WV Speleo Log

[trip] Shovel Eater UpDog Survey

2009-01-31T23:59:00.007-05:00

This past weekend was my return to Germany Valley after a 6 month hiatus; while our lead quickly died and we surveyed just under 90 feet, I was treated to a relaxing tour of several "new" parts of Shovel Eater Cave. Brian Masney and I drove from Morgantown on Saturday morning and met up with John Harman at his house, then grabbed a late breakfast - or rather, early lunch - at The Gateway. We stopped by the landowners' farm for permission to head in to Shovel Eater as well as to do some "landowner relations"; Brian presented them with a stack of glossy cave porn: some fantastic SEC photos that really impressed the family, the first that they'd seen of their cave.

After a lazy start, we managed to get underground at somewhere around 12:45. The trip in was uneventful; we stopped to snap a few photos for Brian and then dropped down the Ohio Bypass, which had only a trickle of water. At the HHA junction, we turned right and continued up the main passage until we ducked under a relict-flowstone shelf and rappelled a small pit with crumbly mud walls and some water raining down from the ceiling. From this point, the passages became a series of sinuous, tall, narrow canyon, where we continued to travel upstream and climbed up several of John Harman's bolt climbs to higher and higher levels, reaching the EFN survey, which had stopped at a 20 foot pit in the floor and a bolt traverse around the perimeter...

Dave rappelling the Y-hang above the Ohio Bypass in Shovel Eater Cave. Photo by Brian Masney.

We finally began to survey, and as Brian snapped open a cyalume stick to use as a station light, it exploded, spraying his face and eyes with glow-in-the-dark chemical goo. Thankfully, he was able to stay calm and collected while standing blind, eyes burning at the top of a 20 foot pit; I did my best to flush his eyes out with an entire liter of water, and being the trooper that he is, he was then ready to shoot instruments. It was then that we noticed that this area of the cave has a jaw-dropping assortment of updog on the floors, walls, and ceiling, and it was obvious to us that this should be called the UDS, or "UpDog" Survey. Never before have I seen so much updog in one place!

Our survey shot across and over the pit, to a mud-and-breakdown slope which fed into a doubled-back canyon passage beyond. John had previously placed several bolts, and he rigged a traverse line to safely cross. The passage headed up to a wider canyon spot at mid-level, and up another 15 feet to the original phreatic tube in the ceiling. Sadly, this tube ended within 5 stations, choked with cemented mud and sandstone cobbles in the upstream direction, sealed by flowstone downstream. Unseen holes in the floor dropped rocks and mud balls down to the go-nowhere EFN canyon below. Without fanfare, our lead died, so we packed up and headed out. John derigged the traverse line and the two bolt climbs on the way back to HHA, which should be a big disappointment to all the "twenty footer" hounds.

The "sunnyside up egg"; a formation along the EFN canyon. Photo by Brian Masney.

After grabbing a bite to eat, we set off for some sight-seeing. We continued up the HHA trunk, ducked underneath the WVU bolt climb, and visited the Echo Dome(?) at end of the passage. I hit this beautiful dome with my disto and measured 101.4 feet to the top. We backtracked to see an area called Pristine, where John spied a potential bolt climb that he plans to do ASAP. Eventually, we made our way down to HHH so that Brian could meditate at the foot of the omnipresent "Buddha" in the Acoustic Persistence Chamber.

Eventually, we decided that we'd poked around long enough, and headed out of the cave. Again, the trip was uneventful, and we were on the surface by 1:30AM, with around 12.5 hours underground.

[trip] NCRC Vertical Self-Rescue / Dynamited Cave

2008-09-20T23:59:00.000-04:00

Many thanks to both John Punches and Aaron Stavens for teaching the excellent NCRC Vertical Self-Rescue course at Trout Lake this past weekend.

When the class met on Saturday morning, there were several ropes rigged high into tall doug-firs, which we used to practice the basics of changeovers, passing knots, and downclimbing. Before long, we were practicing climbing counterbalances, diminishing-loop counterbalances, assisted climbing, basic haul systems, and even single-rope pick-offs. We then headed to some beautiful nearby cliffs to put our new skills into practice.

Practicing vertical skills in the trees around camp.

Ralph rappels some nearby cliffs to investigate rigging options.

Finally, on Sunday, we headed into Dynamited Cave and split into two groups, tackling real-world rigging and implementing various counterbalance and haul systems in the less-than-ideal situations that are found underground. Though we were 15 people coming into the course with widely varying experience and skills, every person walked away from the weekend as a more competent vertical caver, and I believe everyone had a great time in the process.

Ralph assists an "injured" Albert up a pit.

JC guides Sarah while she is hauled from above.

See also: photos from NCRC Vertical Self-Rescue course

[trip] Labor Day Dynamited Cave

2008-09-01T23:59:00.000-04:00

This Labor Day weekend I joined the Cascade Grotto and members of the Oregon Grotto and the Willamette Valley Grotto for some camping and caving near the small town of Trout Lake, at the base of Mount Adams.

On Sunday, four of us - Hester and Albert Mallonee, Ethan Scarl, and myself - visited Dynamited Cave, a multi-level vertical lava tube. We rappelled a 15' nuisance drop, a 40' lava falls, and an amazing 65' blind pit. I shot the following poor-quality video during the trip and edited it in a fit of insomnia - you've been warned.

Ethan ascends out of the blind pit in Dynamited Cave.

See also my Dynamited Cave photos.

[trip] Cry Wolf Cave

2008-08-31T23:59:00.008-04:00

On the first day of the Cascade Grotto's Labor Day weekend trip to the Trout Lake area, Claude Koch led a trip into Cry Wolf Cave. Cry Wolf is a fantastic lava tube that Claude and company dug into last year, and it features some large passage and formations, including a mystery gelatinous thing called The Blob. The cave is on private property and is gated.

Claude Koch dropping into the gated entrance pipe of Cry Wolf Cave.

A shelf covered in lavacicles in Cry Wolf Cave.

Rosey, Chris, Albert, and Hester in typical walking passage found in Cry Wolf Cave.

See also: more photos of Cry Wolf Cave

[trip] Trout Lake Lava Tube Digging and Caving

2008-08-16T23:59:00.009-04:00

I went digging this weekend with Claude Koch, the "mad lava tube digger" from the Willamette Valley Grotto. Over the last two or three years, Claude has worked his way into dozens of small new lava tubes and a few really amazing ones. He focuses on the Trout Lake area, a lava flow along the flanks of Mount Adams in WA.

We first dug a bit on Dig 69 Cave - yes, he's got so many that he's resorted to numbering them! We spent around an hour digging on a dirt/silt fill that completely plugs the 3-foot-high tube, and then decided to move onto something more productive. We quickly made a stop at Ottoman Cave to check out a dig that was too tight even for me, and moved on again.

Doug Marchant and Claude Koch outside the entrance of Ottoman Cave.

We then headed over to Dopey Cave, which had about 75 foot of known passage, blocked by breakdown. I headed in and was able to pry a frightening loose block from the ceiling crust and move it out of the way, which enabled Claude and I to scoop around 400 feet of virgin lava tube between 6 and 3 feet tall, with an amazing lava intrusion in the floor.

The entrance to Dopey Cave, which we easily extended by 400 feet.

After a chilly night of camping, Ken Stickney of the Oregon Grotto took me on a tourist trip into Resurrection Cave. This cave features some extremely impressive lava formations, and was discovered only after the dense forest had been cleared.

Ken Stickney poses with the "old lady" in Resurrection Cave (I've forgotten its real name).

Formation Alley in Resurrection Cave features a dense collection of lavacicles.

A lava rose (R) next to an oddly-shaped lavacicle (L) in Resurrection Cave.

See also: more photos from Resurrection Cave

[meta] Pacific Northwest Caving

2008-08-15T23:59:00.001-04:00

Despite this being the "WV Speleo-Log", I'm spending the Autumn in Portland Oregon, and will be posting trip reports from the Pacific Northwest for the next few months. I hope that all my faithful readers enjoy a break from the norm...

[trip] Elk River Cave-a-palooza

2008-07-26T23:59:00.001-04:00

On Friday, Llew and Justin Williams, and Lorin Long went into the Historic Entrance of Simmons-Mingo Cave, down to the main stream passage, and explored upstream. Dave Riggs and Nikki Green rappelled the sink entrance of Falling Spring Cave but found the cave itself to perhaps be silted shut; they then visited Justright and bounced Just Cave. On Saturday, Llew, Justin, Dave, Nikki, Johnny Williams, and John Powell went into the Elk River Entrance of My Cave, rappelled the 80 foot Outhouse Drop, and found the cave stream low and the waterfall non-existent, then did a through-trip out the Dry Branch Entrance. Always a glutton for punishment, Dave bounced Outhouse Drop again, and reports that climbing the mud slope at the top is a pain in the butt. That night, Johnny, John, Dave, and Nikki went into the Zarathustra Entrance of Simmons-Mingo, which has a newly-opened sinkhole slope entrance, went back to see the lake, then traveled down and followed Canadian River's trunk passage to the bottom of Oildrum Falls, where a new rope appears to have been rigged, before heading back out Zarathustra.

[trip] Return to SEC's Rushin' Rift

2008-07-12T23:59:00.003-04:00

This GVKS weekend (2008-07-12), Nikki Green and I did a two-person "squeezefreak" trip to survey the upper passage at the top of the Rushin' Rift in Shovel Eater Cave. We were one of the last teams in cave, at around 10AM, and hit the tail-end of rope traffic in the entrance series of the cave. At HHA15 we picked up a 9mm rope, left a note for Mark Minton and Yvonne Droms (as a safety precaution for our two-person survey), and headed for the nearby Rushin' Rift. We found Bob Zimmerman's team before we found the Rift, and they stuck Nikki down two tiny leads which didn't go. They claimed to have checked out the Rift on the way in, and found it to be silent; we confirmed this ourselves, no sign at all of "The Devil's machinery", so apparently the water within this chasm is intermittent.

I rigged the 50 foot drop, though we did not rappel into it - rather we used the Y-hang as aid to go straight back into the upper rift passage. We shuffled back to the unlabeled calcite chunk cairn (CN1) which marked the end of the previous survey, located just before this passage goes from "small" to "tiny". Before we could mark our first station, the hungry rift ate our only roll of flagging tape; thus, all stations on this survey are marked with blue sharpie on rock.

This upper rift passage is capped by a fault plane, dipping about 20 degrees in a generally East direction, which frequently appears as a smoothly-sculpted calcite vein in the ceiling, and sometimes as oddly-shaped phreatic proto-passage formed within once-fractured rock. Freshly-broken crystal gives off a sulfur smell. An extremely narrow canyon is incised into the floor, usually too narrow to eat a body, but almost always the perfect size to eat the conveniently-placed foot or survey tape. At several places - notably near our first station and past our last station - rocks dropped down this canyon can be heard to tumble down quite an impressive distance, what I would estimate to be at or beyond 50 feet, though "tumbling rock" can be deceiving. At one point, we clearly heard hammering, which we later discovered to be the work of Bob Z's team. Airflow was never more than "slight", if that. Paleoflow direction is likely in the direction of our survey - away from the cave's main passage, and generally Northeast - at least in the upper rift.

Representative sketch of the upper Rushin' Rift - tiny passage with a nasty canyon incised into the floor.

We surveyed the entirety of what I "scooped" on the previous trip. I had estimated this to be on the order of 200 feet, but the miserable nature of the passage caused me to overestimate by 2X. At the end, the passage turns down the dip of the fault plane, losing around 15 feet of elevation, where the still-hungry rift devoured Nikki's digital camera (sorry, Nikki!). Finally a "room" is reached, which is comfortable enough for two people to stand and eat lunch; rocks dropped down here tumble down what sounds like a terrifyingly-deep chasm, an experiment that I repeated many times in the name of science. Beyond, the passage becomes too tight to follow, but the deep canyon may be accessible just beyond our last station, as the canyon widens in a sharp meander. Upon finishing, we de-rigged the unused rope and returned it to HHA15.

We surveyed 115 feet in a painful 10 shots. I do not consider the upper Rift lead to be killed yet. Rather, I believe that the only way to further explore the Rushin' Rift is to ignore the too-too-tight lower rift passage, and to rig rope from the top passage and enter the rift from one of these upper access points.

[trip] Spelunking in the Stinks of Gandy

2008-06-22T23:59:00.003-04:00

On my way home from Kentucky, I stayed the night near Elkins to do my first ever trip into WV's famous Sinks of Gandy on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, nobody showed up at the designated meeting time except Bob Griffith, so he and I did a two-man trip to the Sinks.

We piled into my car and headed in the general direction of where the cave should be... it turns out that Bob had only visited the Sinks once, and it was over ten years ago. Luckily we found it without issue, geared up in shorts and t-shirts (after all, how hard could the Sinks really be?), and walked down to the cave entrance.

The entrance is truly iconic, Gandy Creek is swallowed completely as it silently meanders its way right into the gaping hillside. The surrounding land is pure West Virginia; rolling hills of cow pasture as far as the eye can see. An overnight thunderstorm apparently rinsed the cow pasture clean, and the water entering the cave had pools of disappointingly-colored froth floating by to show for it. Yuck.

Dave Riggs standing in front of the Sinks of Gandy. Note the disgusting brown water! Photo by Bob Griffith.

The water was just over ankle-height on the way in, with sunlight illuminating the way for several tens of yards, and birds flying in and out, swooping and dive-bombing inside the sizable passage. We sludged through waist-deep, icy cold water, going in much further into the cave than I had expected, and I could already feel the chill of the cave. We took a sandy side route when the water nearly sumped, passing by stagnant, disgusting pools of water, and noting flood debris completely covering the walls and ceilings. The air was still, and the cave was full of thick fog, which even two StenLights had trouble cutting through.

We made our way back into the main stream passage, and the water started getting deeper and deeper... first waist deep, then chest deep, then dropping even deeper ahead. We checked a side lead with elephant tracks, which led to a dead end - obviously a commonly made mistake, judging by the trench in the floor from the traffic. We knew that we had to be near the exit, but couldn't see any light, and weren't about to wade out into nasty water over our heads. We looked around for the bypass to the exit, but didn't have any luck, and since we were both feeling quite chilled at this point, decided to head back the way we'd came in - defeated by a "novice" cave! When we made it back out into sunlight, there was a notable brown ring around my chest: the high water mark of the filthy Gandy Creek.

Looking out the entrance as Gandy Creek flows in. Photo by Bob Griffith.

Bob and I had a great time in the Sinks, and now that we've gotten a few hints on how to find the path to the exit, hope to go back when the water is warmer and cleaner to do the full trip. Afterward, we joined Alan Carpenter for the Mon Grotto adopt-a-highway in front of Bowden Cave.

[trip] Hero Hole Survey

2008-04-24T23:59:00.004-04:00

This Thursday evening, April 24, 2008, Brian Masney, Abby Hohn, and I headed into the Cheat Canyon to survey Hero Hole. This cave hasn't been visited since it was dug open on New Years Eve 2005/2006, and we expected the mined "sinkhole" entrance to have slumped closed. We arrived at the cave around 7PM with a full cache of digging and surveying gear. Abby headed down to the bank of the Cheat River to study, while Brian immediately jumped in and started hauling rocks out of the entrance. There was a strong, cool breeze blowing out, and there were plenty of loose rocks above the entrance in addition to a great deal of washed-in mud and rock. After roughly an hour, we had cleared the passage out and geared up to head underground.

You have never truly caved until you have caved in the Cheat Canyon. Re-digging into Hero Hole, upsidedown. Photo by Brian Masney.

After climbing down the dug entrance hole, you drag yourself under a shelf across a silted "beach" bellycrawl which "opens up" to a small 4-foot-high room. The cave stream seemed lower than I remember it, and looking downstream to where the stream follows an impassibly-small conduit, we saw Hero Hole's namesake, Hero Man, battered and beaten by the harsh cave environment, stripped practically naked and lying in the stream. Not wanting to wind up with a similar fate, Brian and I wasted no time in heading all the way upstream, so that we could survey from the back out. The main cave passage ends where the cave stream emerges from a channel which is too tight to follow; the ceiling height is no more than 3 feet, and the width certainly less than that. Given the cramped, wet, conditions, and the fact that we were doing a two-man survey, it was a slow operation. The canyon passage meanders a bit, and protrusions and shelves composed of patented Druid CrapRock™ poke out here and jab there.

