Just missed ya, Skeezix. I arrived "on the scene" in 1984 through 1988, whilst carving out a degree in civil engineering at Va Tech (then VPI & SU). I had made a couple of n00bie forays to Seneca in 1979-1980, before I knew WTF I was doing on the end of a rope. Damn near got myself killed both times. N00b!!!1  If you had met me back on my first trip to Seneca, you would have killed me too, no doubt.  
  
I remember camping (perchance illegally??) along Roy Gap Road on the rocks side of the North Fork river back then, near the spring over by the south pillar, where the trail to the South Peak East Face cuts through. And I remember the old swinging bridge, too. That was in 1979-1980. 
  
It probably got swept all the way to the Chesapeake Bay by the flood in late 1985. The following spring, me and my buds shifted our sights to the New River Gorge near Fayetteville, WV for the next several years. I never made it back to Seneca, as I graduated in 1988 and moved out here. 
  
I still have one of the old business cards from the Gendarme in my rolodex at work. God, how I miss Seneca Rocks. As you opined above, "It has, indeed, been that long." :snif: