately, it was not where we were supposed to be. We had missed the turnoff to get to Eagle Cave and we had to do some backtracking and bouldering to get back to the other side of a valley. Along the way, “some” people (ahem) told Amber stories about bobcats, bears, and giant sea monsters. She was pretty brave, but decided to stay close to the adults anyway.
We got to the slanted horizontal cave entrance earlier than expected (but I don’t know what time it was.) After a very short distance, we reached the drop. There was a wooden rope ladder already in place. Greg belayed all of us over the edge, with John going first in order to put Joe’s cable ladder in place for us. The cable ladder was weird and I think most of us used the rope ladder instead. Once he got all of us and our gear down the 15 foot drop, Greg belayed himself over.
The bat room was large and Greg told us the wall had been covered in bats in February. John found a spider. We didn’t see any bats in the bat room, but we did run into a group of people who were on their way back to the ladder. They had a couple of very dim flashlights and no helmets.
The cave was very dry and sandy. It was a nice change from the wet, muddy caves I’d been in previously, and the sand was easy on my elbows — I have very few bruises. We did some crawling around for quite a while. We found one moldy bat hanging from the ceiling. Dave took a picture of it – see photo below. The cave had some very large rooms and the boulders were quite large and chunky. There were lots of little crevices but where we were, most of them didn’t really go very far.
Around 5:00 or 5:30 we started heading out. We wanted to get up the ladder, out of the cave, and down the mountain before dark. Getting back up went very smoothly. We ran into more people with flashlights and no helmets while we were on our way out. We saw some graffiti, which was disappointing.
When we came out of the cave it was raining. We packed up and headed down the mountain, and lost the trail again. We did some scary maneuvering in some very exposed places, but nobody slipped on the wet leaves and fell to their death, so it’s all good. We picked up the trail again and the rest of the walk down was very pleasant.
We got back to the cars about 8:00 p.m. Kim had brought chicken salad and egg salad, and since the rain had changed to a light mist by the time we got to the cars (perfect timing again!) we ate sandwiches before heading home.
On the way home, Greg and Amber saw a bobcat cross the road. They were ahead of us, so we missed it, but we were lucky enough to see the “funky ufo flying saucer shaped vulture feeder thing” on someone’s lawn. This was Kim’s first trip and she said she had a great time, would definitely go again, and thanks for the memories.
No knees were blown out in the making of these memories.