By the time we were at the halfway point, Brian suddenly became extremely cold... his survey station was directly under a tiny conduit at ceiling level, no more than 6 or 8 inches wide, where the chilling wind blasts out. If there is any hope for Hero Hole, it is by following the air up into this "lead". Beyond this air duct was a truly miserable stream crawl, where the dipping ceiling forces your head progressively lower and lower. Luckily, in such a short cave, the halfway point means that you're almost finished! Before long, we were on the surface, soaked, slimed, and chilled from the cave's wind. We were underground for less than two hours, and managed to squeeze 100.5 feet out of Hero Hole! By midnight, we were on our way back out of the Canyon, satisfied with another great day of trying to piece together the Druid Cave System puzzle.

Hero Hole plan-view lineplot, with a surprising 100.5 feet of survey.

[trip] Briery Mountain Weekend

2008-04-13T23:59:00.012-04:00

This weekend I assisted John Chenger with relocating and exploring several caves in the Briery Mountain area of Preston County in order to look for bats. We met at noon on Saturday, April 12, in Kingwood. I loaded my gear into his truck, which was equipped with a GPS and laptop showing our live location on a topo map, and we headed off.

Our first stop was Briery Mountain Pit, which we easily found in a large sink on the side of the road. A culvert feeds water into the sink, which falls 25 feet and then sinks as a spraying waterfall into the cave's entrance. We rigged a cable ladder, but I found that I was able to free-climb the 10 foot deep entrance pit - a 2 foot wide vertical slot - without getting too wet. Once down in the 8 foot high entrance passage, you must dart back under the waterfall to continue; nothing like getting soaked on the way into a cave! The cave consists of a couple-hundred feet of walking and stooping passage, stream passage that zigs and zags across joints, with occasional dead-end side leads. The floor was extensively littered with broken glass, cans, plastic, and all sorts of washed-in debris. The walls and ceiling were covered in a thin layer of filth, the rock of questionable character, and there was silt and mud caked into every corner. The strata dips 10 to 15 degrees back into the hillside (under the road) and it's difficult to walk very far before something new drips onto your head. I eventually came to a 4 foot tall, 12 inch wide vertical slot where the stream disappeared into; a squeeze that I was warned about by veterans of the cave, and I decided at that point that I'd seen enough of Briery Mountain Pit. Bat count: zero.

That water was cold! Climbing down into the entrance of Briery Mountain Pit. Photo by John Chenger.

Unfortunately, John was feeling rather ill at this point, and with my cave gear entirely soaked, we decided to call it a day. He got some rest, and I headed back home to Morgantown, where I had just enough daylight left to dry out my cavesuit and do a bit of rock climbing. I received word in the morning that John felt much better, so we met in Bruceton Mills at noon on Sunday and set off for a second day of Preston County caving.

First up was Kelly Quarry Cave, a cave which literally stunk... Located in the walls of an old quarry, this cave appears to be formed in the Savage Dam member of the Greenbrier, a series of sandy limestones and red shales, and in the top of the Loyalhanna. We both entered the Kelly Quarry Crawl entrance, the right-most and highest entrance, which consisted of a body-sized crawl through a rather odd passage for the area: the walls are coated with a 2 inch thick crust of Aragonite, some of which has had popcorn deposited on the ends. Sadly, all the crystal is stained an unflattering mud-brown color. This passage continues as a small crawlway for around 75 feet until a junction is reached (with air), which was too small for even me to fit through. With considerable effort, I was able to turn myself around, and we both crawled back out to check out the other entrances. The main entrance and second entrance are stacked on top of each other. Flowstone is visible above them, and there are slickenslides on some of the exposed rock. The fractured limestone, probably unstable from quarrying, has collapsed these main entrances, and one cannot enter the "largest room" in the cave without crawling through some very sketchy-looking breakdown. We chose not to push our luck, and did not enter these collapsed entrances. Bat count: zero. Dead skunk count: two.

Aragonite crystal in Kelly Quarry Cave. Photo by John Chenger.

The collapsed main entrances of Kelly Quarry Cave. Photo by John Chenger.

As we were heading away from Kelly Quarry Cave and "ridge-driving" the area, we spotted what appeared to be a pit on the side of the road. Sure enough, it was a 6 foot diameter sink filled with karsted limestone chunks, with a roaring stream audible down below - John dubbed it the Roaring Rift as I climbed down 15 feet into tall and narrow virgin stream passage. After scooping around 250 feet of walking passage in cleanly-sculpted Loyalhanna limestone, the ceiling narrowed, and I decided to save the remainder for a future survey trip. This is surely an area in need of ridge-walking, and it was quite a treat to find virgin walking passage in this county - a personal treat for me because it was my 100th cave! As you would expect, this un-planned cave had the highest bat count of the weekend, eight pips.

Climbing down into the "roaring" stream passage below upon discovering Roaring Rift. Photo by John Chenger.

Just a short distance from this new cave, we spied an abandoned mine which wasn't marked on the topo map, which John called Roaring Run Mine. We decided that it probably wasn't limestone, but headed in to investigate. While we didn't find many bats (only two), we did find an unexpected resident: a quail or pheasant who didn't appreciate our headlamps pointed at her.

Roaring Run Mine, in obviously dipping strata. Photo by John Chenger.

Continuing on to the last cave on our list, we headed to the tiny town of Orr to find Orr Cave. We spent a great deal of time just trying to find some limestone, let alone the "shallow sink" that Garton describes. Eventually, on our way back to the truck, we finally located the entrance hidden in a small outcrop and covered with a few logs. I climbed down in and started crawling... on my side... in water... until the cave ended in a drippy dome. While this is an area that should be looked at (we saw a few very interesting springs on the way), Orr Cave is not one that I plan on visiting again. Bat count: zero.

Recording data at the entrance to Orr Cave. Photo by John Chenger.

After parting ways with John, I headed South for Thomas, where I met a group of cavers at the Purple Fiddle to hear Doug McCarty play some amazing music. The drive home was interesting, as the Spring weather turned back into Winter, and the roads were covered with snow and sleet. Overall, it was a fantastic weekend caving in a rarely-visited part of Preston County.

[trip] Shovel Eater Cave - Rushin' Rift

2008-03-08T23:59:00.002-05:00

After heading down to Germany Valley late Friday night, through some of the thickest fog I've ever driven in, finding the field house dark and quiet upon arriving at 1:30AM, and getting a good night's sleep in my hammock underneath a torrential downpour, I met up with a large group of GVKS folks at The Gateway at 8AM Saturday morning. I was put on Bob Alderson's team with John Harman and Cullen Hencke, and our goal was to investigate a fascinating lead off of HHA, which was dubbed the Rushin' Rift upon its discovery on October 27, 2007. Mark Minton described it as:

Under one wall the canyon dropped down a deep, narrow pit which we named Rushin' Rift. A strange humming sound could be heard in the distance, unlike anything we had heard in a cave before. Air? Water? The Devil's machinery?

We arrived at the SEC entrance around 10:15AM and headed into the entrance series. After the third rappel, we ducked down under the water to a drippy, muddy room containing the new "Buckeye Bypass" (as we decided to call it). A short, uncomfortable, diagonal rappel to a rebelay drops you down to a series of traverses in a passage that looked vaguely familiar to me... the bypass seemingly teleports one all the way down and past Harper Canyon - wow! We were to HHA in no time at all, and were staring down into a complex intersection of narrow canyon passages off to the side of the "main" passage. Sure enough, when everyone was quiet, we could hear "The Devil's machinery" from the deep slot.

John and Bob cleaned the rock surface and set three bolts; a single bolt at the top for a traverse line down under the "lip" of the canyon, with two bolts for a free-hanging "Y" rig. We later taped this drop at 49.1 feet from the upper bolt. The rappel down is tight, with shoulders against the wall for most of the way, and should not be done while wearing a pack (oops!).

The lower canyon has a flat floor, is seldomly wider than 24 inches, and doesn't offer many (er, any?) opportunities to stand up. It is dry, with no sign of even a past stream, and with highly abrasive popcorn lining the walls and obscuring paleo-flow evidence. Upstream goes only 10 feet to a formation-obscured hole in the floor which was just a couple feet deep. Downstream the canyon twists in very tight meanders and appears to loop back on itself; when Bob pushed downstream I could hear him closely from the upstream hole. With extreme effort, Bob pushed downstream and had much difficulty returning. I followed and tried to "shave" popcorn from some of the squeezes for him to get back through. I did not attempt to push as far as he did, but I would guess that neither of us pushed farther than 40 feet from the rope.

In the lower canyon, we could definitely hear "The Devil's machinery", which sounded distinctly like a waterfall. I personally didn't think that it sounded louder after pushing in the downstream direction, but others in the party stated that they did. Having no luck pushing this tight, lower canyon, we decided instead to investigate the upper levels of the canyon. While Bob and I taped the drop, John and Cullen headed up and scouted it out.

The upper canyon, which is reached by traversing down to the Y-hang and going behind it, consists of an oval-shaped phreatic tube with a narrow canyon incised in its floor. It is bounded from above by a low-angle fault or fracture, which has been filled in with a band of calcite crystal. This calcite band has been solutionally sculpted in places to reveal a beautiful, "organic"-looking, flowing crystal ceiling. The upper passage follows the strike of this fault plane. It is very dry, showing small bits of gypsum in places, and is more comfortable to move in than the lower passage, though it is still relatively small passage. We were still able to hear the sound of water, off far in the distance somewhere but didn't seem to be any closer to it.

While Bob, John, and Cullen surveyed out of the upper canyon (from a point where the ceiling became quite low, marked by a cairn of calcite crystal), which yielded only around 50 feet of easy survey, I pushed in the upstream(?) direction, which seemed to correspond to what appeared to be downstream in the lower canyon. Confused yet? I pushed forward through alternating low-and-tight to narrow-and-tight to just-plain-tight tube with canyon or just canyon without floor (no actual exposure however), for what was probably 250 feet. At times I felt faint airflow coming up from the lower canyon, but it was never "blowing", even though I was in relatively constricted passage. After thoroughly shredding my cave suit on the dry, rough passage, it seemed to head down dip of the fault plane, going downhill (though I still believe upstream direction) approximately 10 feet. At this point, I could not hear the others, nor could I hear the sound of water at all. The passage isn't suitable for large cavers, but it does continue. I set a cairn here and turned back in time to run lead tape (read: get in the way) of the survey team.

We took a quick tourist trip to see Hellhole Hall, the Acoustic Persistence Chamber, and peer through the window at The Rubicon (WOW!). We were all stumped as to the origin of the sandstone cobbles in this wide, flat passage, and felt a sense of déjà vu as if this part of SEC belonged in some other Germany Valley cave...

The trip out was uneventful, and much shorter than my previous trip to this area thanks to the Buckeye Bypass. Even using the buckets to catch the dripping water, we still got a bit damp on the Bypass climb due to the large amount of rain this weekend, and also on the redirect climb above it. We exited the cave at 8:25PM, after a short 9.5 hour trip, to frigid 19 degree weather with a high wind; our cave suits froze on the walk to the vehicles, and several later teams reported that the locks on their cars had frozen solid!

I suppose that the lower canyon shouldn't be considered "dead", but it can probably go to the back burner unless no other route to the elusive "Devil's machinery" can be found. The upper canyon goes, but also requires "squeezefreaks" to map it, and doesn't appear to head closer to the sound. We surveyed approximately 50 feet, plus a 49 foot drop, but didn't solve the mystery of the Rushin' Rift. Thanks to my teammates for putting up with my sniffling and general slowness as I battled an annoying cold this weekend.

[trip] TCSS Revisits Bonner Cave

2008-02-16T23:59:00.003-05:00

Getting a later start for our monthly Tucker County survey than usual, the usual suspects rolled into Parsons around 10am for breakfast. In addition to Kevin Keplinger, Brian Masney, Dave Riggs, John Harman, and Cullen Hencke were Jeff Stutler and Bill Good, as well Nikki Green (from U. of MD). Our goal of the day was to reinvestigate the Bonner property and try once again to find a back connection to another nearby cave.

We arrived at the Bonner property at around 11am. Kevin, Bill, and Jeff took advantage of the beautiful weather and went ridge-walking, which (I believe) resulted in no new discoveries. They also bounced Bonner Forty Footer, which they confirmed was a dead-bottom pit.

Dave, Brian, John, Cullen, and Nikki loaded up and prepared to push Bonner Cave. We were surprised to find that the cave is no longer enshrouded in fortress of briers and barbed wire, but is now very easily accessible with a small 4-wheeler road going right beneath the entrance. We rigged a hand-line and descended the steep entrance slope and free-climbed down the slot with compressed cave-air blowing up into our faces. We quickly followed the main stream passage (which had very little water flowing) to the Waiting Room.

Dave and Nikki pushed the low main passage, which starts as a belly-crawl in a shallow stream perched on the "Tucker County Asphalt", an impermeable black conglomerate with embedded rounded, white quartz pebbles. After several tens of feet, it is no longer possible to stay on the floor, and the unfortunate caver is forced to attempt to squeeze/crawl/pull/twist on top and through an ever-changing keyhole/slot/canyon. It should be noted that there are several small "rooms" throughout the passage in which one can sit and turn around easily. I eventually became so frustrated dragging my cave pack through this passage that I left it behind at around the half-way point. Flowstone, soda straws, and small stalactites are found throughout this passage. We came to what appears to have been a flowstone choke at one point, but has been hammered on one edge. Nikki squirmed over it with her helmet off, and I squirmed under it with my helmet off, one ear in the stream and one pressed against the rock overhead.

Unfortunately, we found large breakdown blocking further progress. Obvious cave of similar proportion can be seen beyond, and a strong wind blows from it, but we were unable to squeeze around the breakdown, despite our best efforts - Nikki made a struggled attempt, there was no chance of me getting around it. The stream flows beneath it, but this lowest level is only inches high. Breaking the rock would be extremely difficult, as it lays in the canyon passage lengthwise and is stacked high. I'm still personally convinced that connection to a large cave lies just a few hundred feet beyond this breakdown. Soaked, sore, and exhausted we headed back to the Waiting Room where the others were waiting.

Brian, John, and Cullen explored the upper passage, accessed by climbing up at the Waiting Room. An immediate lead on the left, which appears to be an infeeder to Bonner, is choked with flowstone and small rimstone dams, both at the upper and lower level. Heading straight, a very-dry, rounded crawlway heads off to the right and zig-zags from joint to joint. John pushed this passage to a flat room 18 inches high, where the thinly-bedded ceiling peels off and hangs dangerously over ones head. I did not note airflow in this dry passage, and we didn't deem this lead important enough to risk disturbing the ceiling flakes.

We exited the cave to daylight and sunshine, a welcome change for a February TCSS. We were packed and in the vehicles by 4pm, met the surface team on the road, and all headed to CJ's for a pizza dinner.

Coal Mine Opened in Morgantown

2008-02-11T16:54:00.001-05:00

There's a new "cave" in Monongalia County. It appears to have recently opened up, and is located very visibly next to a main road right inside Morgantown.

A small graded hill, literally on the side of the road, contains a slumped opening about 10 feet wide and 3 feet tall. The ceiling beam appears to be made of a muddy sandstone, while the "cave" itself appears to be formed in a crumbly, shaley seam of coal. The entrance slopes down and back for at least 20 feet and continues out of sight; the passage is at least 4 feet high. Another passage may go to the right from the entrance. The floor is completely covered by shattered coal talus.

My assumption is that this was a very old coal mine which was simply graded over when the area was developed. Recent construction combined with heavy rains this week may have caused the entrance to slump open. It appears rather dangerous, and given its highly-accessible location, should probably be gated or filled very soon.

The helmet in the following photos is for scale only, I did not enter, and I do not recommend entering this mine.

Edit: The mine entrance was posted as state property "no tespassing" a week later, and then filled in by the DoH(?) in early March.

