A Caving We Will Go!

So I think I just set my personal record for caving in a one month time span - measured from grotto meeting to grotto meeting. Been so busy printing and caving haven't had time to tell you all about it until now. So when the question is asked tomorrow night at out grotto meeting - "Who's been caving?" I'm going to have to bust out a flippin list to remember all of them!!

1. Crossings with Stephanie and Nathan on 4.2.09

photo by Nathan Williams

We went during a serious storm - while we were there - water stared pouring from all sorts of wild places... this shot is cool because you can see all the little water streams...CF-SIT.

photo by Nathan Williams

Another great shot by Nathan - Steph and the haystack were lie with 3 firings of a Lumedyne strobe as an in-camera mutli-exposure

2. Buggy Top with the Huntsville grotto on 4.4.09 (first time trying out my new Pentax in cave!)


3. Blevin's Gap with Nathan on 4.8.09

This is Nathan looking through the squeeze to get down to the lower level. Yeah - that'd be an 8-1/2 inch gap there.

photo by Nathan Williams

And I don't normally post photos of me - but I actually really like this one - and anyway this is part of the gorgeous pool of water on the lower level.

4. Jess Elliot with Angela, Andy, Al, and a bunch of other nice folks from the Dogwood City Grotto 4.11.09

Angela hanging out in a cool portion of Jess. I used two CF-SIT lights for this shot - one on the side and then the other next to me.

5. Hooper's Well with Nathan and Stephanie on 4.14.09 (Steph's 1st pit)

So this is most definitely the wackiest shot I've taken so far, I climbed up the rope about 20 feet, Nathan set up a slaved flash to sidelight Stephanie and himself and then got on the opposite rope. I had my camera set to bulb in one hand, a manual flash in the other, lens cap dangling out of my mouth.... and then I started spinning and twirling...bleaugh. Steph even sat on the rope to keep me from spinning but I still did..ended up attaching my QAS to the other rope and standing in my foot loops to stop spinning for a few moments... finally got one with enough light and without my boots or kneepads in the frame... really like the angle down the rope on this one.

6. Limrock Blowing with Danielle, Stephanie and Nathan on 4.16.09

A bit of Dynamic CF-SIT on the downstream side.

7. Limrock Blowing with Peri, Michelle and Tommy on 4.18.09

Multiple photo composition of Michelle here - because I was working with only flashes - but I like the way it ended up.

Someone made the comment on Flickr that this looked like the caving mafia.... I'm going to go with it - the caving mafia -Don Michelle, Don Tommy and Don Peri

8. Blevin's Gap with Stephanie and Nathan on 4.23.09

Nathan and Steph after 30 different alignments of flashes and "a little to the lefts"... "no, an inch to your rights"

9. Iron Hoop with Michelle, Tommy, Nathan, Angela, Andy, Stephanie, Josh, Colin and Randy on 4.26.09 (topped out at 11-1/2 hours on this one!)

A very happy Stephanie in Iron Hoop. (And by the way instant mashed potatoes are incredibly yummy as a hot in-cave food..... mmmmm....taters! But do watch out - they can be rather hot.)

Check out Colin's photos of the trip.


And then go to the Realms Flickr for all the cool 3-D photos that Nathan took with both of our cameras - bring your red/cyan glasses with ya!! And be seriously prepared to be AMAZED!!!

10. Neversink with Nathan and Stephanie on 4.28.09

This would be the dead rat we found at the bottom of the pit... ewww.

11. Blevin's Gap (yes, again) with Buddy, Joe (their first pit), Don and Nathan for the premiere of SIT 2.0 in-cave (which was very cool and a great success!) on 4.30.09

Here's Joe - man he was so cool - had no problems at all!

12. Stephen's Gap with Stephanie, Danielle, Casey and Nathan (and Fred + 1 later on) on 5.2.09 for Paul and I's first anniversary. (Paul was sick which totally sucked - so he didn't get to go - he let me go anyway) He is feeling MUCH better now and on the road to recovery - albeit a bit spacey from the codine laced cough syrup.

Nathan, Steph, Danielle and Casey ready to hike up to SG.

Man oh man was there a lot of water - and it was simply gorgeous. Here's a little behind the scenes shot I took per Nathan's request. I think this was a 6 second exposure using all natural light.
And then here's a 3 photo panorama of the main waterfalls.

I took some other photos on some hikes and out and about and such - be sure and check them out on my flickr.