Every year the National Speleological Society hosts a photography competition during their annual convention. For cavers it is kind of a big deal. The awards committee produces a slideshow of the submitted photos and at the end the winners are announced. The presentation is one of the events of the week. To be awarded Best-In-Show at the NSS Photo Salon is a fairly high honor in our small world.

Best-In-Show was an honor I had received once before when I sat down at my computer with a cup of tea in the summer of 2020. COVID was raging across the United States and the NSS had taken the unprecedented step of cancelling Convention and most of the shows and talks were being hosted virtually. A line of spectacular photos passed by as usual before the Best in Show was awarded. To my utter astonishment a photo of mine taken with one simple light in a muddy shit hole of a cave only ten minutes from my house in Pennsylvania beat out a couple hundred photos from exotic locations like Borneo and Italy.

The story behind It began a half a year earlier in the middle of winter. Having recently taken up residence in the Laurel Highlands I was beginning a systematic process of resurveying and mapping the caves and karst of Fayette County. One such target was at the headwaters of Grable Creek – one of the major infeeders of the Youghiogheny River. The headwaters began at a small spring behind which a small cave was dug open and reported in the 1960s. Pennsylvania caving legend Frank Mielcarek named the cave after the stream: Grable Cave. From the old map, Grable was a typical Wymps Gap Limestone cave: small, obnoxious, and short. With the old notes and descriptions in hand we set out to relocate the cave in the late-winter of 2019.

Finding the sink at the base of the old quarry wall was easy enough – it was figuring out where to dig that quickly became a problem. The quarry wall was very active and every ten years or so the cave needed to be reopened by digging collapse material out. Ron Morrison accompanied me, a veteran of past trips to this cave, and stood on the slope of rubble and dirt one rainy December weekend.

“It’s somewhere right here.” He said, pointing at his feet.

“Or maybe there.” He pointed a few feet to the left.

The water issued from the end of the rubble pile fifteen yards downhill. It was obvious that several feet of cobble and fill existed between the modern surface and wherever the cave was. The entrance itself was reported to be very small – barely 1ft in diameter. We would be digging through soil and large boulders looking for a very small entrance… seemed like a fun idea. At least we knew the cave was there.

The digging began in earnest around New Years. Almost immediately we hit rocks and boulders that needed split or busted to be moved. A couple needed winched out with webbing and pulleys. Routinely we were digging in snow storms and our fingers would go numb while working in partially frozen muddy sludge.

By February the dig was down 8 feet in a hole 5 feet in diameter almost all of which was large cobbles and rocks partially cemented in soil. After removing the spoil pile against the headwall we saw a faint joint line running down through the limestone. Joint lines are the initiation point for cave passages and that became our target to follow. Some days we had 6 or 7 people working on the dig and rotating between raising and moving the rocks. Each time a rock was removed we wondered: is this it?

The dig was on my way home from work and I would stop by, in my work clothes, and move more rock and soil. One day snowy day in February while digging by myself the muddy slope slumped downward and then imploded inwards exposing a small black hole not much more than 6 inches in diameter. As I looked at it, another glob of mud fell and briefly blocked the hole before getting sucked inwards! I stuck my face down to the hole; I could feel the air howling around my face and from the darkness came another unexpected sensation: the reverberating roar of white water. Grable Cave just upped the ante.

It took just over two months after the cave was opened to make it passable. At the same time the world went to shit. Looking to escape the increasing horrors of COVID, Hope Brooks, Cindy Barton, and I began the survey of Grable Cave. The entrance was obnoxious. A 2ft by 2ft pit dropped 3ft to a hard 90 degree bend into a slot only 11 inches wide and 16 inches tall which opened into the cave. The entire descent was slimed with mud oozing from the still fresh spoils pile. Absolutely nothing about it was enjoyable.

Just inside the entrance the cave opened into a small room big enough to vaguely sit up in. Ahead was a narrow canyon maybe a foot wide and 4 feet tall with ledges coated in flowstone and soda straws. Being partially buried for most of it’s life had protected this cave from much of vandalism received by other caves in the area.

We laid on our sides in the running water and surveyed the canyon. Cold air howled in from the entrance. This was a sporty and cold cave. After twenty feet we surveyed into the first place to stand up: a small dome room only ten feet tall. Flowstone cascaded down from the top. The dome formed along the same joint the cave was following. In the ceiling of the dome was a shale layer which stopped upward progression of the cave.

We surveyed onwards. The passage was never much more than three feet tall and we were getting intimate with the cave stream because of that. The water immersion combined with the howling wind the cave was brutally cold. One particularly obnoxious flowstone formation was named The Bitch. To pass around The Bitch one needed to lay on their side in a few inches of water and squeeze around a haystack formation that mostly blocked the passage.