[trip] Weekend At Bennies

2008-01-26T23:59:00.000-05:00

The WVU Student Grotto headed down to Mercer County to stay with former President Ben Mirabile and do a bit of caving in Southern West Virginia.

On Saturday, Ben led a trip into Scott Hollow Cave, consisting of Dave Riggs, John Harman, Rich Finley, Jason Thomas, Garth Dixon, and Jessica Morning. We headed down Mastodon Ave. and Patty Lane, headed East from the Junction Room and wandered around the Omega Loop until we finally popped out into the enormous trunk passage of Mystic River.

Elsewhere, Kyle McMillan took Abby Hohn and Dave Mason on a wild tour through Lost World Caverns in Lewisburg. Meanwhile, John Tudek and Thad Martin went into the Lipps Entrance of the Organ Cave System.

Most of us met back up at Ben's house that night, and Dave Riggs, John Harman, Abby Hohn, and Dave Mason did Honaker Cave on Sunday afternoon. We spent around 4 hours in the cave, eventually managing to find the "lake", which was more of a giant, two-tiered mud puddle.

[trip] Chilly Tucker County Survey

2008-01-19T23:59:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, January 19 2008, the Tucker County Speleological Survey returned to MR Cave for the first time in over a year. With five people present, we split into two teams: Doug McCarty and Doug Bell would re-survey a side-lead towards the front of the cave, while John Harman, Cullen Hencke, and myself - Dave Riggs - would push one mile into the cave to continue the survey of the main cave passage.

After meeting for breakfast in Parsons, we headed to the cave and suited up as snow fell on our heads. We entered the cave at approximately 10AM, rigged the waterfall drop with a webbing handline and quickly crawled past the dripping water into the cave's main stream passage.

Several-hundred feet up the main passage, we reached Doug and Doug's side lead. Our groups parted, and this was the last that we saw of each other. They surveyed 275 feet of passage and were back on the surface by 4PM.

John, Cullen, and I continued on to the Swimming Pool, where we got soaked nearly to our waists. 1000-grueling-feet further, we stopped for water and John discovered that the tight Tucker County passage had cracked and broken his water bottle. We would have to share 2 liters of water between three people over the course of a long survey trip.

Another 1000-feet-or-two later and we were at our destination... and exhausted! One mile of Tucker County cave typically means thousands of feet of crawling or duck-walking in narrow stream passage, and MR Cave is a fine example of Tucker County's best. John and Cullen changed into dry clothes and ate, while I pushed ahead in the main passage to determine where our survey should head: the main route went low as a very-wet stream crawl, or high as a tight stooping passage with sketchy, gypsum-wedged breakdown, while a side lead followed an infeeder canyon coming in at a right angle. Surprisingly, I found carbide graffiti in the low main passage: "π 69" - meaning that the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity from WVU had been all the way back here in 1969. Had they come in all this way from the main entrance, or had they come in some rear entrance that we've not yet found?

We decided to survey the side-lead first, to knock it off the lead list, and expecting it to pinch out within 100 feet or so, as all the other known infeeders do. John and Cullen were on instrument, and I was trying my hand at keeping book and sketching. We slowly worked our way upstream, choosing the easiest route through up-to-three levels of meandering canyon. At times the passage was 4 feet high, at times it was 25 feet from stream to ceiling. We found a few nice formations along the way and the remains of some sort of small mammal. Eventually, the ceiling came down to meet the stream and the cave continued as a 2-foot-high crawl with a small upper passage, with definite air movement. We wound up surveying 502 feet in a passage that we didn't expect to continue.

After heading back to the junction, eating a much-needed meal, and gulping down our rations of water, we started the trek back out of the cave. The trip out took much less time than the trip in, perhaps because it was downhill and downstream, perhaps because we were so intent on getting out of the cave. As we came closer and closer to the entrance, the frigid wind blowing in our faces felt colder and colder.

Completely soaking wet, we exited the cave at 1:15AM, after 15 hours underground. The ground was covered with snow and ice, the temperature was 5°F - our coveralls immediately started to freeze, our wet hands and feet went instantly numb, we could feel ice crystals forming in our noses as we ran approximately 1/4 mile to the car. John arrived first and started it up, Cullen and I went the long, uphill way and both dove to the warm exhaust to thaw out our hands. We changed as quickly as possible, left a note at Kevin K's house, and then drove to Germany Valley, finally getting some sleep at around 4AM. MR Cave is now 7357 feet (1.4 miles) long.

On Magnetic Declination

2007-12-23T04:49:00.000-05:00

This is an excerpt of a wandering email discussion on magnetic declination with regard to cave survey software.

We have a West declination in West Virginia, which means that a magnetic compass points to the West of True North. The declination amount is subtracted from a magnetic compass reading in order to get the true bearing.

To specify declination in survex, you give the reading that the compass would read when pointing to True North. In our case, that means a positive value (because it is subtracted from the reading). So our "negative", or West, declination would be specified in survex with a positive number like this:

*calibrate declination 8.983

Despite claiming to use a similar data format, therion calculates true bearing the "right way", the offset of Magnetic North from True North, which is opposite the way that survex does. The practical consequence of this is that if you use the declination value from .svx files in .th files, you must change the sign in therion. Specifying the same West declination in therion is:

declination -8.983 deg

You can calculate declination for any point at any given date in time according to the IGRF geomagnetic model at this NOAA website.

Walls is smart enough that so long as you provide a location for the cave entrance and a date for every survey, it uses this geomagnetic model to automatically apply declination to every survey shot. Update: According to the therion book (PDF), therion (0.5.0 and higher) can do this also, provided that you specify a location, date, and don't manually specify any declination - though I have been unable to get this feature to work properly.

Interestingly, Bob Thrun analyzed a month's worth of actual measured magnetic declination taken at one-hour intervals and came to the following conclusions about short-term declination fluctuations (ie. not predicted by the geomagnetic model):

Declination can change up to a quarter degree over the course of one day.
There is some daily periodicity to declination change.
Some days are more "noisy" or "quiet" than others, ditto for some locations.
Declination is also affected by sunspot activity.

Since Bob's investigation in 1997, we now have declination data available in one-minute intervals, which could be studied in a similar way.

[trip] Evening Visit To Maiden Run

2007-12-04T23:59:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday evening, the WVUSG took an enjoyable tourist trip to our own backyard cave, Maiden Run #1. Brian Masney, Rich Finley, John Harman, Dave Mason, myself (Dave Riggs), and Anastasia Heasley - on her first outing with the Grotto - met in Sabraton at 6PM, condensed vehicles, and drove out to Deckers Creek. The temperature was below freezing, and there was around 2 inches of snow on the ground - what better time is there to head underground where the weather is always great?

Rich Finley, Dave Mason, Anastasia Heasley, John Harman, Dave Riggs and Brian Masney in Maiden Run Cave #1. Photo by Brian Masney.

Rich headed in first and rigged the 15 foot drop with a cable ladder. He and I descended to the bottom of the first pit, which is about 8 feet in diameter, 25 feet tall, drippy-wet, and intersects the main passage in such a way as to prevent the casual visitor from seeing the majority of the cave. With the aid of a questionable webbing hand-line, I climbed up the far side of the pit and rigged the other side of our cable ladder to the even more-questionable rigging at the top. Rich climbed to the top, then wedged himself into a nook so that he could belay the climbers with a rope attached to his body. Note: One should NEVER rig to any questionable bolts for life support, we chose to do so only because we were able to back up and belay from a well-placed person, and only then because this was an easy "nuisance climb".

Everyone else climbed down and then back up the pit without incident, and we headed further into the cave. We were disappointed to find that most of the "biological speleothems" that we encountered on our last visit had either been carried off or weathered away. We soon popped out and chimneyed down into the second dome-pit, which appears to be about 35 feet tall and 15 feet in diameter. This room is covered in carbide-soot graffiti from the 1950's, 60's, and 70's. It also contains a register which was placed in the cave in 1995, and needs replaced as it has deteriorated extensively.

Dave Mason in the climb-up from Maiden Run's second dome-pit. Photo by Brian Masney.

Brian and Rich set up to take some photos, while Dave, John, Anastasia, and I headed up the dry upper route to push it to its bitter end. Unfortunately the end was quite bitter, as neither Dave nor myself were able to (willing to?) make a tight sideways-squeeze down into a slot with going passage heading off out of sight. Defeated, we headed back to the dome-pit to pose for a few of Brian's photos, taking care not to disturb the well-organized nest of an Allegheny woodrat.

The four of us then tackled the lower stream passage, accessible through a sloping hole near the floor of the dome-pit. Though I'd visited the cave several times, this was my first time down in the stream passage (the stream itself was mostly dry), and I was quite impressed with it. We followed it upstream as an incised canyon, up over a dry paleo bank where the stream meanders under a wall, until it connects back up with the stream. From here, the others followed the stream back downstream into a low canyon, while I continued upstream despite what looked like miserable caving ahead. I crawled for what seemed like approximately 300 feet in very consistent 2 foot high, wide streambed (not so dry), which had a perfectly flat, dipping ceiling, as if the passage were running exactly along the strike of the limestone. After a few moments of pushing, I headed back to the group, convinced that the crawl does in fact continue exactly like that, forever. On the way back to the dome-pit, I pushed an upper lead in the ceiling of the stream canyon, which was very low, very dry, and very disgusting (so this is where those bio-speleothems walked off to!), only to find myself at a dead-end with a dirt plug and a tiny hole. I shined my lamp into the hole and the hole shined back - Brian and Rich were on the other side, I was apparently on a small level in between the high dry passage and the low wet passage, which connects to the dome-pit right behind the rat's nest.

We arrived back at the dome, ate, drank, and planned our exit. John and Rich were to descend last, rigging a pull-down knot to de-rig the cable ladder behind them. Everyone descended the pit and climbed back up the opposite side without incident, and it was John's turn next. He tested the "bomb-proof" rusty rigging and pulled the hanger right off one of our three anchors. Yikes! Having expected issues with the rigging, we had hauled in tons of webbing, etriers, a bit of rope, etc., so within about one half-hour's time, Rich had rigged an etrier and handline to some rocks approximately 25 feet away from the lip. John and then Rich easily came down, back up the far side, de-rigged our cable ladder and headed out. Meanwhile, after they'd safely descended, the rest of us headed back to the vehicles - our wet cave suits frozen solid by the time we arrived. We headed back home at just about midnight, having spent around 4 hours underground on what was an excellent local caving trip.

The WVUSG will be heading back to Maiden Run #1 next week to place new bolts and hangers at the pit, and we plan on teaching new members how to survey by producing a modern map of the cave.

See also: More Maiden Run photos by Brian Masney (including past trips).

[trip] Cheat Ridgewalking Yields New Small Caves

2007-11-17T22:29:00.000-05:00

Finding ourselves bored with this month's Tucker County survey canceled, Brian Masney, John Harman and I decided to do some ridge walking and surveying in the Cheat Canyon. While we never managed to survey the cave we'd intended to, we did find a few new small caves, and... play a bit of football?!

When we drove down the North rim of the Cheat Canyon, we found the Beaverhole Road had been posted "No Trespassing" by a hunting club. Not wanting to anger the hunters, we drove all the way down to river level, where the land is owned by the state. We started hiking and found a football washed up on the bank of the river - this football was carried into every cave that we visited today, thus settling the discussion of whether caving is or is not a sport.

Before long, we discovered a small cave - which we named Quarterback Cave - with a low entrance approximately 3 feet wide but narrowing considerably away from the floor. Crawling in for 15 feet takes one to a small room of about 5 feet in diameter where sunlight is visible through a fissure in the wall. A narrow spur passage with a channel in its floor branches off to the right and ends in another small room. The cave is home to many spiders and crickets. Quarterback Cave is approximately 35 feet long.

Brian Masney inside the entrance of the newly-discovered Quarterback Cave.

Quarterback John Harman poses inside the entrance of Quarterback Cave.

Less than 100 feet away, we discovered another smaller cave - which we named Football FRO - behind a fallen slab of rock which nearly hides a 2 foot by 2 foot sloping entrance. The entrance "room" is about 3 feet by 4 feet high, and a single narrow passage with water dripping from the ceiling heads back for a body-length. Brian hammered away a tight corner so that I could squeeze my way on another 5 feet to find a dead end. Football FRO is approximately 15 feet long.

Brian Masney inside the entrance of the newly-discovered Football FRO.

We headed on and checked out Overhang Crawl, another very small cave. While the cave itself isn't very impressive, there is a very drastic blind valley located behind it, which we dug on for a bit in the hopes of breaking into massive passage laying beyond. Having no luck there, we continued on.

Our final destination was Spring Falls Cave, a spring resurgence which moves a large amount of air and produces a very impressive quantity of water, which falls spectacularly down over a limestone cliff as a waterfall. Our intention was to survey the cave, however we quickly found ourselves belly-crawling in icy cold water and decided that we'd need wetsuits to survey in this chilly cave.

Brian Masney and John Harman pose outside the entrance of Spring Falls Cave.

All photos by David A. Riggs.

[trip] New Deckers Creek Cave Survey

2007-10-21T20:19:00.001-04:00

This Sunday, John Harman, John Cunningham, and I (Dave Riggs) surveyed the new cave near Deckers Creek. We spent about 3 hours surveying, shot 11 shots, including two surface shots in the entrance sink. The cave is 65 feet long and 27 feet deep; the total slope length of our in-cave survey was 99.5 feet. This was John C's first survey trip, and he did great - they didn't have to re-shoot a single shot. It was my first time doing a real sketch, and I can't say that I did as well as the instrument readers - I'm going back next Sunday with a lineplot to re-do my sketch properly!

Dave Riggs sketching (poorly) in the entrance sink. Photo by John Harman.

John C. chimneyed up to the very top of the crevice passage and found that it goes to the very top of the limestone, there is literally topsoil at the ceiling. We moved a few rocks and opened up a second "entrance" to the cave, a 9 inch wide and high joint which intersects the top of the crevice passage. It was large enough to survey through for a single closed loop, but you'd have to be seriously determined to actually go into the cave that way.

John Cunningham looks for a surface opening to serve as a vertical entrance, while Dave Riggs considers trying to go into the slot entrance. Photo by John Harman.

Working names for the cave are "One Room Wonder" and "Three Turkeys", the latter name being a double-play on the three wild turkeys that tried to scoop our cave that afternoon, and on the "three turkeys" who surveyed it.

Plan view of the cave lineplot. The cave is 65 feet long. Generated using Survex.

Profile view of the cave lineplot, showing the vertical extent of the crevice passage. The cave is 27 feet deep. Generated using Survex.

Panoramic photograph of the entrance sink. Photo by John Harman.

Another New Deckers Creek Cave

2007-10-14T19:35:00.000-04:00

I went on a lazy afternoon hike along Deckers Creek this afternoon and located a promising area with a dry streambed that cuts entirely through the thickness of the Greenbrier. With very little effort, I discovered a new cave located up the bank in a narrow, 8-foot deep sink walled by an outcropping of the upper Wymps Gap member. An opening leads down into an entrance room, which is about 8 feet in diameter and 6 - 8 feet high. A fissure passage leads off for about 15 feet and then rounds a turn, beyond which I did not explore (I was armed with nothing but a small pocket light). This area needs to be ridge walked, as it has potential.

Edit: I re-visited this new cave to GPS it, and snapped a few photos. The cave appears to be formed along enlarged vertical joints that combine to form the room at the entrance. The entrance room is about 12 feet at its highest point, with a low lead, about 2 feet high, on the right side. The left side is a fissure passage, up to 15 feet high or higher, and up to 4 feet wide, which goes back for about 15 feet and then appears too tight to follow. The fissure passage bells out at the bottom, and there may be more passage down at that level. The strata looks very similar to that visible in Nuttinbuttawett Pit, which is also formed in the uppermost parts of the Greenbrier; limestone beds are varying shades of grey, blue, and tan, with several containing nice fossils, and a thin layer of tan shale which easily weathers away.

Entrance to the new cave, with helmet for scale.

A portion of the visible strata, showing the weathered tan shaley bed.

Looking down the fissure passage from the Entrance Room. The floor of this passage drops down several feet below the floor of the first room, and bells out at the bottom.

