Trip Reports

Trip Reports
	6-9-06 ~ 6-11-06 Camping & Caving at Bowden & Hamilton	Part 1: Camping out near Bowden Part 2: Bowden's Third Entrance Part 3: Pushing the Back of Hamilton
This will be a 3 part trip report, that takes place over 3 days of camping and caving. This trip started out Friday afternoon after I got home from work. Ben, Sam, Ezra, and I were on this trip. Ezra is an old time friend, and had not gotten the chance to go out with us in a long time. He had only done one other caving trip to Sinks of Gandy Cave a couple years ago with Ben, and was excited to go on another caving trip.
Part 1: Camping out near Bowden
We all met at my house to load up the trucks. I rode with Sam, and Ezra rode with Ben. We left about 6 PM on our way to the mountains, which was alittle over 1.5 hours away. There are two camping spots at Bowden, one at the very top of the mountain, and one at the base. We checked to see if anyone was at the top camp ground first, there was a motor home there, so we headed down to the bottom spot. I don't think anyone really camps here except us, I think the spot is used mostly by hunters. There is a rough dirt road that leads into the woods to the camping spot. You have to cross a stream a couple times, which can be rather rough, with boulders to drive over. About half way down the road, Sam mentioned that it would really suck if a tree was down. Well, he just had to say that and jinx us. Turns out, there was a large tree that had fell in the road, not more than 5 feet from the camping spot.


We could have just carried our supplies about 30 feet up the bank to the camp spot, and left the trucks there on the road. But I wasn't about to let this damn tree beat us. The worst part was, all we had were a couple machetes, a hatchet, and my Ranger RD9 knife to cut the tree with. My chainsaw needs a new chain and blade, so I didn't bring it along. Luckily, Ben had a coma long in his truck. So we took turns cutting away at the tree, until it was about 3/4 of the way through. Then we attached the coma long to where we had cut, connected it to another nearby tree, and proceeded to ratchet the tree. Ben had a nice coma long, but it still took alot of pressure to snap the tree. We were all jumping on it at once point to help it along.


Once he had the tree snapped, it was still staying in place from the pressure it was under. Sam used the coma long some more until it finally gave way and fell.


In case you are wondering what the tarp is for, we place it over the coma longs cable, so that if it would happen to snap, it would not slash back at us as much. This is a good idea when working with any metal cable that is under a load.
Here is a video of the tree finally giving way. bowden_tree_removal.wmv
Finally, after over an hour of chopping and pulling, we got to actually park at the camp site and start setting up camp. We did the usual setup with our tarp over head. Ben setup his tent for him and Ezra to sleep in, Sam and I slept in the back of his truck, which has a camper top. Ezra got the fire going, and gathered up some wood for that night. We sat around the camp fire, eating hotdogs and drinking beers. We had a rather late night, and didn't end up crashing out till about 4 AM. I was amazed the next morning, when we all got up alittle before 9 AM. We were all tired, but not as much as I would have thought, knowing what we did the night before. Ben cooked us up some breakfast on my Coleman stove. After having our breakfast, and a couple cups of coffee, we were ready to get our day started. We packed up some of camp, but left things setup. We were only a 10 minute walk from the cave entrance.

Part 2: Bowden's Third Entrance