The Massachusetts Caver - Boston Grotto

Vol. XXXI No. 4 July — August 2012
Piercy’s Mill entrance, photo by Jeff Moore. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ for conditions of use.
On Tuesday, Rich and John and I did a self-guided tour
of Piercy’s Mill Cave, owned by a very caver-friendly
family on conservation land. We followed the stream
flowing out of the cave upstream into the cave and soon
found the way blocked by nasty breakdown, but retracing
our steps, found a side passage containing some nice formations
and a room full of huge rimstone dams. At one
point I saw a red candy wrapper and asked John, who
was closer to it, if he could grab it. This turned out to be
a crystal skull (actually a votive candle holder) hidden by
the NSS Convention. The idea was that the Grotto or
group that found all 12 skulls would reunite them with
the 13th on the last evening of the convention. winning
something or other, probably related to beer, thereby
averting the end of the world on December 31st 2012, the
supposed end of the Mayan calendar [hence the name of
the convention, MayaCon].
I’ll cut to the chase. The beer drinking and caving went
on until the banquet on Friday evening. The temperature
Breakdown blocks in Piercy’s Mill, photo by Michael Chu.
on Friday reached the high 90s, and most of us were not
very comfortable sitting in the banquet building across
from the camping area while the air conditioning system
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