[trip] New Years Day Cave Survey

Aaron Bird, Brian Masney, Jason Thomas, and myself (Dave Riggs) made another trip back into New Years Day Cave this weekend (June 10). We first surveyed from the bedrock-on-bedrock crawl, through the Whack-A-Mole™ Way, to the last dig. We then broke up into two teams, and together surveyed through Jason's wormhole, past the dome, past the low/wide stuff, and into the crumbly canyon passage that we last turned around in.

We were in cave about 9 hours and surveyed about 1010', which brings New Years Day Cave to a whopping 2499' length - now the longest cave in Monongalia County (topping Maiden Run Cave #1 at 1800')!


Amazingly, we do this for fun.


The line plot shows NYDC heading directly for the end of Druid Cave, with about 400' straight-line distance between their surveys. We turned around in canyon passage that requires a hammer to continue forward, and the Druid wind is still very strong in this far end of the cave.

Photo by Brian Masney