Snow Sprite

Twelve miles of single lane dirt logging road lead up the side of Shaver’s Mountain, with switch backs, frightening drop offs, no guard rails, and a river hundreds of feet below. All that to get to the farm where Cave Hollow Cave hid.

The farmer, who raised work horses for a living, did not bring his car up the mountain in the winter. He knew the road would become impassable in bad weather. He did not depend on the outside world for much anyway, with no electricity and no phone. Kerosene lanterns lit the interior of the house; a wood burning stove kept it warm; and a root cellar kept the produce cool.

Montgomery Junior College Trail Club conducted an annual Thanksgiving weekend camping trip to this cave in wild and wonderful West Virginia. The cave, which has fifteen miles of passage, is near the top of the mountain, located about a mile from the farm house.

The plan this year: fifteen or so club members would drive several cars in a caravan, leaving home on Friday at eight AM, arriving at the farm house by noon. We would carry all our gear from the farmer’s front yard to the cave a mile away, then for the next forty-eight hours, sleep, eat, cook, explore, film and do almost everything else in the cave.

On prior trips, we slept in tents on the pasture beside the cave entrance, but this year, we planned to use sleeping bags in the cave, because we expected snowy weather. As a rugged outdoors group, we felt we could handle any challenges. But we underestimated what Mother Nature had in store for us, and the challenges she could cause for my tiny, two seat, convertible sports car, a 1960 Austin Healey Sprite.

This year was different from previous annual trips to this cave. We planned to make movie films in the cave, an ambitious undertaking in the days of 8 mm movie film, before videotape camcorders. We had asked ourselves, "Why has no one produced a movie to show the magical world inside wild caves where only spelunkers fear to tread?" We found the answer in photography books of the day. "Making movie films in wild caves is impossible due to the extreme hazards and lack of adequate light." We said, "Let’s do it."

My friend, Ted Doyle, owned am 8mm movie camera, which needed a good bit of light to properly expose the film. Light is not in large supply in caves. To solve this technical detail, we bought special six volt movie lamp bulbs. I made hand held mounts for the lamps and a protective wood carrying case around a motorcycle battery to provide electricity for them.

Our group had already produced one movie in an easier cave on an earlier trip, but we were disappointed in the results. We used 400 Speed black and white film because it does not need much light, but the grainy appearance of the finished movie was annoying to us perfectionists. So this time we brought 100 Speed black and white film. It would reduce our usable filming distance, but the sharpness in the finished movie would be much better.

One 6 Volt, 100 Watt lamp would provide sufficient light to film up to fifteen feet in front of the lamp. We could hook up several lamps to the battery with long heavy cables I had crafted. That would allow us to film up to forty feet away. We required a team of six fellow spelunkers just to move the battery, cables and lights through the cave.

My friend Ted, who was riding with me on this trip, unexpectedly had to work Friday morning. The rest of the group drove to the mountain in the morning according to plan. But Ted and I did not get away until afternoon.

It began snowing as we got into West Virginia. The wet heavy snow frequently clogged the windshield wipers, making it a slow trip, as we frequently stopped to clean off the wipers. We did not arrive at the farmer’s house until almost dark. The others had long ago parked their cars near the farmhouse and hauled all their camping gear from the house to the cave. Ted and I had all the movie equipment with us.

We contemplated the joy of lugging our own camping and caving gear, plus the movie camera, lights, cables and that heavy battery, in the dark. It would take at least two trips, perhaps three. We were hungry and tired. We wanted to get done so we could cook our dinner and go to sleep. All that hiking back and forth with heavy loads stood in the way. Or -- just turn the two door Sprite into an off-road vehicle and drive over.

The Sprite got a running start to cross the trampled up barnyard, followed the sunken tractor path across the front pasture, down the hill to the stream crossing. The stream was a little deep for the low slung Sprite, so we tossed logs in the stream and drove across them.

While trying to get up the hill on the other side, we discovered that the snow had made the slick rock surface, well, slicker. The Sprite managed to travel a few yards up the hill then just spun it’s rear tires on the snowy wet smooth surface.

We stopped and fitted chains on the rear wheels. Remember chains? People used to use chains in the snow. They are awkward to install, usually requiring that you lay down in the snow to wrestle them around the tires on the car. The fasteners can not be secured with gloves on your hands. The cold steel latches hurt to operate with bare fingers, but that is the only way to work with them. The chains must be removed when you get back on pavement without snow, or they will quickly break and tear up the paint around the wheel well. But they do provide traction. Traction in snow, traction on ice. They even work well in mud.

The chains did give the Sprite traction to easily move up the slick rock slope. We drove along a cow path around a ridge to the back pasture where the cave awaited.

