Adrian's Bachelor Party

Moaning Cavern

The gang before their first official spelunking trip.

For my bachelor party, my friends and I went to Moaning Caverns for an adventure tour of a real cave. OK, so it's a little more G-rated than your average bachelor party, but we had a blast. Anything that starts with signing away your life has gotta be fun, right?

Signing away our lives.

Four of us opted to rappel in through the cave's original entrance. Tony snapped these photos for us. Unfortunately, you can't really see just how large the room is. The rappel is 165 feet, and the room is large enough to hold the Statue of Liberty. Beneath the rappelling ropes are piles of bones of prehistoric people who fell (or were tossed) into the cave.

I went first.

Adrian on the rappel.Adrian on the rappel.

Then Mark.

Mark on the rappel.Mark on the rappel.

Jason.

Jason on the rappel.Jason on the rappel.

And Marc.

Marc on the rappel.Marc on the rappel.

Once we were on the floor of the main room, Joel (aka Larry) and Steve joined us for the crawling tour of the undeveloped area of the cave.

The crawling gang.

We descended a ladder and headed into the Black Hole. There were no more electric lights beyond the hole, except for those on our helmets.

Onward into the Black Hole.

There's lots of difficult crawling, sliding, slithering, and scrambling on the rest of the tour, so we don't have any pictures from that portion. Our guide, Bruce, has pictures of other groups on the same tour on his website. Top view map of the crawling tour.

We started at the Black Hole (N) and worked clockwise.

Fortunately for us, it was late in a dry summer, so the cave wasn't as muddy as usual, but it was a little wet, which made it hard to get traction on the rocks.

After emerging from the crawl (maybe two hours?), we were back on the floor of the main chamber. The only thing left to do was to climb sixteen flights of stairs back up to ground level. Despite the fact that caves are generally cool, we were hot and sweaty from the work out.

The gang after the spelunking.  Our guide, Bruce, is in the lower right.

Afterwards, we cleaned up, enjoyed a nice dinner at the Willows Steakhouse in Jamestown, and then played poker all night. Of course, I was required to wear my new miner's helmet throughout the game. It wasn't until later I realize that they were all reading my cards in the reflector on the helmet light.

Getting ready to play Low-Hole Wild and other cave-inspired poker games.Poker game.
© 2001 Adrian McCarthy. Photographs courtesy of Tony Gnecco. Map stolen from Bruce Brand. Last updated 28-AUG-2001.