WEBVTT 00:00:00.400 --> 00:00:02.013 February, in north Georgia. 00:00:02.813 --> 00:00:10.636 Deep inside a cave, two men hang from two ropes, about forty feet above the floor of a pit. They hang inside a waterfall. 00:00:11.436 --> 00:00:13.389 They are dressed in shorts and T-shirts. 00:00:14.189 --> 00:00:21.258 At the top of the drop, three friends shout down into the roar of the water. For a few minutes, the two voices shout back. 00:00:22.058 --> 00:00:23.207 Then one of them goes quiet. 00:00:25.007 --> 00:00:35.421 This is Caving Stories: true stories of cave rescue and survival. Today, Ellison's Cave, and the Warm-Up Pit. This story ends in two deaths. 00:00:37.221 --> 00:00:43.101 Ellison's Cave is on Pigeon Mountain, in Walker County, Georgia, near the town of LaFayette. 00:00:43.901 --> 00:00:54.971 On Saturday, the twelfth of February, twenty eleven, ten students from the University of Florida went in. They were a group from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Five men, and five women. 00:00:55.771 --> 00:01:01.581 None of them had any experience of vertical caving: going down a shaft on a rope, and climbing back up it. 00:01:02.381 --> 00:01:09.463 Outside, the temperature that day was somewhere in the thirties and forties, Fahrenheit. They were dressed in shorts and T-shirts. 00:01:10.263 --> 00:01:17.503 About a thousand feet from the entrance, the floor of the cave drops away into a vertical shaft. It is called the Warm-Up Pit. 00:01:18.303 --> 00:01:26.159 Most accounts give its depth as a hundred and twenty-five feet. The accident report of the National Speleological Society gives a hundred and twenty. 00:01:26.959 --> 00:01:34.131 Water falls into the pit. There is a usual place to rig a rope there, out of the water. And there is the waterfall. 00:01:35.931 --> 00:01:39.165 During the trip, one of the students' backpacks fell into the pit. 00:01:39.965 --> 00:01:44.030 One of the men decided to go down and get it. His name was Grant Lockenbach. 00:01:44.830 --> 00:01:55.965 The version of this story that circulates online says his friends warned him, and that he told them he'd be fine. Those words are not in the accident report. What the report does record is how he went down. 00:01:56.765 --> 00:02:01.229 He rigged his rope directly in the waterfall, instead of at the usual dry spot. 00:02:02.029 --> 00:02:17.339 His harness was a seat harness, tied by hand. To control his descent, he used a climbing belay device, the kind called an A T C. For climbing back up, he had two rope ascenders: one clipped to his harness, and a second one with no sling on it. 00:02:18.139 --> 00:02:21.960 He had no helmet. No light. No gloves. 00:02:22.760 --> 00:02:24.630 And he went down, into the water. 00:02:26.430 --> 00:02:27.593 He did not reach the bottom. 00:02:28.393 --> 00:02:36.411 About forty feet above the floor of the pit, he stopped, on the rope, in the falling water. He could not get down, and he could not get back up. 00:02:37.211 --> 00:02:43.870 The report does not say exactly what went wrong. It files the whole accident under three words: difficulty on rope. 00:02:44.670 --> 00:02:58.100 The online version says he stopped halfway, after a loud noise from his harness. The noise is not in the record. The position is. Forty feet from the floor of a pit about a hundred and twenty feet deep. About two thirds of the way down. 00:02:58.900 --> 00:03:04.789 At the top, his friends could not hear him clearly over the waterfall. But they knew he was calling for help. 00:03:06.589 --> 00:03:15.553 The group split. Five of them left the cave to get help. Three of the women stayed at the top of the pit, with one more of the men. His name was Michael Pirie. 00:03:16.353 --> 00:03:17.582 Then Michael went down too. 00:03:18.382 --> 00:03:21.180 He did not go down Grant's rope. He rigged a second one. 00:03:21.980 --> 00:03:35.264 His gear, as the report lists it: a sewn harness. The same kind of belay device. No ascenders at all. His helmet was hanging loose, with the chin strap undone. No gloves. No light. 00:03:36.064 --> 00:03:50.051 The online version says he reached Grant, and found him already slow and confused from the cold. The record does not say whether he reached him. It says where the two of them were found. Hanging from one of the lines, in the spray of the waterfall. 00:03:51.851 --> 00:03:58.605 The five who went for help had to get out of the cave first. The online version says they made it back to their car, and to their phones. 00:03:59.405 --> 00:04:03.657 At two nineteen in the afternoon, Walker County Emergency Services took the call. 00:04:04.457 --> 00:04:14.511 Back at the pit, the two men on the ropes and the three women at the top kept calling to each other. According to the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, they stayed in contact for several minutes. 00:04:15.311 --> 00:04:20.248 Then, one after the other, the two voices went silent. Grant's first. 00:04:21.048 --> 00:04:25.382 By the time help came, the women at the top had not heard either of them in a long time. 00:04:27.182 --> 00:04:33.998 About an hour after the call, three rescuers were climbing Pigeon Mountain. Anmar Mirza, Tim White, and Bill Putnam. 00:04:34.798 --> 00:04:42.061 The trail up to the cave is about a mile long, and it climbs eight hundred and fifty feet. They covered it in half an hour, and went in. 00:04:42.861 --> 00:04:51.855 At the Warm-Up Pit, Mirza rigged a rope outside the waterfall, and went down, until he was level with the two men. About forty feet above the floor. 00:04:52.655 --> 00:04:53.962 He could not swing across to them. 00:04:54.762 --> 00:04:58.882 He called out to them. Several times. There was no answer. 00:04:59.682 --> 00:05:08.340 Tim White went down inside the waterfall, to clip them onto the descent rope. They were lowered to the floor of the pit, and an E M T examined them. 00:05:09.140 --> 00:05:09.801 Both were dead. 00:05:10.601 --> 00:05:15.582 The rescuers rigged a four-to-one pulley system, and hauled them up the pit, one at a time. 00:05:16.382 --> 00:05:19.058 By eight thirty that night, both were out of the cave. 00:05:20.858 --> 00:05:32.829 Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson gave the cause as hypothermia. The bodies were taken to Atlanta for autopsy. The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission names two causes: harness hang syndrome, and hypothermia. 00:05:33.629 --> 00:05:36.173 Their names were Grant Lockenbach, and Michael Pirie. 00:05:36.973 --> 00:05:45.738 On the twenty-fifth of June, twenty thirteen, the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission announced a Carnegie Medal for Michael Wayne Pirie, awarded after his death. 00:05:46.538 --> 00:06:09.744 This story also circulates online as a short video. It stops at three thirty in the afternoon, when the rescuers arrive. It gets two things wrong. Michael did not go down the same rope as Grant: he rigged his own. And he went down after the group had split, not before. It also adds two things that are not in the report: the noise from the harness, and thirty minutes before the voices went silent. 00:06:10.544 --> 00:06:18.701 Everything in this episode comes from the report, the Carnegie Commission, and the press from that week. And there are two more details in the report. 00:06:20.501 --> 00:06:21.877 Neither man had a light on him. 00:06:22.677 --> 00:06:29.931 But a headlamp was found on a ledge, next to where they hung. And a small Maglite flashlight was found at the bottom of the pit. 00:06:30.731 --> 00:06:31.520 Both were still on. 00:06:34.520 --> 00:06:44.288 The sources for this episode are in the show notes. This was Caving Stories. If this one stayed with you, follow the show in your podcast app, so the next case comes to you.