From the Entrance Room, looking up and out into the forest.

The low lead heads off under the entrance from the Entrance Room. It is about 2 feet high, and not as narrow as it appears in this photo.

[trip] WVUSG Does Pendleton County

2007-10-09T12:19:00.002-04:00

The WVU Student Grotto recently spent a great weekend in Pendleton County. We stayed at John Harman's WV Underground fieldhouse in Germany Valley, had an excellent time and even managed to do a bit of caving while we were there.

On Saturday morning, we took a trip to Sinnett-Thorn. Since we had a fairly large group, including many "green" cavers, we moved rather slowly. We headed back in through the main canyon passage, went up The Silo, and checked out the big room while we ate lunch. We examined the Thorn connection, but the passage had 6 inches of water in it - the wind howled through the passage so forcefully that the water had continuous waves on the surface! Opting to stay dry, we headed back down The Silo and went upstream to the waterfall. A few people poked around up top and did the squeeze, finding borehole passage beyond, while everyone else monkeyed around near the waterfall. We spent about 5 hours in the cave.

The group at the Sinnett entrance, after a tiring but enjoyable trip. Amanda Summy's photo, snapped by me.

While we were in Sinnett-Thorn, Kyle McMillan led a group of beginners from Alderson-Broaddus into Trout Cave, on the John Guilday Caves Nature Preserve.

After eating some dinner in Franklin, we headed to Harper's Pit, a 70' deep pit located in the middle of a Germany Valley field. Kyle and I belayed people from below; Tom Lilly, Jataya Taylor, Dave Mason, Gayle Suppa, and Thad Martin did their first in-cave rappels - everyone did a great job!

On Saturday morning, we all had a serious hunger for some pie, so we headed to the restaurant at Seneca Caverns. Unfortunately Thad's car died on the way there, so he and a few other people spent the remainder of the day trying to fix it. Meanwhile, the rest of us headed to nearby Mystic Cave. We first went down the right-hand (downstream) branch of the cave, did the handline climb down and went to what seemed like the end, then came back out to warm up and have a bite to eat. After narrowly avoiding a territorial bull, we headed back in and went upstream, getting thoroughly soaked in the waist-deep pools, but enjoying the amazing formations. For such a frequently-visited cave, Mystic is very well decorated, and is a great horizontal (but wet) trip. We probably spent a total of 4.5 hours in the cave.

[trip] NCRC Orientation to Cave Rescue Class

2007-10-09T12:18:00.000-04:00

This weekend I attended the Orientation to Cave Rescue class which was offered by the Eastern Region of the National Cave Rescue Commission (NCRC) at Laurel Caverns, PA.

We met at 8:00AM on Saturday morning at Laurel Caverns. The morning was spent in a classroom over a powerpoint presentation on the basics of cave rescue - command hierarchy, responsibilities, goals, etc. Several search-and-rescue teams were conducting a mock-search during our training. After a brief non-vegetarian lunch, we broke out into smaller groups and did some more hands-on training. One session showed us how to use military field telephones (fun!); one gave an extremely high-level wilderness first-aid lesson - too basic to help those with actual EMS training, too vague to help those without. A third session taught us how to package a patient in a SKED and a Ferno stretcher. We had a nice vegetarian dinner, then broke into two teams and did a rescue "obstacle course", where we would package a patient and then maneuver them (gently!) over, under, around, and through all sorts of constrictions, drop-offs, tunnels, and other brutal obstacles that simulated cave terrain. This was a lot of fun, but was extremely exhausting after 2.5 hours. We finished up around 8:00PM.

Again, we met at 8:00AM at Laurel Caverns, but Sunday was much different than the previous day's course. We arrived and were incorporated into the previous day's mock-search, which had now turned into a mock-rescue. In conjunction with the search-and-rescue teams, we reported to Barton Cave, where three cavers were suspected as being "lost". Since I am familiar with Barton, I was put on the initial search team as a guide. Our team went in to the back of the cave, where we quickly found the first "lost" patient (who really enjoyed playing the part of a lost old caver). After getting our patient out, we were sent back in to help extract an injured patient who was currently being packaged. It took about 4 hours to extract him, even though he was only a few hundred feet from the cave entrance, and it looked like quite an unpleasant ride.

I learned a great deal about how cave rescues operate and about how I can most effectively and efficiently help out. The most striking lesson of the weekend is how long it takes and how much effort is involved in extracting an injured caver - it will make me re-evaluate the sorts of risks that I take underground for sure! I had a great time taking the course, and I highly recommend it to all cavers.

[trip] Travertine Spring Digging

2007-09-04T23:59:00.000-04:00

On Monday night I did some solo digging on Deckers Creek, at the spring/FRO that I've named Travertine Spring FRO. I went out again on Tuesday evening with John Harman, who helped move some serious rocks that I couldn't touch on my own. At dusk, two bats flew out of the breakdown where we were digging - one surprised bat bounced off my head on his way out. The cave is named for the chunks of layered calcite (travertine) that have been found in the stream bed, which are hopefully a sign that some serious cave exists inside.

Exciting times we live in...

Travertine chunks found in the streambed of Travertine Spring FRO, Monongalia County, WV.

[trip] Windy Slope Dig

2007-09-02T23:59:00.000-04:00

Sunday morning of OTR, at what seemed like the crack of dawn, I groggily heard Brian Masney and Doug McCarty pack up and head North for the Cheat Canyon. Aaron Bird and Bob Kirk were apparently already on their way to finish digging and start surveying in our newest Cheat Canyon cave; I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. Eventually I managed to drag myself out of bed, pack up camp, and drive 1.5 hours to Masontown. As expected, when I arrived everyone was already down in the canyon, leaving me no choice but to pack up all my caving gear into a backpack and start hiking all the way down into the Canyon - ugh. Luckily, as I started my hike, a speeding pickup truck came flying down the road, beer cans clanking and music cranked - they shouted "hop in, buddy!" and hauled me all the way down, 45 minutes by 4WD truck, saving me what would have been an even longer hike.

I finally arrived at the Windy Slope Cave entrance, much to the surprise of the large group of cavers milling around outside. Bob and Aaron were inside digging on the squeeze in the Fichtner Entrance, while Doug, Brian, Sandy, Greg Springer, and Terry "Monk" McClanathan waited outside. Much time passed, and Aaron, Doug, and I killed some time by digging on a hole upriver and directly across the river from Spring Falls Cave (which didn't yield anything major to us). Meanwhile Greg and Brian were inside digging, Greg being frustrated enough to trudge through the icy cold Water Entrance by himself.

Dedicated team of diggers and surveyers, who traveled from as far as Ohio, Baltimore, or Michigan for a taste of sweet Cheat Canyon caving. L-R: Doug McCarty, Aaron Bird, Bob Kirk, Sandy ?, Greg Springer, Dave Riggs, Terry McClanathan and Brian Masney. Photo by Bob Kirk.

After several hours, enough progress was made on the dig so that everyone could fit through the squeeze. I started in and was informed that surveying had been nixed for the trip. I took Terry and Sandy for a tour of the cave, then Terry and I went out the Water Entrance to give him the "full taste" of a Cheat Canyon cave. We hiked down the hill and waded into the bath-water-warm Cheat River in full cave gear, washing everything off and staining the entire river brown. With zero feet surveyed, we hiked up to the vehicles and drove out of the canyon - despite lots of traffic on the Druid Road - for a Mexican dinner.

[trip] Bobcat Blowhole Push

2007-08-31T23:59:00.000-04:00

Friday morning of OTR, Aaron Bird, Bob Kirk, and I - Dave Riggs - headed South down the stomach-turning US219 to Lewisburg, to push the remaining leads in Bobcat Blowhole, one of several significant caves in the Raders Valley area. Aaron and Bob gave me a quick tour of Raders Valley, showing me the entrance to Zicafoose Blowhole and several other interesting geologic features.

We entered Bobcat Blowhole around noon, squeezing into and down the dug entrance slot, then made a right-hand turn to intersect a stream passage - which was luckily dry on this day. This stream passage is occasionally of stooping height, but is mainly belly crawl for 1200 grueling feet.

At the end of the stream crawl, the cave suddenly opens up into a very large fault chamber. The ceiling follows the fault, with slickenslides and shattered rock everywhere. We rappelled down a rigged 25 foot drop, climbed up a small hillside of limestone fragments, then crossed a traverse line to another rappel of about 15 feet. We continued down more fractured rock to a lower level stream passage, where our goal was.

Aaron and Bob put on wetsuits, but I did not bring mine. Luckily, the water was so low that I didn't need it at all. We climbed down to the stream and headed in the downstream direction, crawling on low sand banks. Aaron investigated a small infeeder on the left, which was too tight after 75 feet or so. We reached a huge mountain of breakdown which blocks the downstream passage - Bob and Aaron poked around at the lower levels, while I climbed up mud banks at least 40 feet high looking for a way through. I was able to squeeze well into the breakdown and was sure I'd found the way forward... until I peered through a crack and saw Bob and Aaron peering back; I'd been turned around completely in the breakdown. Unable to find a way through the terminal breakdown, we headed back upstream.

We noted a high void on the left as we traveled upstream, located about 10 feet from the floor. I climbed up the mud bank and dug at it, trying my hardest to squeeze into it. Bob and Aaron pushed on my feet, I removed my helmet, and managed to snake my way up into it with a bit of effort. I explored a mud-bank floored chamber paralleling the stream passage, poked around up into some sketchy breakdown, and determined that the chamber didn't go. We headed back. While Aaron and Bob changed out of their dry wetsuits, I followed the stream passage upstream, climbed up and crawled through a passage to check out Columbia Canyon, and impressive canyon filled with large breakdown blocks.

We climbed up the mountain of breakdown, ascended the two drops, and started out the main stream crawl. Aaron and I stopped to pick up some former camp supplies which had been left in the passage, but they were too cumbersome to haul out without a proper bag for them. After what seemed like an endless crawl, we emerged on the surface at around 5pm. We made a quick stop to check out Deel's Hole, a very impressive, large collapse doline and cave, then headed back to OTR after an enjoyable trip.

[trip] Depths Of Bradshaw Run

2007-08-19T23:42:00.000-04:00

This Sunday, I met up with Llew and Justin Williams, and Bob Griffith for a tourist trip into Bradshaw Run Cave, on the Elk River, Randolph County, WV. I camped solo at Oildrum Falls after surveying in Tucker County the previous day. Llew and Justin arrived around 10am and rolled me out of my hammock. I brewed some coffee and made breakfast, gathered up my wet, muddy cave gear (I'd set it out to dry, but it was hopeless), and Bob Griffith showed up. We drove to the cave, geared up, and were at the entrance by around noon.

Luckily the cave entrance was much less wet than it had been on our previous visit. I rigged the 35 foot entrance drop and rappelled down, the maiden in-cave drop on my new bobbin descender, which did a pretty good job.

Once everyone was down, we followed the main passage to big, walking, phreatic tube passage. I took a quick jog down the side passage on the right, which I believe curves back underneath the main passage. At the fault room, we sung harmonies with ourselves, in what must be one of the best echo chambers of any cave. We finally climbed down to the top of the 50 foot pit which leads to the lower levels. Bob took a frightening 7 foot fall climbing down, but bounced right back up without injury.

I rigged to a giant boulder and rappelled over the undercut, muddy lip to a free drop and down to the middle level. After everyone rappelled down, we discovered that this muddy middle level was completely plugged. Using my cave pack for a rope pad, Llew, Justin, and I rappelled down the remaining 15 feet to the bottom level. Bob stayed up at the middle level while we checked out what we expected to be a short passage leading immediately to the sump.

This lowest level is extremely, extremely muddy! Apparently, during high floods, the sump backs up and floodwater deposits large amounts of silt and mud here. We headed on for a few hundred feet, climbed down two very large mud dunes and into HUGE 50 foot tall muddy trunk passage at the very lowest level of the cave. There were no footprints down here, making us wonder just how often this level floods. We went on for a good way, and spent probably 30 - 40 minutes heading on in the direction of the sump, but finally decided that we'd been gone much longer than we'd expected and headed back. After looking at the cave map at home, I see that we were only 200 feet from the terminal sump.

Cold and slimed with mud, everyone was anxious to climb back up to the upper level. Everyone had a difficult time getting over the muddy, severely undercut lip at the top. In hindsight, we should have tossed a pigtail over the lip to use as a foot hold. I was negligent in not climbing up first, but everyone made it up and out without serious issue, though it took us all quite a while.

The trip out was uneventful and quick. The entrance drop seemed to have a bit more water than on the way in, but that could have simply been because we spent more time in it while climbing than ascending. I ascended out last and started de-rigging the rope, only to realize that I'd forgotten my cave pack down at the bottom! Arrgh!! I quickly re-rigged the rope, without rope pads (for shame!), and bounced the pit to retrieve it. We finally made it to the surface just as a bit of drizzling rain was falling, after 6 full hours underground. We packed up and headed to Mama's Kitchen in Elkins for dinner, after an enjoyable trip in Bradshaw Run.

[trip] Bennett Cave Survey Part 4

2007-08-18T23:59:00.000-04:00

We thought that this weekend would be the final trip into Tucker County's Bennett Cave, but the cave refused to let us finish it up. The TCSS met up Saturday morning at the Tucker Country Inn in Parsons and headed to the cave to gear up. Kevin and Justin K. met us in the morning but didn't go underground due to a skateboard-induced injury (Justin was skating, not Kevin).

Doug McCarty, Josh Flaugher, and Cullen Hencke started surveying into the high lead in the downclimb from the upper to lower level. Everyone thought that this small lead would pinch out within a few tens of feet, but they surveyed over 200 feet and finding the inside of the stream resurgence that we found on the surface. They named the room with sunlight shining in from above the "Spider Room"... that's one that I'm glad to have not surveyed myself. Doug was able to reach his hand completely outside the cave from here.

Brian Masney, John Harman, and myself (Dave Riggs) tried to finish the survey above the main waterfall. John scaled the waterfall first, getting soaked in the process, and put a tarp in place to try and cut down on the spray. While the tarp helped, we all still got plenty wet on the climb. We climbed up to the next level, where we found a large lead to the right and a low lead to the left.

The left lead went to a stair-stepped dome/canyon series consisting of two waterfall climbs, and ending in surface valley breakdown. We began to survey and realized that we did not have a pencil - oops! While Brian descended to go beg the other survey team for a pencil, John and I scooped the left passage.

A quick climb up and back down led to another waterfall climb on the right which ended in surface valley breakdown. To the left, we followed a canyon downstream, checking out a dome lead on the way, then I followed a low crawl which curved back around and turned out to be the smallest of the three waterfalls in the main waterfall room. John followed a low tube to the right which popped him out at the top of the Trash Dome, under and behind the main waterfall. The tight, water-carved passage also did a serious number on his cave suit.

Brian finally returned with a pencil, and we began to survey the right lead, then started on the left lead. We surveyed the upstream waterfall climb and the dome side lead, where I hammered my way into about 20 feet of miserable, muddy virgin passage. Cold, wet, and shivering, we decided to start tying our survey in to the rest of the cave before we were forced to leave it hanging. We did a 20 foot plumb shot down to the middle level, and surveyed to the main waterfall just as the second team showed up to find us. We shot down the main waterfall and tied into a known station down at base level, packed up, and left the cave.

Bennett Cave plan lineplot, as of August 2007.

Bennett Cave profile lineplot, rotated to show hypothesized fault plane. The limestone is bedded nearly horizontally.

While we racked up well over 400 feet of survey, the cave will still require at least one more good survey trip to complete. That's fine with me, as I've still got to do the map! We changed clothes after a good 7 hour trip and headed to CJ's for pizza. Afterwards, I drove to Oildrum Falls to camp for the night and head into Bradshaw Run Cave the next day.

Bennett Cave now stands at over 1800 feet long, 96 feet deep - 2nd deepest and 15th longest cave in Tucker County (exact numbers pending delivery of survey data to cartographer).

Bennett Cave is CLOSED by the landowner, and permission has been granted to the TCSS only to survey the cave.