I knew that if the snow got too deep, the Sprite, with a ground clearance of only five inches, would have trouble getting going. So I parked it facing on a down hill slope about a hundred feet from the cave entrance. We dragged everything into the cave and joined the others, who had dinner cooked and ready for us. We slept well that night.

On Saturday we explored the cave for twelve hours, and made movie films along the way. Our six gallant young men who were assigned the task of coaxing all of the movie making equipment through the cave were incredible. They had to carry it along walkways, drag it through crawl ways, and lift it up and down small cliffs.

Every now and then we would find a location that deserved filming. We would decide at that moment what we wanted folks doing so there would be action. They were not experienced actors, we were not experienced directors, and we had no script. We had an extremely limited budget, measured in battery life and minutes of film supply. There was no option of recharging the battery or running out for more film. But we were young and full of confidence.

We had a wonderful time, wore our selves out, and would have to wait until we got the film back to civilization and got it developed to know how successful we had been. As planned, we ate, slept, and just about everything else in the cave without looking outside.

For those of you who have never been in a cave, or more to the point, have never spent two whole days in a cave, conditions are different than you expect. You can’t judge time accurately.

In a cave, the temperature stays nearly constant. In Cave Hollow Cave, it stays about fifty-five degrees. It is not warmer in the day than at night.

When you let things get quiet, when you stop making human noises, it gets eerily quiet. You hear water dripping somewhere. It might be nearby, or if the echoes are working just right, it might be a hundred feet away. You can’t tell which.

There is no radio to allow the local disk jockey to tell you what time it is every three minutes or so. There is no sense bringing a radio into the cave. It can not receive a signal through hundreds of feet of solid rock. So you really do not have any idea of what is happening outside on the surface world.

It also stays dark. Whatever light sources you bring in with you is all there is. You have no reference to day and night. If you looked at a typical wrist watch of those days, it was a twelve hour watch without a date indicator.

Without knowing if the sun is up or not, you could wake up in your sleeping bag, open your eyes and see nothing. You bring your arm out of the sleeping bag and rotate your wrist to put the watch directly in front of your face. You see nothing.

If you had a luminous dial, it was one that worked with phosphorescent paint. When exposed to light for a while, it would glow for a while after you removed the light. But if you had been asleep for several hours, that was done and gone.

If you turn on your flashlight to assist, it is so bright, it forces your eyes closed. After you learn how to cup your hand over part of the lens to reduce the brightness, you look at the watch. It says 10:00. Let’s see, you went to bed at 8:00 PM. Have your been sleeping for two hours or fourteen hours? Every now and then someone would go toward the entrance of the cave to see if there was daylight evident. They did not go outside, just far enough to see if a glow of light could be seen down the passage. That is how we knew when it was time to leave.

On Sunday morning we gathered our stuff and came out of the cave to a snow covered world. I looked toward where the Sprite was parked. There was a slight rise in the white snow. Just a bulge. In most places the snow was about a foot deep. But the wind had caused a number of drifts and bulges. One of them must be the Sprite.

After first digging into a wrong bulge, I found the car and Ted and I began to dig it out. Some of the others began the long hike back to the farm house with their gear. A few others thought it would be easier walking in the tracks of the Sprite, so they helped dig it out. They offered a push if I needed it.

Together we dug down enough for me to open the driver door and I started the cold engine. It fired right up. I put it in first gear, released the hand brake, let out the clutch, and the engine slowed down. The car did not move.

Oh! I was a dummy. I had set the hand brake after driving through wet snow for hours. After it sat in the cold for two days, it was frozen tight. The Sprite hand brake had an exposed cable underneath the car that was coated with ice, keeping it from releasing.

I jacked up the side of the car to crawl underneath in the snow. Somehow I needed to thaw the ice off the cable. Hmm! A heat source? My caver’s carbide light burned acetylene, that would melt it. So there I was, holding an open flame against the underneath of my car while my toes froze.

Ted and I got back in the car and it lurched forward as the last ice broke loose. The Sprite began rolling through the snow that was a foot deep compared to the Sprite’s five inches clearance. I thought I should keep it moving to avoid getting stuck.

The Sprite struggled through the snow across the back pasture, into the woods, down the slick rock slope, over the logs in the stream, up the hill to the front pasture.

As we passed the others who were hiking back to their cars parked at the farm house, I realized there was another problem. The tractor path across the front pasture was sunken on the right side below the height of the ground, but was just about level on the left side. The wind had drifted the snow straight across. The field was littered with big boulders and rocks everywhere outside the tractor path. So I drove as close to the left edge of the path as I could, maintaining speed in hopes of plowing my way through any deep spots.

No luck. The right wheels were in deeper snow than the left wheels, and that pulled the car to the right. All of a sudden, the car was all the way into the deepest drift and snow started flying every which way. Then I heard a "Floumpf" sound and the car came to a stop.

