Dragon Breath Does the Ps
We got a later start than usual on Sunday. Trying something different. The jury is still out on whether it’s any better or not. We still had a few dropouts on this trip. Something about too much homework. Come on, there’s always too much homework. There’s never enough caving.
John, Dan, and Dan’s sister Linsey went with Amos Steve and me to the P-Caves. For those who don’t know, this is a collection of caves on a property with most of those cave names beginning with “P”. Persistence, Python, Platter, you get the idea.
We entered Python Pit Cave about 1:40 PM. It’s an easy “1 hour cave” Steve claims. And it probably would have been except I kept stopping to take pictures. This cave has a few formations that were neat to see. But the climbing and crawling was the best part. This was a great workout.
We went in the Persistence Pit entrance of the Persistence – Platter cave system. Story has it this was originally thought to be two caves, but a small squeeze called “Hartman’s Handshake” connects the two. Persistence was more wet than usual (it seems like all the caves are like that right now). Seems like every rimstone damn was full. A few of the belly crawls did promote getting wet. No way to avoid that without stay out of the caves all together. But it was worth while. On the way back we went thought “Hartman’s Handshake”. 
Being second to last I didn’t realize how tight it was until I got face to face with it. I had to back out, drop my pack and empty out my pockets to get that extra inch of clearance. And yes, that was wet, too.
We reached the end of the cave with no real problems. Looked up the Platter Pit entrance. Amos and Steve talked about experiences climbing in and out of that entrance. It’s marked as a 24-foot drop. It is climbable just because of the structure. It’s more of a slot than an open pit. You can put your back on one wall and feet and hands on the other most of the way. But a hand line would be helpful at the very top and very bottom. After discussing how to accomplish all this, we opted to all just go though the squeeze one more time to get back out the way we came in.
Buchanan Cave is a bit smaller in length that the others, but the rooms are large. Not whole lots to see there, but there were some bones that caught our attention. Sifting through the bones we tried to identify what type of beast it was. We finally agreed that it was a deer. But there was a fan belt lying with all this stuff, so we figured it was a John Deer.
By the time we finish all these it was getting late. We walked around and looked at the entrances to the other caves, but didn’t go in. Maybe next time. This is another one of those “I gotta’ do this again” trips. Hopefully sometime we’ll get back and try some we missed and hope they will be a little drier.
On a side note, this was my first trip to the “P-Caves”. Amos and Steve are not only registered Associate Advisors to Dragon Breath (Crew 9), but are active members of the National Speleological Society, Philadelphia Grotto, Central New Jersey Grotto, and a few other grottos and caving conservancies. Because of their knowledge of the caves, caving skills, and their abilities to pass this knowledge along to our youth members, they are the most valued members of our team. None of our trips would ever happen without them.
Here's some more pictures of the trip.
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