[trip] Bradshaw Run, Dreen, Just Caves

2007-07-14T23:36:00.000-04:00

This weekend, I left Morgantown late on Friday night and arrived at the Oildrum Falls campsite just after midnight. Doug McCarty, Llew, and Justin Williams were exhausted enough from their trip into the historic side of Simmons-Mingo Cave that I didn't wake them. There had been flash thunderstorms throughout the week in Morgantown, and I assume that the Elk River area had some precipitation as well. On Saturday morning, we met up with Doug Bell, Jesse Miller, and John Barth, and headed to Bradshaw Run Cave.

The entrance to Bradshaw Run was taking a good deal of water - much more than the previous time we'd visited the cave. I rigged the rope to a fallen tree outside, and then headed in. The top of the drop was lined with large cobbles and washed-in rocks. I kicked the most obviously-loose ones down, but the entire floor was covered with plenty more - great. We opted to rig the rope to a bolt on the left hand wall, which kept the rope from sweeping loose rocks down the drop. Water was pouring in from the ceiling in many places, and a soaker of a waterfall was flowing down and over the drop.

I rappelled 8 feet down to the ledge and placed a rope pad, then rappelled the rest of the drop - only 20 or so, but with the waterfall pouring down right over my head. Justin came down next, then Llew, until the three of us were all completely soaked and waiting at the bottom. Since this was to be Doug, Jesse, and John's first in-cave rappel, it was decided that we should probably pick something a bit drier for them. The trip was aborted. On the way out, one of the loose rocks dislodged from the top, bounced off the ledge and was sent flying a good distance out from the bottom of the drop - beware of the wide splash zone due to rocks bouncing off this ledge.

We took a quick detour - everyone driving their vehicles while soaking wet and in full vert gear - to check out Falling Spring Cave, which I think is one of the most amazing cave entrances in WV. Though there was no water flowing over the falls, the massive logs jammed into the cave entrance hint that this cave is not the place to be during a serious storm.

Our next stop was Dreen Cave. I rigged the drop immediately on the left-hand passage, which was nice and dry. This drop is an ideal beginner rappel - it's about 35 feet deep, is very easy to get on and off rope, and is a completely free drop with walls within reach if you need them. Everyone bounced the pit once or twice, with Jesse, Doug, and John getting their first in-cave rappels under their belts - they all did a great job.

At this point - around 3:30pm, Doug McCarty had to leave but the rest of us were still itching to get some more caving in. We headed to Just Cave for some more vertical action. Llew and Justin had rappelled Just before, but I had never - they helped me rig it, and I headed down first. The "pit" is a very long, but narrow vertical fissure. Until you reach the bottom, it doesn't bell out any more than 3 feet wide at its widest. We rigged to the side closest to the entrance, which gave us (unfortunately) the shortest rappel - perhaps 40 feet. Llew, Doug, and Jesse rappelled down as well, then Llew and I chimneyed through another vertical fissure to check out the rest of the cave. We went down a few tens of feet through breakdown, where everything was completely covered with mud and silt. A cave stream appeared, rounded a bend, and headed into some low passage, which we didn't bother following. There were some excellent crinoid fossils in the lower limestone, including a few arms.

We headed out, packed up camp, and Llew, Justin and I headed directly for Mama's Kitchen in Elkins for great hot meal. Mama's no longer has cave/caver photos on the wall, but instead has a large WV-themed mural which features at least two caves. We're already planning a return trip back into Bradshaw Run.

[trip] Windy Slope Cave Dig

2007-06-23T23:41:00.000-04:00

I did a podcast trip report from our digging trip into the newest significant cave in the Cheat Canyon, Windy Slope Cave. You can listen to the 15 minute report on PodCaver.

We got to explore the largest passage discovered in the Canyon since New Years Day Cave, and it goes for well over 1000 feet. Our digging efforts paid off - I was able to make the first ever through trip from the Fichtner entrance to the water entrance of Windy Slope Cave.

Link: Windy Slope Dig PodCast

Dave Riggs, Brian Masney, and Doug McCarty in front of the Wet Entrance of Windy Slope Cave. Photo by John Harman.

[trip] Deckers Creek Pits

2007-06-20T23:59:00.000-04:00

This evening, Brian Masney and I headed to Deckers Creek to "survey" a few pits. Real pits are rare in Northern WV, and even more so in Monongalia County. Several are clustered along Deckers Creek where water manages to enlarge limestone joints and then fall far enough to start cutting down into the rock.

We started with a pit that I discovered last year, called Jumbo Shrimp Pit. Brian rappelled down first, and we taped the pit at 27.1 feet from the lip, 28.5 feet from the bottom of the small sink. The floor has a pile of leaves and debris several feet high. The cave is essentially a single solutionally-widened joint which bells out to 4 feet wide at the bottom. I took a couple survey shots and we both sketched the inside of the cave before ascending out.

Dave Riggs rappels into the (new) deepest known pit in Monongalia County. Photo by Brian Masney.

Next we hiked over to Nuttinbuttawett Pit, which Garton published as 25 feet deep. We dropped the pit and taped it at 19.3 feet from the lip. This cave appears to have formed where two fractures intersect, and an old floor and drain are visible about halfway down. While not as deep or long as the new pit, at least this pit bells out wide enough to form a real room. One thin layer of shaley-limestone had lots of very large crinoid fossils. Luckily the pit was only taking a small amount of water today, so we didn't get soaked. I did a rough sketch of the pit and we climbed back out.

Dave Riggs ascends out of Nuttinbuttawett Pit, after stripping it of its coveted first-place title. Photo by Brian Masney.

Now nearing dark, we spent a few minutes trying to find the pit that Greg Springer described as Itsatightone Pit. Brian found a very small but steeply-walled sinkhole and within minutes had exposed a limestone joint about 8 inches wide in the bottom. We were able to peer at least 6 feet down into it, and could hear rocks bouncing down even further, but it'd take some work and a very skinny caver to push it.

Brian Masney digs open a small sinkhole along Deckers Creek which may be Itsatightone Pit.

See also: Deckers Creek cave photos by Brian Masney

PodCaver

2007-06-18T14:32:00.000-04:00

After scouring the web and failing to find any podcasts related to caving, Aaron Bird has decided to start his own - PodCaver. So far, he's got several hours worth of content up, including discussion with Rachel Bosch-Bird about Mammoth Cave, an interview with Mark Passerby about caving tools, technology, and methods and his work in Raders Valley, and daily reports from our recent work week in the Cheat Canyon. You may recognize Aaron from the insightful speleo-commentary that he occasionally posts here on the Speleo Log, or from his excellent print interviews in the Cave Diggers / Caves.com magazine.

Links: PodCaver Website, PodCaver on iTunes, PodCaver RSS Feed

Aaron Bird recording the next exciting installment in his state-of-the-art PodCaver Studio. Photo by Brian Masney

[trip] Pacific Northwest Lava Tubes

2007-06-18T14:00:00.000-04:00

I recently took a two-week trip to the Pacific Northwest in order to see a part of the country that I've never yet visited. Of course I couldn't take a trip without doing a bit of caving, so I took the opportunity to check out my first lava tube caves.

In Oregon, located near the Newberry National Volcanic Monument in the Deschutes National Forest, I first visited Boyd Cave. This easily-accessed lava tube has a small entrance hole with a metal staircase leading down into over 1000 feet of easy, round passage between 10 and 20 feet tall. The cave is very dry, and small breakdown piles are found occasionally. The cave is worth seeing if you're in the area, but a bit too "bland" to warrant a trip to Bend just to visit it.

The entrance to Boyd Cave, from the inside looking up and out the small collapse entrance.

I then traveled a short distance up the road to try and visit Skeleton Cave, reported to be 3000 feet and more sporting. I arrived to find that the cave was gated and locked (supposedly for hibernating bats), despite it no longer being hibernation season. I checked out about 50 feet of low cave on the non-gated side, but could do nothing more than admire the impressive collapse sinkhole entrance of Skeleton. I had a very enjoyable night camping just outside the cave, under a full moon, in Oregon's high desert.

Large collapse sink entrance to Skeleton Cave. The bat gate is about 30 feet wide, and was locked in June.

In Washington, during a several day stay on Mt. St. Helens, I awoke early (for me) and headed into Ape Cave at 9am. Ape is probably the most-visited lava tube in the US, and its long, straight, flat and sand-floored passage makes it well-suited for this. I headed in the main entrance and went downhill, with the entire cave to myself. The hallway passages are frequently 25 feet wide and probably between 30 and 40 feet tall. It was certainly more impressive than was Boyd, but only barely.

Once to the pinch-out end, 3/4 mile from the entrance, I turned and headed back out where I met three schoolbus loads of middleschool kids going into the cave. Great. I hiked about a mile and a half to the upper entrance, stopping to check out lots of little lava bubbles and FROs (the lava equivalent of karst, I suppose) on the way, finally reaching the large collapse sinkhole at the upper entrance. Here I found a group of 8 seventh-graders with about 6 lights between the entire group, planning to head down and pop out the main entrance. Upper ape has a lot more breakdown and is a bit more sporting than lower ape. I gave them two of my spare lights and helped them navigate some of the climbs, we encountered dozens more schoolkids on the way out.

A small "lava FRO" near Ape Cave. I went in one entrance, explored about 15 feet of cave, and popped out the second entrance. The area is full of small lava bubbles like this.

Small "skylight" between the upper and lower entrances to Ape Cave, as seen from inside.

Finally, just a mile or so from Ape, I visited Lake Cave. Another beautiful basalt collapse sinkhole slopes down into stooping passage which opens to the top of a 30 - 40 feet tall lava canyon. The canyon is rigged with a ladder, which is chained and bolted to the wall. Lake was a great lava tube! The cave seems to flow down a steeper grade, occasionally with "lava falls", plenty of breakdown and climbing, and very spacious, tall lava canyon passage - probably 40 - 50 feet tall and 30 feet wide in some places. The lava walls appear to have been melted and re-melted, and dripped and flowed like molten chocolate ice cream in places. Lake Cave ends in a disappointing lava ash choke with an inches-deep pool of water - hardly a lake. This cave must have gone for over a mile, and was quite enjoyable. If you go to Mt. St. Helens, do Lake Cave instead of Ape Cave!

Scenic collapse entrance to Lake Cave. The landscape is mainly moss-covered basalt with very little topsoil.

Goopy, melted ice cream lava walls in Lake Cave. Photos can't do justice to the alien texture.

While I was impressed with the length and the passage dimensions in most of the lava tubes that I visited, the caving itself was a bit boring. Not much to see (no formations, of course), no real leads or anything beyond single-passage caves, little climbing or squeezing. However, the potential for undiscovered lava tubes of significant size is very great - they're only discovered when ceilings happen to collapse, so there's bound to be many many more to be found (or dug into). Project caving in the Pacific Northwest sounds like it could be very rewarding, but for now I'll stick to my WV stream caves!

All photos by David A. Riggs

See also: more of my lava tube photos

[trip] Cheat Canyon Work Week Day 2

2007-06-09T22:25:00.000-04:00

Today was the second day of the Cheat Canyon work week. Aaron and Tristen Bird, Greg Springer, and I - Dave Riggs - met at Mark's at 9AM, then drove down the hill to his pond to unload camping gear. I was spending only a half-day in the canyon, while the others were camping and working the rest of the week.

At 10AM we hiked down the hill to Lick Run, where we spent the day poking and prodding in the hopes of finding and upstream entrance to Druid Cave. We located the bottom and the top of the Loyalhanna, and found several "interesting" spots, but no definitive places where water is pirated or holes with a vacuum to match the downstream blowing holes. The dye trace definitively says that Lick Run is the source of Druid's water, but we weren't able to find it today. I hiked up the hill at 4PM, everyone else planned on remaining to dig another hour and then call it a day.

Tomorrow the group surveys virgin walking passage in the newly found cave at the extreme downstream end of Druid Cave (past the Twin Springs). I won't be sending out any more trip reports from the work week, as I'll be spending the rest of the week in Mammoth Cave!

Work Week Stats
Surveyed Cave: 96'
New Caves: 1
Virgin Cave: 110'
Participants: 5
Person Hours Worked: 57
Liters of Mountain Dew: 6?

[trip] Cheat Canyon Work Week Day 1

2007-06-08T22:47:00.001-04:00

Today was the first day of the Cheat Canyon work week, and it's already been productive. We met around 9am at IHOP for breakfast, and were greeted with an inspiring phone call from Allen Peterson. Allen's luck for finding cave in the canyon has apparently rubbed off on us (yes, bad luck is communicable). We arrived at Mark's farm by 10:30, and Brian drove us down into the canyon by 11am. From here, we split into two teams.

Aaron and Tristen Bird, Greg Springer, and Doug McCarty headed to the new cave above the Twin Springs with the goal of enlarging the blowing lead. The cave has now been named Fichtner Cave, in honor of a great landowner who has really helped us to make progress in the canyon. Edit: The cave became the Fichtner Entrance to Windy Slope Cave.

Aaron and Doug modified some tight rock using a Hilti loaned from Rocky Parsons and the Shavers Mountain Survey - Doug preferring to create significant clearance with just a hammer. They say that just a few feet of easily-scooped silt keeps them from reaching the room at the current end of the lead. Wind howls through this passage and room.

Meanwhile, Greg walked down the hill to river level, headed upstream for less than 100 yards, and hiked up a small gully which seemed to be blowing a slight cool breeze. About 50 feet up - perhaps 10 feet lower in elevation than the nearby Fichtner Cave entrance - he pulled up a rock and was hit with a "geyser of cold air". He and Aaron dug a bit and were soon looking down the barrel of more virgin cave! Aaron crawled in the entrance hole, turned towards Fichtner Cave, and was standing in a pool in walking passage. The passage ranges from 4 to 6 feet high, 1.5 to 3 feet wide, and is completely full of water - waist-deep at its deepest. He scooped about 60 feet to verify that it goes (it goes!) and headed back out, soaked and slimed. This cave also blows cold air with serious velocity, and it is suspected to be a lower level (and second entrance) of the nearby Fichtner Cave. The gully had been inspected by everyone at one point in the past, and had previously been flowing with considerable water, but was nearly dry today. This cave will be surveyed on Sunday.

While the other group was popping rocks and scooping virgin cave, Brian and I - Dave Riggs - went to push and survey the new cave that was dug open with Allen Peterson earlier this week. Allen has aptly named the cave Original Sin Cave, because finding and digging on this karst spring in 1980 was "The Original Sin" which has doomed generations of Northern WV cavers to spend an eternity in hellish Cheat Canyon caves. Dressed only in wetsuits, kneepads, knee-high rubber boots and helmets, Brian and I became known for the day as the "Extreme Team".

I headed into the cave first, and immediately noted that the entrance pool - dubbed by us "The Hot Tub" - was much lower than it was on Monday, excellent news! We both pushed our way back into the cave to the tighter spot where I'd previously turned back. A few rocks were moved, and I was beyond and caving in soggy virgin passage again... at least, for a few tens of feet. About 100 feet in, the cave stream comes in from a parallel side passage on the right; a ledge here provides only about 7 inches of crawl space to get past. It appears that if some cemented rocks were hammered from the floor, a small caver could push beyond and follow the water upstream where it appears to open up slightly more. The passage that we were in was never more than 2 feet tall or 3 feet wide, and we were constantly in icy water. There were a few small stalactites on the ceiling, however.

Dave Riggs in monotonous 18-inch-high stream passage, Original Sin Cave, Preston County WV. The stream is perched on a layer of black shale, visible at the bottom of the cave walls. Photo by Brian Masney

We headed out to warm up and eat, then did a bit of surface examination now that we knew what the cave inside did (but found nothing but sandstone talus on the canyon wall). We then surveyed the cave - a painful effort with a two-man team laying in an icy stream in 18 inch high passage. On the way out, we noted that the Hot Tub was very noticeably deeper than it was in the morning, and we suspect that this cave may flood to the ceiling at times.

Then, almost instantly, the sky turned grey and rain poured from above. We radioed the other group, who shared their news of another new cave, and headed across the canyon to see. We arrived as they were packing up, rain still coming down. Brian drove us back to Mark's house by 6pm, where the thunderstorm raged. Not wanting to camp in the rain, everyone decided to sleep in Morgantown for the night. We meet again tomorrow morning, 9am at Mark's house.

