WVGES

I visited the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey (WVGES) at Mont Chateau today. I picked up an electronic copy of the 1923 Geological Survey of Tucker County, which consists of a PDF scan of the survey's text (550 pages, unfortunately scanned as images so you're not able to search it), and scans of the geologic and topographic maps (scanned 400dpi and broken up into two giant .tif files each). They actually still have some dusty, mildewed original paper copies of Tucker County, but it's one of the last ones left. They told me that someone is currently converting W.E. Davies Caverns of West Virginia to electronic format, and of all their publications, that book has been their Freebird.



Tiny detail view of the 1921 Tucker County geological map by the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey

Edit - Doug McCarty points out that the geological maps are available from the WV GIS Tech Center and from the PSC Grotto. They're compressed as MrSID files, a proprietary format that I can't view, but you probably can. I don't know of any other source for the text of the survey except from the CD that I purchased.

[trip] Tucker Co. Mar. 25, 2006

Brian Masney, Doug McCarty and I surveyed in the back of M*R cave this Saturday. We were in cave by 10am, and took probably close to 2 hours to get back to the end of the survey. We surveyed past the farthest point I'd previously been back in, past the end of the 1955 survey, and stayed close to the floor for longer straight shots rather than high and dry. The cave amazingly opened up into tall, 4' wide passage for probably 175' - a big relief after spending most of the day on our bellies in the water. We surveyed 420' of passage, then conveniently hit some low passage that inspired us to call it a day. Doug booked it out and had already changed clothes by the time Brian and I made it out of the cave around 9pm!



Doug McCarty sketching, photo by Brian Masney

Alternate trip report: Doug McCarty (includes excellent working lineplot of M*R)

Rainy Vertical Practice

The weather has been beautiful the last 4 days, but this morning it rained and rained. Naturally, we decided that it'd be a great day for vertical practice. Some fellow crazies met up at 9am in Fairmont and went to some great property near Valley Falls.

Doug McCarty placed a couple bolts and rigged a rebelay and a redirect. We spent 3 or 4 hours practicing in the rain. I definitely didn't perfect the technique, but I know enough now to practice on my own.