The car, Ted and I were in over our heads so to speak. I could see nothing but snow all over the front windshield. The wipers moved it around, but all I could see was snow. I looked in my rear view mirror, and there was snow covering the rear window. I checked the side window and it was white with snow.

I heard muffled voices shouting, "Where did he go?" My companions on foot on the pasture later told me that as the car came to a stop, it looked just like it did when we first came out of the cave. Just a bulge in the snow.

To signal that we were all right, I tapped out "Shave and a hair cut, two bits" on the horn. I heard muffled laughter. After some digging, they got us out of the car. Then we dug a path for the Sprite to follow back up onto the left edge of the path and tamped down enough snow to keep both sides of the car out of the deep snow drift.

We finally got across the barnyard to the farm house and the other cars. We performed our usual thank you to the farmer for letting us use his property to visit the cave. We left all of our remaining food on his front porch. He never asked us to do that, but each Thanksgiving weekend when we came back, he welcomed us and gave us the permission to camp and cave on his property.

This was my 3rd consecutive Thanksgiving weekend coming to this farm. The Trail Club did not have records of how many years they had been making that trip, but there were old hands along when I first made the journey, and they placed the leftover food on the porch. Now, I was the old hand on the trip and the sharing tradition continued.

Then the group talked about going down the logging road to get off the mountain. Most of the drivers were frightened at the prospect. Two days ago, the trip up the mountain was their first time driving in this kind of terrain, and their first time driving that road, or any thing like it. In this weather everyone looked to me, who had been here before in my Sprite, to lead the way down the mountain. With all the drifting the snow had done, I would know better where in the switch backs was road, and where was ditch. They felt that if I went first, I would show them the way with my tire tracks. We agreed that if we got separated that we would meet at the general store in the town of Red Creek.

With Ted in the passenger seat, I started down the logging road. It took a fair amount of concentration, trying to remember just where the road was on the side of the mountain. After a while, I looked in the mirror and although the others had started out just behind me, I could not see them anymore. I guessed they were traveling slower than I was.

"What is that noise?", Ted asked. The car did sound different to me too, but it was hard to discern what was the cause. Twelve miles later, as we reached the end of the dirt road and got on pavement that had been plowed, the noise changed to a loud roar. I stopped and verified, "Yep, we lost the Sprite’s muffler somewhere back there in the snow." The exhaust pipe had swung out from under the Sprite, under the rear wheel and stuck out the side at an ugly angle, looking somewhat squashed. And noisy as hell.

I knew that about ten miles down the road was the tiny town of Red Creek. It consisted of several houses, a pair of churches, a general store and some outbuildings.

The general store was true old rural; not yuppie pretend old rural. On previous visits, I had gone inside, to see an iron pot belly stove in the center near the front door with chairs placed around it. The store shelves had blue jeans next to lanterns next to cans of beans. There were jars of one cent hard candy.

Out front was a single gas pump that had a big clear glass globe on top with numbered lines on it. You hand cranked gasoline up into the globe until it reached the line matching the number of gallons you wanted to buy. Then you put the hose into your car’s filler tube and drained the globe of gas into your tank. You were expected to go inside and tell the clerk how much you took and pay him what he said you owed.

I had hoped we could get some advice from the store on how to get our missing muffler problem resolved. But when we got there, the store was closed...Sunday morning. So we drove to the two churches. Not a single indication that anyone had been there. The walkways to the front doors had not been shoveled. Nobody was coming to church during a blizzard out here. The houses did not seem to have anyone home. And no sign yet of the other cars in our caravan. Where were they?

In our meandering around the tiny town of Red Creek, we noticed next to a shed were a pair of wood planks extending out over a sunken embankment. They were supported by a crisscross pattern of scaffolding. It was a platform to allow you to work under a car. There were raised lips of wood along the two inside edges of the planks to guide the car’s tires. Just what we need to help get the exhaust pipe back under the car and tied up to the axle with bailing wire. Any owner of a British sports car like the Sprite had bailing wire in the tool box, and I was prepared.

Since there was no one to ask permission, I just had Ted guide me as I drove the Sprite onto the two parallel planks. Ted issued commands, "Right a little. Now left. Oh No! Turn Right!! Take it slow. It just barely fits." In fact the platform had been built to fit the track of a standard American car of the fifties. The sprite was a lot narrower. The tires were balanced on the inside raised lips instead of being on the platforms. But we were already out there, with the car five feet above the ground, perched on the raised lips. So I got out the jack and raised the driver side of the car. Then I removed the rear wheel on that side, and Ted helped me force the damaged exhaust pipe back under the car and tied it in place with baling wire.

I put the wheel back on and started to lower the car when Ted yelled, "STOP!" While the Sprite was jacked up on the left side, the forces had managed to slide the car a little bit to the right. Now the left wheels were coming down inside the platform where there was nothing but air.

Ted got over on the right side of the car and pushed the car to the left as I lowered it. It worked, the Sprite was sitting with all four tires on wood. Not much wood, but with a great deal of care, we managed to back the Sprite off that car rack and back onto plowed pavement.

We went back to the general store. Still no sign of our friends’ cars. We waited a while, then for something to do, I took off the tire chains and put them away.

Later, while waiting in the car, Ted asked me, "Could you please turn up the heater?" I looked at the control and it was already at max. The engine had been running for some time, but the temperature gauge indicated that it was still cold. I knew what that meant with the Sprite. We had a coolant leak somewhere. I got out and lifted the hood. Where the hose connects to the top of the radiator, it has a Y that goes off to the heater. The vulcanized joint that keeps the two pieces of hose together had failed. We had lost a lot of coolant.

I rummaged through the tool box and found some electrical tape. It took the entire roll to wrap the hose joint until it was watertight. Then we needed coolant. I had a partial jug of antifreeze in the trunk, and a canteen of not quite enough water to mix with the antifreeze. So we took out a cooking pot and set it full of snow on the engine. A while later, we had water in the pot. We were able to top off the radiator and the heater started working again.

A few minutes later we spotted our friends cars coming into town. We got out to greet them and explain all the adventures we had experienced, but they started talking first. "You won’t believe the problems we had. Following your tracks in the snow was the easy part. That was great. Thanks, but one of the cars had nearly bald tires and could not get traction in the snow, so we had to push it all the way down the mountain. What a nightmare. We are all sweaty from pushing that stupid car... Oh by the way, is this your muffler?"

It was! I thanked them for finding it and tossed it in the trunk because there was no way to reattach it to the mangled exhaust pipe.

After sharing stories for a short time, one of the drivers butted in and told us that he had heard on the radio that US Route 50 was closed where it crossed the mountains on our way back home. So were all the parallel roads north of there. We would have to drive 50 miles south to a pass that was still open. That would add at least another two hours to our return trip home. It was already much later than we had planned, so we hopped into our cars to head home.

I had a good map, so I lead the way out of town. The roads had been plowed, but not cleared. There was still a layer of packed snow and ice on the surface. A steep uphill grade on a wide left hand curve around a ridge greeted us just outside of town. At the right edge of the road was a steep bank down to a pasture. I took a running start and hoped I would be able to keep traction now that I did not have chains on the car.

Everything seemed fine until I crested the hill and spotted a pickup truck stopped in the middle of the road with a hunter standing in what was left of my side of the road, looking out over the pasture. I could not stop in time, so I steered as far to the right as I could without getting caught in the piled up snow.

I judged wrong. The right wheel grabbed into the snow and pulled the car off the road. We were going at a high rate of speed, diagonally down the bank toward a barbed wire and post fence at the bottom of the slope. All this with a huge roar since the car did not have a muffler any more. I steered slightly to the left and feathered the gas until the front wheels started to steer again and got control just as the rear fender clipped one of the fence posts.

We felt a little thump through the seats rather than heard it, and all of a sudden the Sprite got traction and we shot back up the hill and onto the road a ways past the pickup truck.

I looked in my mirror and saw the hunter pulling his rifle out of the rack in the back window. Thinking that he was probably not pleased with me almost running him down, I kept going.

My friends arrived at the pickup truck and the hunter turned toward them. He snapped, "Did you see that crazy sports car go by?"

"Yes!", they replied, "He was really flying way too fast. We’re glad to be behind whoever was driving that funny little sports car." The hunter smiled and waved them by.

Our detour took us through a number of small towns, considerably larger than Red Creek, with people out and about in cars and on foot. I learned how much gas I could give to the engine to be able to drive through the towns without making too much noise. But one town had a traffic light. It turned red just as I got there, so our caravan stopped and waited patiently.

Just as it turned green for us, a police car pulled up to the light on the cross street and stopped for the light. I had to accelerate to get going, and I did my best to keep it quiet. But it roared as I shifted gears. I saw the officer turn his head toward my car, now just past the intersection.

In my mirror, I saw my friend in the next car pull into the intersection just in front of the police car. Then he stopped, got out, lifted his hood and shook his head. That was enough of a delay for me to get out of that town without having to explain the missing muffler to the local policeman and judge. I rumbled the rest of the way home, triumphant.

The movie films came back from processing a week or two later. We were right; the 100 Speed film made clearer pictures than we got from the 400 Speed film. But it was still black and white film, and caves are full of colors, mostly shades of white and brown, but beautiful colors. Those colors were missing in our movie.

Our "actors" often looked like they were wondering what they should do for the camera. It was not their fault, we had not prepared them properly and we did not direct them in a professional manner.

We loved the films, but started making plans to improve things for the next attempt. We would do better.

-- Bob Kuhns