Work Week Stats
Surveyed Cave: 96'
New Caves: 1
Virgin Cave: 110'
Participants: 5
Person Hours Worked: 30
Beers Consumed: zero!

[trip] More Virgin Cave in the Cheat Canyon

2007-06-04T22:16:00.000-04:00

Nearly 30 years ago, Allen Peterson and his band of "druids" did some ridge walking on the South side of the Cheat River canyon and discovered an interesting karst spring below an old logging road. They very briefly dug on the spring before following its water downhill, leading to the discovery of Druid Cave. As Druid grew over the years to 2.3 miles in length, the spring above its entrance was forgotten... until dye tracing in 2007 showed that this spring plays a very interesting hydrological role in the Druid Cave system: it appears to be the downstream resurgence of New Years Day Cave, which appears to be hydrologically distinct from Druid Cave until this spring water flows into the Druid Cave entrance on the surface.

Today, Brian Masney and I met up with Allen Peterson and revisited this karst spring for the first time since the discovery of Druid Cave. Allen, in the area for a business trip, met me at the Pittsburgh airport and drove us down to Morgantown. After meeting up with Brian, shuttling vehicles around, and fighting with car problems, we were off to Masontown and started hiking down into the canyon at around 2:30pm.

On arrival, we immediately started digging in to the spring, which fanned out both horizontally and vertically along the hillside below a limestone headwall. I prodded at a small conduit with a crowbar, while Brian and Allen poked around some large moss-covered breakdown with water flowing from within. Allen moved several rocks aside and felt a strong, cool breeze - paydirt! We went at the area with our hand tools and found that this part of the hillside was completely composed of breakdown blocks, small rocks, and easily movable fill. Over the next several hours, we easily moved close to a ton of rock - exposing more airflow and a cave stream, and destabilizing some of the sketchier rocks on the hillside.

The cave passage visible inside was low and very wet; working conditions required sliding downhill and pulling rocks out while someone else tugged you out by your own boots. We spent some time stabilizing the lining rocks and removing most of the entrance slope. The only remaining barrier was the icy-cold soaking in very low, unknown passage. We all took turns trying to push the nasty entrance, but none of us made it on first attempt. Brian and I played rock paper scissors, and I lost, so I took a deep breath and scooped some nasty, wet, virgin cave.

Dave Riggs emerges soaked from the low, wet, newly dug cave above Druid Cave. Photo by Brian Masney.

The entrance pool is a six foot wide chamber where the swiftly-moving cave stream is between two and six inches deep, and air space is one foot at the highest point. A wetsuit is needed from the very start, as the water is extremely cold and one is entirely soaked immediately.

Following the cave stream to the right, one travels parallel to the Cheat River, and distinctly up-dip in a nearly-straight line. The cave passage is never more than three feet high or wide, and is a semi-circular arching stream passage. The cave stream, while only an inch or two deep, takes up the entirety of the width of the passage in most spots, and is perched on a layer of etched black shale. I continued for what seemed like seventy-five feet, until the cave passage became small enough that I'd have had to exert real effort to continue, but the airflow and water ensure more cave beyond - so long as one has a wetsuit.

Brian Masney, Dave Riggs, and Allen Peterson at the newly dug cave entrance above Druid Cave. Photo by Brian Masney.

After all these years, the very first karst feature discovered by Druid Cave explorers finally yields virgin cave to one of its original discoverers. The dye tracing results show that this new cave should be the hydrological downstream resurgence to New Years Day Cave, and the fact that it appears to be perched on a shale bed reinforces the implication that New Years Day Cave and Druid Cave are hydrologically distinct, parallel caves.

The Druid Cave saga continues...

[trip] Bennett Cave Survey Part 3

2007-05-19T23:59:00.000-04:00

This month at Tucker County, we had only one survey team in Bennett Cave. Brian Masney, Josh Flaugher, and I (Dave Riggs) first surveyed the remainder of the downstream trunk passage. It meanders a bit, and the main stream juts in and out from under the wall a couple times. The ceiling gets very low - about 12 - 18 inches - and you must crawl for a few feet in the wide, shallow stream to pass it... but then it opens back up to 12 foot high trunk passage with high sediment walls. This big passage abruptly ends at a big sump pool with very slowly swirling water, depth unknown. Given the massive mounds of sediment around the pool, I suspect that even in low water (the water was relatively high today) the sump is impassable by lunged cavers. We did encounter two very large frogs here at the sump pool, hence it's dubbed name, the "Frog Pond".

We then headed back upstream to the waterfall room to knock out the lower two leads. We started from the red painted station on the ceiling under the waterfall and surveyed the left passage. This low, winding passage starts out small but opens up to crawling height shortly. Dry at first, a small stream is encountered, then old cans and bottles, a large salamander, followed by... a beautiful 15 foot high domepit. Brian did a sketchy climbup and checked a lead to the right, which he said was too tight. The water was coming from the left, and his view made it appear that attempting to push the low, wet lead would be torturous (so we didn't even try). My ability to survey backwards through this lead earned a name in my honor (which will not be uttered here).

Finally, we surveyed the right lead under the waterfall. This lead is never higher than 3 feet, but is extremely wide. It is fed by two infeeders, a too tight stream on the left, and a waterfall over frightening sandstone breakdown and surface debris from the ceiling on the right. I suspect that this right passage is fed directly from the surface stream above, while the left lead is fed from further upstream, closer to (or directly from) the garbage-filled FRO.

Bennett Cave lineplot as of May 2007

We netted about 400 feet of survey, the last of the major survey effort with the exception of the passage above the big waterfall. Several very small sections need mopped up, but these are trivial. If we can muster two survey groups next month, we should be able to complete the survey of Bennett Cave.

After meeting up with Doug McCarty and Kevin Keplinger, who had just finished surveying the small new cave on the Bennett property (which while only 35 foot long, apparently got them soaked with dripping water), we headed to CJ's for pizza. Brian and I then drove to Dolly Sods, which supposedly got a large amount of snow the previous night. We didn't find any snow, but the wind was absolutely incredible! I tested out my new Hennessy Hammock, which did an excellent job of keeping me dry in the rain and wind. In the morning, Brian and I hiked around 8 beautiful miles in excellent weather.

[trip] Spring VAR 2007

2007-04-30T16:54:00.002-04:00

Spring VAR 2007 was in Durbin, WV, and hosted by the Frontroyal Grotto. I arrived Friday and set up camp with the WVU Student Grotto. We were celebrating the grotto's 30th birthday, having become an official grotto of the NSS in April, 1977.

Saturday morning, a group of us headed to the Elk River and planned to do Bradshaw Run Cave, but the Elk was up way too high to even bother going to the entrance. Instead, we headed over to check out Just Cave and Justrite Cave, neither of which were very interesting (Just looked too sketchy to rig). I managed to forget my real glasses, so I spent the day caving in my prescription sunglasses - with StenLight on "turbo", I never knew the difference!

Group in the sloping entrance to Just Cave. L-R: Jason Thomas, Cullen Hencke, Josh Flaugher, Dave Riggs, John Tudek. Photo by John Harman

We then headed over to Dreen Cave, rigged to a sturdy chockstone, and rappelled down to check out the lower level. While there wasn't a lot to check out where we rappelled, it was very nice looking arching passage about 30 feet tall, which led to a very nice domepit with waterfall. Everyone ascended up, then we checked out the rest of Dreen. For an easy, mainly horizontal and dry cave, Dreen is quite enjoyable.

Cullen Hencke descends into lower Dreen Cave. Photo by John Harman

We all headed back to Durbin just in time for dinner. Thanks to the Frontroyal Grotto for providing a vegetarian dinner option! After dinner, I gave a short, nervous speech, and presented our faculty advisor of 30 years, Dr. Henry Rauch, a plaque on behalf of the WVU Student Grotto. Afterward, current and alumni members from every generation mingled, told old war stories, and ate birthday cake provided by Frontroyal - thanks again!

The plaque that we presented to Dr. Rauch. Photo by John Harman

WVU Student Grotto alumni celebrating our 30th birthday. Front: L-R: Melissa Parker, Quincy, Jason Thomas, Kirby, Tom Hay, Katherine Gurtler, Jessica Morning; Middle: L-R: Greg Adamson?, Bob Livingston?, Henry Rauch, John Harman, Dr. Garth Dixon, Scott Maphis, John Tudek, Dave Riggs, Jeff Bray, Mary Schmidt, Bill Balfour, ?; Back: L-R: Cullen Hencke, Josh Flaugher, Ryan Ellers, Kristen Matak, Brian Masney; Photo by Tim Bleech

On Sunday, everyone packed up, then went caving with Grotto alumni Scott Maphis and Tom Hay. We visited Tub Cave, which is located in an absolutely enormous sinkhole, and consists of one giant room. It was impressive to see, and the area is very beautiful. On the way back to the car, the local landowner stopped us and asked if we'd like to visit a small cave on his property. We crossed the street and popped into McKeever's Cellar, a cave perhaps 40 feet long with two entrances, and wooden bins where a farmer used to literally use the cave as a cellar.

Great shot of the big room in Tub Cave by John Harman

Tom's daughter Beryl in McKeevers Cellar. Photo by John Harman

It was one of the best VARs that I've attended, many thanks to the Frontroyal Grotto and to the members and alumni of the WVU Student Grotto for making it a great time!

See also: John Harman's photos of Spring VAR, Just, Justrite, and Dreen Caves, Tub Cave and McKeever's Cellar; Brian Masney's photos of Spring VAR 2007

[trip] Simmons-Mingo Rescue

2007-04-23T23:59:00.000-04:00

At 4:40AM, the morning of Monday, April 23, 2007, I got a call from Doug Moore that there was a cave rescue callout at Simmons-Mingo Cave. Brian Masney, Josh Flaugher, and I rounded up our gear and headed South. We arrived at the historic entrance and were instructed to go to the Zarathrusa entrance and do a through trip, sweeping the cave for 5 lost cavers who had attempted a through trip from the same entrance on Saturday morning.

We arrived at the Zarathrusa entrance where Jason Thomas was waiting, but no one else was present. As we got geared up, a group of cavers and a communication team arrived and prepared to lay down telephone line behind us. We were in cave by about 10:30am and started doing whistle calls and checking side leads as we headed in the direction of the other end of the cave.

Eventually we made it to a steep muddy slope leading to an enormous lake. We were unable to find a way around, and the map that we were provided offered no help. We decided that the most prudent action would be to head back to the comm team as fast as possible for better directions. We made it all the way back to the entrance without encountering them - a hint that something was up.

Everyone climbed out the nasty Zarathrusa entrance, and there was nobody topside on the Dry Branch. We jumped in our vehicle and drove to the historic entrance, where we were very happily greeted. The lost cavers had been found within 1000 feet of the historic entrance, less than half an hour after we'd gone underground. Four of the cavers were already topside under their own power, and the fifth was currently being hauled out on a litter. The rescue crew was elated to see us because they'd expected that they'd have to wait there for us to complete the through trip.

By afternoon, the rescue operation had become extremely organized and more than 60 people had showed up to volunteer help. Three of the rescued cavers were taken to a hospital via ambulance, and another was flown via helicopter to be treated for mild hypothermia. All five returned home safely that night.

See also: Simmons-Mingo rescue on the NSS discussion forum, photos by Brian Masney

[trip] Bennett Cave Survey Part 2

2007-04-21T23:59:00.000-04:00

Tucker County Speleological Survey headed back into Bennett Cave this month. Our team - Dave Riggs, Brian Masney, John Harman, and Josh Flaugher - headed in to survey above the waterfall. I scaled the questionably-old rope first, getting soaked in the process. One bye one, everyone climbed the 20ft waterfall, each being drenched with cold water in the process. At the top, we found a small chamber with a sketchy 15ft chimney rigged with a length of webbing. Brian scaled up it and examined the passage above - another waterfall climb. Already chilled, we decided to abort the waterfall survey until next month (with wetsuits and extra dry polypro).

We then headed downstream and surveyed about 150ft of muddy passage, (almost) killing the left side lead. Doug McCarty's team surveyed from the big room into the waterfall room, then under and towards the left.

Bennett Cave lineplot as of April, 2007.

After exiting the cave, a local took us to a "hole" which had recently opened on the property. We walked over with him, and I went in to check out this new virgin cave. It consists of a single 40ft gothic-shaped passage, with nice vertical fluting. The ceiling is between 10 and 20ft tall, but the cave is never more than 4ft wide. With a bit of digging in the floor, it may be pushed further - but no air movement was noted.

Dave Riggs exiting the small new Tucker County cave. Photo by Brian Masney.

Finally, John, Josh, and I did a surface survey from the trash-filled FRO to an insurgance point where the stream drops 10ft down enlarged joints, to the Bennett Cave entrance.

Bennett Cave is now just over 800ft long. Remaining leads are the downstream main passage, under waterfall right passage (low and wide), and whatever wet passage exists above the waterfall.

Bennett Cave is located on private property and is CLOSED for recreational caving. The Tucker County Speleological Survey has been granted permission explicitly to survey this cave.

See also: Brian Masney's photos

[trip] Pendleton Caving - Sinnett, Sites

2007-03-27T23:59:00.000-04:00

In celebration of Spring Break, John Harman, Josh Flaugher, Cullen Hencke, and Dave Riggs spent a few days caving in Pendleton County, WV.

On Tuesday, March 27, we met up at John's house in Germany Valley (Schoolhouse Cave is literally in his front yard) and were joined by Chris Eleyette. The five of us took a trip into Sinnett-Thorn Mountain Cave, which is gated and requires access through the Sinnett-Thorn Cave Conservancy. John, Josh, and Cullen have recently made several trips into Sinnett-Thorn, but it was Chris's and my first visit.

We went into the gated Sinnett Cave entrance and followed the main passage, which mostly consisted of very dry canyon passage. We then climbed up the spiraling Silo into the massive, strike-oriented big room. The big room is completely floored with breakdown, and has a steeply sloping ceiling following the dip of the limestone. The walls of the big room are lined with fossil brachiopods, meaning that it is likely formed in the Corriganville member of the Helderberg (similar to Cave Mountain Cave). This long room has a very impressive volume, which hints at some large passage hidden beneath the breakdown.

CMI-sponsored professional caver Cullen Hencke climbs The Silo in Sinnett Cave. Photo: John Harman.

After playing around in the big room for a bit, we attempted the Thorn Mountain Cave connection. A climb up from the big room leads to a wet and muddy uphill crawl - which some kind soul has floored with plastic - with the most powerful cave wind that I've ever felt. A low and wide, upsloping room leads to a tiny triangular crawlway about 15 feet long. This passage supposedly leads to the Sinnett Annex, but neither John nor I could fit, thus nixing our Thorn Mountain connection attempt.

We attempted to push two other tight passages near the big room, looking for a rumoured "lost" connection to the waterfall, but were unsuccessful. We then climbed back down the silo and hopped down into a stream canyon, going upstream to the waterfall room. After much searching, we located the passage up at waterfall level, which requires a very low crawl after a sketchy climb. After a full day caving, we headed back out through more crawls than I remembered on the way in.

Josh, Cullen, Chris, John, and Dave outside the gated entrance to Sinnett-Thorn Mountain Cave. Photo: John Harman.

After a warm dinner in the sprawling metropolis of Franklin (home of CMI!), we headed back to John's and camped on his beautiful property in Germany Valley. We did a bit of covert rappelling that night, and on Wednesday morning got a tour of some of the incredible sinkholes and karst features of Germany Valley.

Midnight rappelling in a secret Germany Valley pit. Photo: John Harman.

We headed back to Franklin and met up with Jessica Morning, then headed to Sites Cave. A brisk hike up the mountain on a well-marked trail leads to the gaping entrance to Sites Cave, a very popular vertical cave since the 1950's. We rigged from a tree high up on the hill, which gave a nice free drop down the entrance pit. I rappelled down first, with rope bag in tow - it repeatedly twisted around the rope on the way down, causing much fumbling and cursing. While Sites is nearly 300 foot deep, the rappel is about 180 feet interrupted several times by sloping dirt ledges - the deepest purely vertical drop is just over 100 feet. The sloping passages appear to roughly follow the steep dip of the Helderberg.

