TRIP TO THE SOUTHERN AREA IN WARREN
By Bill Walker

On April 13th, Eric and Joanne Amsbury, Bill Walker and Adam Scherer made a trip to Warren, the longest cave in Florida. I don't know what possessed us, but we decided to push the back of the cave. Eric, who had done much exploration in the back of the cave, said he would take us wherever we wanted to go. We all wanted to go to the back! I had never been past the Pit, Adam had never been past the Sand Room, and this was one of Ryan's first cave trips.

The Southern Area is generally considered the back of the cave. It's a real expedition to get to the Southern Area and only a handful of people have ever been back there (I think the number I heard was 17.) Warren in general is just plain tough - 95% of the 4.5 miles is hands and knees crawling at best. Just getting to the Pit Area is a real commitment - about an hour and a half of hard caving. We signed the register when we got there. My first trip to the Pit was in the summer of 2000. According to the register, only two other groups had been there since then. That should give some indication of the difficulty just to get to the Pit (pic #1 is Adam standing on a ledge in the Pit). It takes about another hour to get to the Southern Area from the Pit (it took us 4 total from the entrance.)

I told Adam, "we'll be leaving the tourist trails now."

Past the Pit is Casalli's Diggings and Agony Alley. This is the worst crap I've ever been through. It's mostly belly crawling with some really tight squeezes along the way. Some of it is on your side, too. There is no way you can drag your pack behind you because it either gets stuck on a chert projection or it's just bigger than the passage. I made the mistake of pulling my pack behind me and I trapped myself in a Floyd Collins situation that took me about 10 minutes to work out. The only thing you can do is toss your pack ahead of you with your free hand and crawl until you hit it with your head because you can't look up to see where you are going. Oh, and in addition to all that crap, there are a couple of Z bends that you just can't do if your bones are too long! Check out pics 3 & 4 - this is the last tight squeeze in Agony Alley. Their legs are actually bent to their left behind them.

Past Agony Alley is borehole! - well for Warren's anyway. Check the last two pics. Everything I saw was strolling walking passage, but I was too tired to check any of it out. I had to lay down for 20-30 minutes to recover from the rest of the cave.

I think the back of Warrens will make a man think about things. I talked to a caver once that had been to the back of the cave and had a panic attack. He realized just how far away from reality he was and how helpless a person is in the back of a cave like that. On the way back through Agony Alley I had several realizations:

1. What the hell was I thinking!?
This was not fun. Why was I doing this? I realized that the only reason I went to the back was to say that I've been there. That's stupid. Caving should be enjoyable at some level. You should find some pleasure from your sport. Caving can be challenging and strenuous, but it should still be fun. No matter how tired I've been in the past, I still enjoyed being underground. Not this time. All I wanted to do was get OUT. My knees were sore to the touch and I had 4 hours of crawling to look forward to. I hated every minute of this trip. Warrens sucks.

2. Warren is not a cave.
I don't consider Warren a cave anymore. It is merely a collection of interconnected voids in the earth. That might sound like a cave, but it's not. It's just a bunch of random small spaces in the earth that happen to be joined together. I came to this enlightened discovery in a 14" high Hawthorn crawlway. Much of Warren lies at the clay/limestone boundary. I thought to myself, "I'm not in limestone anymore, I'm in a clay passage. This is not a cave, this is a void." Caves are supposed to be made out of rock. Warrens sucks.

3. Warrens sucks.

(1) I'm not having fun, (2) I'm not really in a cave, and (3) it's a sucky experience, therefore I have forever sworn off trips to Warrens. I shall no longer accompany any of you to this alleged cave. Thanks, but don't ask.