There was one respite from the stream crawling about 200ft into the cave. For about 50ft the passage was a whopping 4ft by 4ft. I could sit sideways! About 300 feet from the entrance the passage split in two directions. Both moved significant air and the one with the stream coming from it had the roar of a waterfall. The stream passage was grim. 10 inches tall with 4 inches of icy water… but the air and roaring water was too great and the helmets came off and forward we went. I had to shove a gravel berm aside to fully fit, but after twenty more feet we surveyed to the known end of the cave: a “large” dome room 15ft tall and 15ft in diameter. The stream issued from a very small hole in the wall and dropped 6ft – the source of the waterfall. An upper passage continued, high and dry, but loaded with soda straws. In between the levels was the shale layer which had capped the passage. Above us was the rest of the Wymps Gap Limestone but these leads would have to wait; I no longer had feeling in my hands.

With leads going in two directions and intense wind the cave was more interesting than expected and things happened rapidly after this. The airflow signified that the cave had potential to be very deep. The Wymps Gap Limestone was descending the eastern flank of Chestnut Ridge. Water falling and collecting at the top of the mountain was entering the limestone and emerging at the entrance of Grable Cave five hundred feet below. The limestones of Chestnut Ridge are not known for their extensive outcropping. Repeated searching for the insurgence of Grable Cave yielded nothing. It’s entirely possible the water just enters from the sandstone cap above. But, the air. The air was magnificent. No other cave on Chestnut Ridge moved this kind of air. I mean, this was the kind of air that blew out carbide lamps and made ripples on ponded water. Whatever was beyond the dome probably continued a very long way.

The problem facing us at Grable Cave was that the Wymps Gap Limestone was bisected by an intermittent shale layer. Shales are typically resistant to dissolution and stop the continued development of cave passage. Grable Cave existed under the shale layer (which was visible in the headwall above the entrance) and we were currently trying to get up and above that shale layer. The dome at the end of the cave broke up through the shale layer but the passages beyond looked to be a braided mess of low, miserable, shaley, water crawls.

Trips went into the cave every other day for the next three weeks with teams of two people aggressively working the too-tight leads at the back of the cave. The cave split in two directions where a major cross-joint interrupted the passage. One group worked on a narrow-uptrending crack that moved air that we named Antibody Avenue and while another group worked on the stream leads which we named Coronavirus Canyon. The Antibody Avenue dig was straight misery. It was the slimiest, gloppiest, and muddiest mix of gravel you can imagine. It moved like a massive slurry out of the dig and invaded every part of your body. Your hair would become impregnated with the slime and pebbles would get tangled. The mud would soak through wetsuits and stain your skin. Our skin was never as soft as when we got the weekly exfoliation treatment from Gable Cave.

Coronavirus Canyon was comparatively pleasant. I laid on my side with a 4 pound sledge hammer inching my way forward as I cleared ledges of shale. The shale was sharp, it ripped my wetsuit and I would come out of the cave covered in bloody bruises.

After 50 some odd feet of gnarly passage the two levels rejoined and we were able to stand up again. The passages almost immediately devolved past here with the water and air staying low and a dry body sized tube in the upper level. We laid in the lower passage and kept hammering. The stream was coming from a too low bedding plan off to one side but a mostly open shaley passage continued ahead, air pouring out in our faces. We had spent nearly two hours just working our way through the previous 50ft and so we left the remaining lead. We exited that trip at 11:45 on a Tuesday night.

I had seen an image when I looked into the body sized tube the day before so this time I brought my photo gear in with me. Being the smallest person on the trip I was going to be the one to push it. I set up the camera and flash before I went in. I could see a small room about twenty feet ahead so I took a sledgehammer with me to work my way to it. After a half hour of effort I got to the room.. Unfortunately the passage ended in a mud plug. Our way forward was relegated back to the miserable shale passage below. The only way forward would be by slowly working through the shale walls in the lower level.

The room was barely the size of the back of street car but I was able to contort my body around to get back out. On the way back Cindy Barton tripped the shutter for me. She took several frames and it was third of these frames which became the famous It photo.

On our way back we found that the Antibody crew finally got through into open passage. They climbed straight up 7 feet into a small dome which went back into nebulous cobble. It seemed the air may be circulating through from Coronavirus Canyon. If that's the case then the only way forward is through the shaley lower stream in Coronavirus Canyon. That was a dig effort none of us had the energy for.

The cave is sporty and stout for being only 340 feet long. We had nearly doubled the old length of the cave, but it took us five trips and 12 hours of work to do so. Spread through this 340ft though are a myriad of cave decorations including one decent sized translucent drapery.

The It name for the photo came about one day when I noted that the thumbnail vaguely made me look like a monochromatic version of Stephen King's Pennywise the Clown character - alias: It. Everyone who heard that said they could never unsee it, so the name stuck. For me that just lended to the memory of the project. I would walk into work on Wednesday with dried mud in my nose and a slight limp because the cave just kicked my ass the night before. When I see that photo I remember the absurdity of the Grable Project. Most people who see the photo have a visceral reaction to it. The abject misery of and drama of the image has lead more than one viewer to proclaim that its the "best photo I've ever seen that shows what real caving is like". Apparently it was so good that the Photo Salon judges gave it Best-In-Show despite breaking one of the cardinal rules of caving: always wear a helmet.