Dave Riggs on rappel at Sites Cave. Photo: John Harman.

At the bottom is a nice strike-oriented chamber with lots of formations and many sleeping bats. We had heard that a dead deer at the bottom was cause for alarm, but the smell had worked its way out by the time we visited the cave. The climb back out took plenty of time, and the weather turned slightly worse - occasionally spitting light rain on those waiting at the top. The dreaded "finger" only grabbed the rope once or twice, but nobody got stuck by it. It turned out to be a great trip, and we followed it up with another (better) meal in Franklin, then parted ways. I made it back to Morgantown by midnight and slept like a brick after two full days of caving.

Cullen Hencke and Jessica Morning in the decorated lower room of Sites Cave. Photo: John Harman.

[trip] Cook Pot

2007-03-24T23:59:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, March 24, I headed down to southern Pocahontas County to help John Chenger on a bat project. We were to find and descend Cook Pot, recording temperature and humidity data while looking for evidence of past bat roosting in the cave.

Doug Medville's description of the cave entrance didn't help us much - it took over an hour to find the cave, which was just a few hundred feet from the road. The entrance to Cook Pot is located where a small spring-fed blind valley meets the main stream. The spring's water flows down over a small limestone waterfall, and the cave's entrance is located in the outcropping. The narrow, sloping entrance crevice opens to a narrow pit about 30 foot deep, with a smaller 10 foot pit offset from a ledge. Continuing through an opening at floor level, a 20 foot pit is reached. A 150 foot rope may be used to drop this entrance series by using a bolt which is placed at the top of this lower pit. The remains of old wooden ladders are still located in these entrance pits, presumably from the early 1970's.

From the next room, a low stream crawl for about 100 feet leads to the top of a waterfall going into a 45 foot pit. Here one chimneys out over narrow canyon passage at ceiling level for about 30 feet to a platform where rigging allows a free drop into the middle of the beautiful pit. The slot at the top of this drop can be a bit tight.

Dave Riggs ascends Cook Pot's big pit.

From the bottom of the big pit, we headed downstream following a wildly meandering cave stream until it dropped out from under us at the 15 foot Fork Falls. Continuing forward for a few tens of feet, the passage intersects another cave stream flowing down from another waterfall, Spoon Falls. We followed this stream downstream as 40 foot tall canyon passage intersected with many domepits and interrupted with several huge breakdown blocks.

Dave Riggs posing in front of Spoon Falls.

After returning to the big pit, we went upstream for a few hundred feet, where the passage consists of very tall, dry, gothic arched hallways. We then headed back to the surface, and were surprised to find that we'd spent 5.5 hours in cave. Cook Pot has over a mile of surveyed passage, and we only saw a small amount of it - despite being off the beaten path, it was a very enjoyable vertical cave.

See also: more of John Chenger's Cook Pot photos.

All photos copyright John Chenger.

[trip] Bennett Cave Survey

2007-03-17T23:59:00.000-04:00

This month, the Tucker County Speleological Survey had a huge turnout - Kevin Keplinger, Brian Masney, Dave Riggs, Justin Keplinger, Doug Bell, Jesse Miller, Josh Flaugher, John Harman and Doug McCarty all showed up even though the roads were covered with snow and ice. Thanks to the incredible hospitality of the landowners, we were permitted to survey Bennett Cave, and were given a warm, dry place to change clothes - thanks very much!

The entrance to Bennett Cave is a six foot deep crevice opening in a small limestone outcrop in the middle of a valley wall. A muddy talus slope leads down into a large entrance room with dimensions roughly 45x25 feet, and a height of up to 20 feet. A free-climbable twisted pit leads down to a lower room of about 10 foot in diameter with a 15 foot ceiling. The entrance slope and climbdown are both littered with broken glass, discarded small appliances, and animal remains. A 100' rope rigged outside the entrance serves as a useful handline for exploring the cave.

Josh Flaugher in the entrance to Bennett Cave. Photo by Brian Masney.

From this lower room, a very tight pinch in the floor leads to a low, wide crawl, which then opens up into breakdown into another large room. This breakdown-floored room is 45x35 feet, and up to 25 feet tall. To the right, one may climb down through breakdown to a chamber featuring a pair of 20 foot tall waterfalls. One waterfall is rigged with rope, and has going passage at the top. The waterfall room appears to be formed along a small fault or angular unconformity. To the left, one may follow the trunk stream passage, up to 8 foot in diameter, for over 200 feet. The floor is lined with large cobbles and the stream meanders back and forth, eventually disappearing under the right wall. Two high leads go in opposite directions at the end of the dry stream passage, as another small infeeder joins the passage.

Brian Masney, Johsh Flaugher, John Harman, and Jesse Miller at the base of the left waterfall. Photo by John Harman.

Right waterfall showing possible fault from upper left to lower right. Photo by John Harman.

We split up into two survey teams, with one team surveying the upper passages, and my team starting below. Our (lower) team thought that we had gotten the short end of the stick as we surveyed through a steep, tight pinch and into very low passage. However, as soon as we broke into the lower big room and saw the two waterfalls and booming trunk passage, we were all completely elated! Combined, our groups surveyed over 400 feet of passage in the two levels of the cave. We will return next month to complete the survey, mopping up the two leads at the end of the stream passage and the lead atop the waterfall.

Josh Flaugher in the lower stream trunk. Photo by Brian Masney.

Bennett Cave is located on private property and is CLOSED for recreational caving. The Tucker County Speleological Survey has been granted permission explicitly to survey this cave.

See also: Brian Masney's photos, John Harman's photos.

[trip] Beaverhole Upper

2007-03-14T23:21:00.000-04:00

Rather than suffer through another grotto meeting on a perfectly good Wednesday night, the WVU Student Grotto opted to go caving instead. Gayle Suppa, Jessica Powell, John Neubert, Tom Lilly, Chris Eleyette, John Harman, Kyle McMillan, and Dave Riggs met at 5:30pm and carpooled down into the North side of the Cheat Canyon. John Harman seemed disappointed that the old logging road didn't give his Jeep enough of a workout.

We had excellent weather, and thanks to the new daylight savings change, we had plenty of daylight. After gearing up and hiking a bit down the road, we snapped some obligatory photos and then headed into Beaverhole Upper Cave. Half the group decided to take the high-and-dry big upper passages, while the other half preferred the low-and-wet nasty sewer passage instead - to each his own, I suppose. After exploring the back half of the cave, our groups finally met back up in one of the larger junction rooms.

Making its debut on this trip was Kyle's new "cave radio", a low frequency wireless radio from the mining industry. This beast is the size of a full backpack, weighs probably 25lbs, and has a 4 foot long PVC antenna which needs to be carried with it. Several poor souls got volunteered to help carry this radio into the cave for its maiden broadcast. Unfortunately, we were never able to successfully carry a transmission from within the cave, and then Kyle made a "terminal adjustment" to the antenna, abruptly ending the experiment.

We headed back outside, collected a bag of trash from around the cave, and then climbed back up to the road. On our way back up, a sketchy-looking Jeep came down the road at us - Rich Finley and Jason Thomas had arrived just in time for dinner. Rich tried to impress us by doing a terrifying hill climb, but John one-upped him by doing the climb in reverse! We made it back to Morgantown by 10:30pm and had a pancake feast at IHOP. It was a very fun evening trip - much better than a grotto meeting!

Bowden Breakdown

2007-03-12T21:52:00.000-04:00

According to Kevin Frick and Jesse Miller, there's some new breakdown in the entrance room of Bowden Cave, one of the most frequently-visited caves in the state. Thanks to Jesse for the following photos. Note for scale that he is 6' 4" tall.

All photos by Jesse Miller

Cheat Canyon Dye Retrieval Pt. 2

2007-03-11T22:41:00.000-04:00

Today John Tudek, Tom Lilly, and Dave Riggs hiked into the Cheat Canyon to pull dye traps and examine some interesting karst features along the way. We met at 10:30am in Morgantown, then drove out to the NYDC-area landowner's house. We immediately set out for what would be a beautiful day - "warm" temperatures in the high 40's, and not a single cloud in the sky all day. The sun had nearly melted all the snow in the canyon by midday.

We hiked down from his farm, then headed upstream all the way to the Downstream Dig, stopping only briefly for a few photos on the way. The cave itself was still iced shut, so we quickly retrieved and replaced the dye trap in the spring and moved on.

Tom and John examine Hanging Falls, upstream from the Downstream Dig.

The next stop was the twin springs at river level. When we finally arrived, the springs themselves were completely underwater and not visible from the shore. Unfortunately, the Cheat was much higher during the last two weeks - at least three feet higher than normal level, as evidenced by debris lodged in trees and shrubbery close to the shore. Among the debris were our two dye traps - one left up on the shoreline, one was tangled and hanging up in the trees! We retrieved and replaced the traps, this time tying rocks to the string to serve as anchors. Hopefully they were in the water when (if) the dye passed through the springs.

Dye trap suspended about three feet in the air after a flood event.

We also spent some time enlarging the sucking hole located about 30 feet above these springs. We made short work of several hundred pounds of fractured limestone, exposing a larger hole which still howls air into it. This hole may have some serious promise. We hope to return soon when the ground is less frozen and digging is easier.

The enlarged sucking hole with glove for scale.

We then made the long hike back out of the canyon, arriving at the rim of the gorge at 4:30pm. Now that all the dye traps have been collected, we're all waiting impatiently for the results - hopefully we'll prove a hydrological connection between New Years Day Cave and Druid Cave!

See also: more photos by Dave Riggs

[trip] Druid Cave Dye Retrieval

2007-03-09T23:59:00.000-05:00

To take advantage of the 50-degree heatwave today, Brian Masney and I decided that we'd head into Druid Cave to recover the dye traps place there just two weeks ago. We met at about 2:30pm on Friday afternoon, then carpooled in Brian's truck to the Cheat Canyon. Morgantown was very recently hit with a sudden blast of snow, so we were worried about the amount remaining in the canyon despite the temporary warm temperatures.

Brian drove his truck down the start of the Druid road, and we slid down the entire length of the first hill - yikes! Brian hopped out, quickly installed chains on his front tires, then tested things out by running back up and down the hill - a huge improvement! Despite several inches of snow, he drove us all the way down to the cave without incident.

We geared up and made it to the Druid Cave entrance at about 4pm. We were "greeted" by an odd bat, who flew out the main entrance and did some laps around the area for a bit, before we'd even entered the cave. The two of us headed into the cave, rigged the main drop, and rappelled the first drop with the welcome help of a webbing etrier.

Not wanting to make an expedition of the trip, we wasted no time in moving through the cave. We barreled through the high & dry canyon passage, then rappelled the second drop. Both armed with foot ascenders, we made short work of the waterfall ascent (which did not seem to have increased in flow at all, even with a large amount of snow melt this week) and the climb-ups.

At the walking stream passage, Brian stayed behind to try and photograph the sleeping bats, while I headed forward to the Big Nasty to retrieve the dye traps. I made sure not to handle the dye traps themselves, but rather only the strings, and I individually double-bagged and labeled each one. They were hauled out of the cave in a hard plastic container. Like the previous waterfall, the Big Nasty did not appear to have a higher water level than it did two weeks prior.

The trip back out was business-like and without incident. Except for the "special" bat when we arrived, none of the others were disturbed by our visit. Amazingly, we managed to do the entire trip in just under 2.5 hours, catching a glimpse of daylight as we exited the cave. Brian hauled us back up and out of the canyon, and we were back in town and eating a great dinner at Black Bear by 8:15pm.

We plan to hike back into the canyon this Sunday to pull the rest of the dye traps and investigate some interesting new karst features that were discovered recently.

[trip] Bowden Cave

2007-02-05T23:59:00.000-05:00

Kathrine Gurtler, Tom Lilly, Chris Eleyette, and Dave Riggs took a Monday evening trip into Bowden Cave. We drove down from Morgantown, meeting Chris in Elkins, and arrived at the cave around 6:45pm. We took the standard tourist trip in -- up the main trunk passage to the breakdown room, climbed up to see the dome, then headed up the chilly watercourse to the gate. On the way back out, we decided to do a bit of exploring, and followed the stream entirely rather than taking the dry, upper paleo passage. This route is not recommended! We turned around and took the standard way back out.

The wise ones changed clothes in the mouth of the cave, the rest ran for the vehicles and changed in record time -- my cave suit managed to freeze solid before I could peel it off. We had a suprisingly good dinner in Elkins and met a friend of Katherine's who had actually helped build the gate in Bowden and is a family friend of Will White. We made it back to Morgantown at about 12:45, after a very enjoyable caving trip.

Ridge walking in the Cheat Canyon

2007-01-31T19:13:00.000-05:00

On late Friday afternoon, Jan 19th, 2007, Brian Masney, Mary Schmidt and Dave Riggs went to the Cheat Canyon to do some ridge walking for the Druid/New Years Day Cave system. Dave Riggs has been analyzing the line plots between the Druid and New Years Day Cave systems and something does not look right. It shows the end of the New Years Day Caves and Druid Caves several hundred feet away from each other. We decided to do some ridge walking of our own to see if we could figure out where the problem was.

Brian drove his truck down the Druid Road and parked it right above the cave entrance. We went to the main Druid entrance and got an updated GPS coordinate of the cave entrance. We wanted to make sure that was not the issue. Later on, we found out that the new coordinate matched almost exactly with the original coordinate of the cave. We are also confident with the New Years Day Cave coordinate since it is placed correctly on the topo map.

We hiked across the mountain from the Druid entrance and followed the limestone outcrop. There is a side lead in Druid that has less than a mile of passage in it. Several years ago when Greg Springer and company surveyed the side lead, they found a dead end passage where roots were in the ceiling and some surface debris was nearby. Dave used his GIS program to calculate the GPS coordinate of that location. We hiked around that area in the limestone but we did not find anything interesting. We didn't spend much time on that since that wouldn't help us get any closer to the deeper sections of Druid and New Years Day Caves.

Our next goal was to locate a spot where some surface water goes into New Years Day Cave. This is near the far back of the current survey and it was aptly named the Disney Ride by Dave Riggs. You have to crawl through a small slot near the ceiling where the water just pours onto you from the ceiling. Dave used his GIS program to determine where that should have been on the surface. We hiked to that coordinate and it was located in a stream bed with some water flowing in it. We followed the stream bed slightly downhill and we found a spot where all of the water disappeared underground. There was no viable place to dig. According to the GIS program, we would have to go down about 100' to get to New Years Day Cave.

After that, we hiked over towards New Years Day Cave. One of the GIS maps that Dave has is an elevation model of the state that was generated by a satellite. There is a depression in the main stream further downstream from New Years Day Cave. We wanted to check that out. There are a few waterfalls there and you can see some large cliffs on the other side of the hill. Unfortunately, they are on the opposite side of Lick Run compared to Druid. We did not have time to check these out since we had to be back in Morgantown.

Later that night, Dave looked at the data for New Years Day Cave and Druid Caves. Since we had an accurate elevation of the Druid Cave entrance, Dave was able to enter that data in his GIS program. The vertical line plots between the two caves are still in line with each other, with New Years Day Cave slightly higher than Druid. This is what we want.

The horizontal distance between the end of the two surveys is still pretty far off. New Years Day Cave has over 3,300' of surveyed passage and Druid Cave has 2.31 miles of surveyed passage. There are no loops to close and these are very long surveys. The likelihood of error in the two surveys is very high. A slight error in one survey shot would be compounded in later shots. With that in mind, Dave used the updated elevation of the Druid entrance to determine where the 3D cave passage should lie in the hillside. Our current data shows the end of Druid Cave sticking 70' out of the hillside. If the passage is moved to the left, then it shows the cave passage in the hillside where it should be. This puts it very close to New Years Day Cave.

This is good news. I hope that I have the same enthusiasm the next time I am surveying in New Years Day Cave. I am anxious to get back in there so that we can finish this project.

[trip] Scott Hollow

2007-01-27T23:59:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, Jan 27, 2007, Ben Mirable, Brian Masney, Mary Schmidt, Kyle McMillan, Ryan Ellers, Ashley ??, and Dave Riggs took a tourist trip into Scott Hollow Cave, in Monroe County WV.

Most of us met up on Friday night at beautiful Casa Mirable, near Pipestem Resort State Park. While Ben had plenty of room for everyone, I chose to sleep outside in the freezing cold to escape Kyle's mammoth snoring. In the morning, we caravaned down to Monroe County.

Kyle, Strongman Ben, Dave, Brian, Mary, Ryan, and Ashley outside the entrance house of Scott Hollow Cave.

The entrance to Scott Hollow Cave is located inside a locked house, which is located in the bottom of a giant sinkhole. The owner, Mike Dore, has put a lot of work into the cave since it was discovered in 1984, and also gives paid wild cave tours there. Exploration and surveying are still ongoing, and the cave is currently at almost 30 miles - 3rd longest in WV and 13th longest in the US. A metal culvert with rebar rungs leads about 25' down a windy tunnel into walking stream passage. The limestone dips steeply here, and the passage goes downdip along the Hillsdale Limestone / Maccrady Shale contact, losing over 400' of elevation very quickly.

Within 10 minutes of entering the cave, we somehow managed to become separated from Brian and Mary. Luckily, we managed to cross paths at the Junction Room, where several smaller passages intersect. The group from there continued on until we reached our first destination, Mystic River.

Trunk passage in Scott Hollow's Mystic River. Note the high water mark on the left wall.

Mystic River is a massive trunk passage which appears to be up to 50' wide and up to 75' tall in places, and parallels the strike of the syncline. It appears to be stratigraphically-higher in the Greenbrier (lower Pickaway?), while lower in elevation than the entrance passages (which were in the bottom of the Greenbrier, the blue Sinks Grove and Hillsdale). The water level was in some spots merely inches deep, but for several hundreds of yards we were wading in waist-deep, icy cold water! While the current wasn't terribly strong, the water was deep enough to occlude underwater obstacles like rocks and potholes. The amount of water flowing through there was impressive enough, but to marvel at the amount of water that formed this passage (and hinted at by the high water mark) was mind-blowing! I'm told that this huge passage is itself over 4 miles long, but 1.5 miles are only accessible by sump diving.

We took a left turn at a very large fork and arrived at a beautiful 4' tall double waterfall. As the underground river breaches a layer of chert, it drops abruptly through the limestone; it breaches the chert about 10' upstream as a mid-river sinkhole, with whitewater pouring in from all sides. The sight is quite impressive.

Kyle at the double waterfall.

We continued on to the beginning of a section called Iron City, which consisted of a huge hall floored with breakdown and rubble. Our original plan was to attempt a trip to Kansas, but we'd eaten up too much time on the way. We headed back the way we'd come, wading through the waist-deep water, then climbing up the seemingly-endless breakdown hill as we hiked back updip towards the entrance. The climb back out the access culvert seemed twice as long after 7 hours underground.

It was a pleasant surprise to find warm, autumn-like weather waiting for us on the surface, and we were even treated to a lunar halo. After changing clothes, our filthy group headed to the town of Pickaway for some excellent pizza and dessert at the Pizza Barn - highly recommended if you're in the area!

All photos are ©2007 Brian Masney

Access to Scott Hollow Cave is restricted to experienced cavers, who have been NSS members for over a year, and are at least 18 years old.

Elklick Ridge Walking

2007-01-20T12:59:00.000-05:00

The Tucker County Speleological Survey met and spent a cold day ridge walking along Elklick Valley. We spent a few hours tracking down the landowners for permission, then rediscovered some very cool caves, which we'll re-visit when we're more prepared for a wet and vertical trip.

Jason Thomas looks for cave passage in Elklick Spring.

[trip] 8 Days of TAG Caving

2007-01-14T13:54:00.000-05:00

Brian Masney, Garth Dixon, Dave Riggs, Judi Wasilewski, and Mary Schmidt spent part of the week surrounding New Year's caving in TAG.

Tues 26 December: The day after Christmas, I woke at 4 AM to fly home. After arriving, I re-packed for TAG, then met Brian and Dave Riggs for Mexican food. We met Garth at Brian's house, where the three of us spent a few absurd minutes chasing Brian's escaped cat around the parking lot. Cat captured, we finally headed South.

After driving past Wytheville, we started looking at the Gazetteer for possible camping spots near roads dead-ending in National Forest. We set up tents in the snow.

Wed 27 December: In the morning we awoke to bear hunters and their barking dogs. Awakening to hunters was to be a continual theme of our trip... hunting season also influenced our choice of caves, since many TAG caves are on hunting clubs' property and inaccessible during hunting season. After a few more hours of driving, we arrived in TAG. We were hoping to drop Larson's Well; however, the landowner was not home. A neighbor led us to another cave entrance, which had a beautiful sinkhole with a waterfall flowing in. Brian pulled out his laptop to check the GPS coordinates against his database. The cave matched the description of Waterworks cave. We were equipped more for bouncing pits than wet crawls, so we headed instead to South Pittsburg, TN. South Pittsburg Pit was recently purchased and opened by the SCCi. It is a beautiful pit.

We headed to a campsite near Scottsboro, AL, that WV folks have used often for TAG trips: Goose Pond Colony. We set up tents near the lake.

Thurs 28 December:At sunrise, we were awakened by the sounds of World War III (or, duck hunters in close proximity). Later we saw the bumper sticker: "If it flies, it dies."
We headed out in search of 3 pits: Clod Hole, Will Well, and Rhonda Well. We bushwacked for 6 hours without success. Our 1989 directions and GPS coordinates utterly failed us. We were looking for a gully... and an old logging trail. (We found several.) One of Brian's friends had instructed us to find "a grove of cedar trees - but they're common around here"). We stopped at a cave owner's house to inquire about Sawmill Well. He was not home, but his daughter gave us a phone number for future reference. Back at Goose Pond, Dave and Judi soon arrived.

Fri 29 December: A large group of people were planning to camp until New Year's Day at the TAG Cave In site. On the way we stopped at Cemetery Pit. It was pretty, and as evidenced by the elephant tracks and smooth polished rocks inside, quite popular. We wanted to visit the waterfalls (and avoid the map area called "3D maze"), but were thwarted by Ed's Ledge, a 30' drop that required more than a handline. We ran into 2 other cavers at the bottom who told us to look for their caving website; I haven't been able to find it. It would be nice to go back, and also visit Rusty's Pit, located on the same SCCi preserve.

At the TAG site, we met many wonderful TAG cavers, and also ran into Denise and Mike Hopkins, whom Brian met via Flickr.

Sat 30 December: Mike H. took us to Flowing Stone cave, which required a 2-mile, hourlong hike (Brian, as usual, carried the rope the entire time without complaint). Flowing Stone is a beautiful 225' pit. Water flows over a 50' flowstone formation near the top. The floor and walls are also entirely formations.

Dave and Judi at some of the many flowstone formations in Flowing Stone Cave
Originally uploaded by Brian Masney.

Sunday, New Year's Eve: Overnight rain had soaked through our tents and sleeping bags. Wet socks and wet boots were unappealing. We had coughs and chest colds. Dave and Judy headed home. Instead of caving, Garth, Brian, and I spent the morning hiking at Cloudland Canyon. We intended to bounce The Diggings Pit, a 141' pit near the highway. We ended up descending only ~50' to a dry ledge, not wishing to get soaked. The rope was slimed for the rest of the trip. New Year's Eve was spent hanging our wet gear up in a cheap hotel room, doing laundry and listening to trains go by.

Monday, New Year's Day: We had permits for 2 days in Fern Cave, a long beautiful cave system that also includes 404' Surprise Pit. Our plan was to bounce Surprise Pit one day, and spend the next day exploring some heavily decorated horizontal sections. We had difficulty following the trail, thus beginning our daily allowance of bushwacking. We first found the Morgue Entrance (closed), then after more bushwacking, the Twin sinks/Surprise entrance.Surprise Pit was a great rappel, but I'd like to do it in lower water conditions next time. It was extremely foggy so Brian did not bring any photography equipment into the pit.

Mary Schmidt at the top of Suprise Pit
Originally uploaded by Brian Masney.

Do I look pissed in this picture? It's because the cave ate my pack. We rigged in a spot that we had been assured would provide a "completely dry" rappel and ascent away from the 430' waterfall. However, we went during unususally high water conditions. The rope landed at the bottom of a nasty 30' breakdown climb in high winds and spraying water. Brian was the first down and moved the rope so that Garth and I landed at the top of the breakdown pile.

When it was time to ascend, Brian swung out over the pit from the top of the breakdown pile, but his swing was arrested when the rope caught on a rock and jerked him to a halt. Not wanting to slam into the wall when it was his turn to ascend, Garth came up with an elegant solution: I tied myself off to a rock and fed him out on my rack so he could start ascending in the dry part of the pit without having to swing out.

I was the last one up, and had to downclimb the breakdown. It was a tough, sheer climb, complete with "portable handholds" that almost took me with them when they fell. Cavers typically carry garbage bags that can be used as ponchos for water protection -- I tried using one for the first time. It was worse than useless. The wind whipped it up in front of my face, blocking my vision. The climb took forever because I was trying to return the extra ~ 80' of rope slack to its original position at the bottom of the drop (so that it could be pulled up later without snagging on rocks). The rope kept catching on the sharp outcrops of rock and I was continually stopping and backtracking to free the rope.

I started losing my balance while climbing and dropped my pack. It rolled... and kept going and going. I looked for it when I got to the bottom, but it was so coated in mud that earlier in the day, I had been having trouble seeing it from a few feet away. Meanwhile I was getting soaked. The wind was blowing so much water into my eyes that I couldn't keep them open, and I feared losing my contact lenses (I forgot to pack glasses, so I would be screwed for the rest of the week if I lost a contact). I was plenty warm, but ascending in water spray is potentially dangerous, so after fruitlessly searching for a short while, I headed up without the pack. It took less than 50 feet to get out of the water.

If I had to do it over again, I would coil the slack in the rope, attach it to me at the top of the breakdown pile, and swing out into the pit like Tarzan. It would be better to risk a high-speed encounter with the pit wall than do that nasty downclimb again.

I was pleased that I frogged the 404' in 28 minutes -- the tallest pit I have frogged. When we left late that night in the cold and dark, we bushwacked straight down the mountain according to our GPS coordinates.

Tues 2 Jan: We dropped Moses' Tomb, a lovely 230' pit. I used my new Ropewalker system for the first time -- and learned how to downclimb with a Ropewalker after Brian's makeshift flashbulb gun went off in my hand (ouch!) and I had to descend for a new one (a commercial model for smaller bulbs). Unfortunately, the smaller bulbs incompletely lit the pit.

Wed 3 Jan: We obtained permission for Sawmill Well, a nice 155' open air pit. Afterward, we drove home, arriving shortly after midnight. This left us with a few days of vacation to recover from our vacation!

Brian Masney at the bottom of Sawmill Well
Originally uploaded by Brian Masney.

More of Brian's photos are here.

[gis] GIS Data For Cavers

2006-12-10T22:41:00.000-05:00

This posting is an index of places to find GIS data relevant to cavers. The following location-specific depots should have topographic, geologic, hydrologic, etc. data in some usable raster or vector format, and the data should be available for free. I'll try and keep this list up to date as I become aware of more relevant sources.

West Virginia:

WV GIS Data Clearinghouse - The place for WV data. If you're getting topographic maps, I recommend the USFS maps over the USGS maps if available, as they're of higher quality.
WVDEP GIS Server

Tennessee:

TN Spatial Data Server

Alabama:

AL Metadata Portal

Georgia:

GA GIS Clearinghouse - Login required (no fee)
Center for Spatial Analysis Technologies - Topo maps, no login required

Virginia:

Radford U's GIS Spatial Data Server - note that many VA sites have outdated (broken) links to Radford's GIS site, this is their new URL
Hoakie Library GIS Data
VA Dept. of Forestry
VA Division of Mineral Resources - Data not available for download?

Kentucky:

KGS Geospatial Data Library
KY Division of Geographic Information
Kentucky.gov - lots of great interactive GIS mapping utilities

Canada:

GeoBase

General:

David Doyle's GIS Links - very comprehensive, state-by-state listing of GIS data resources

[trip] New Years Day Cave Survey

2006-11-22T09:34:00.000-05:00

Ben Franklin is often attributed to saying:

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

Brian Masney, Dave Riggs, and Jason Thomas are insane. On Saturday, Nov. 18, we headed back into New Years Day Cave again with the hopes of making the elusive connection with Druid Cave. Once again we hoped that this time would be different, and once again the cave got the best of us.

Druid Cave, with over 2.3 surveyed miles of crumbling, muddy passage, has a much-deserved reputation as one of the nastiest caves in West Virginia. In fact, some would consider it an evil cave. When the 8+ hour travel time for survey trips finally became too taxing, the Druid surveyors began looking for an upstream entrance to the cave to make their lives easier. What they found was New Years Day Cave, which has proven to be anything but easier. If Druid was the frying pan, NYDC is the fire.

The three of us met Saturday morning at the rim of the Cheat Canyon. We packed all our gear and started the hike down into the gorge. A weeklong rain had Lick Run roaring with more water than I'd ever seen it move. We suited up into wetsuits and our caving coveralls, packed extra fleece polypro underwear, heating pads, candles, and emergency gear. We not only prepared for the worst, we expected it.

We were in cave before 11am, and were relieved to find the cave stream in the first part of the cave to be at a reasonable level. We moved fast and tried our best to stay dry on the way in. Our goal was to reach some "large" paleo-passage discovered on the last survey trip, in the deepest depths of the cave, where NYDC is known to be at its closest point to Druid Cave. We stormed through the beach crawl, down through a horrible wet crawl, squeezed through the rock-on-rock, dropped down into the sawtooth-lined Whack-A-Mole™ Way, squirmed through Jason's wormhole, dragged ourselves across a wet bedding plane parting, and made our way into another horrible canyon passage. The black rock in this section of the cave will crumble without warning beneath an unsuspecting caver's feet. Water pours in from the ceiling onto your head while the passage meanders into such contortions that it seems to be trying to evade you.

Jason's cave suit, literally shredded by the sawtooth walls before we'd even reached our destination.

After several hundred feet of this hellish passage, we climbed up to the ceiling and crawled through a very nondescript, nearly overlooked squeeze to a parallel passage with a decent-sized, dry, open room. I was amazed. Even more amazing was that this room led to hundreds and hundreds of feet of more dry, open, large passage! We had made our way into a parallel grid of joint-controlled passages, sometimes as wide as 20' with a 20' canyon incision. There were flowstone and drapery formations, the floors and walls were coated with a thin film of mud, but there was no moving water in sight. A cobble-lined stream bed lies in the canyon floor, and very large slabs of breakdown have tumbled down in places. Unfortunately, there was no air movement in this section. We pushed in the upstream direction until our first joint squeezed out, then followed a 90° connector over to the next parallel joint and pushed it for a bit, finding a 30' high dome and lots more mud. Still, no air.

We exited this beautiful passage and crawled back into our stream canyon to follow the air. At this point, the canyon follows the straight-line path and direction of its neighbor passages, as a part of this master joint set. The canyon tightens up, leaving a 12" by 18" tunnel up towards the ceiling, with 10' of narrow, terrifying canyon reaching down below. With no way to go at the bottom, the top was our only way forward. This crawl was certainly too narrow to turn around in, and the canyon below with the crumbling rock walls and floor made it especially dangerous.

I reluctantly volunteered to go in, on the condition that Brian follow me. We started in, pulling our bodies with our fingers and pushing with our toes. The canyon in the floor kept sucking in feet and kneepads, the passage was so narrow that I couldn't turn my head or put my arms back at my side. I crawled for perhaps 50' in the hopes of finding a slightly wider spot, but the passage maintained its torturous dimensions. I shined my StenLight forward and saw nothing but blackness far ahead -- if this passage parallels the larger joint-controlled passages to the side, it could stretch for hundreds and hundreds of feet. More than a bit spooked by the confinement and the thought that a rescue this deep into the cave would be nearly impossible, I decided that I would not go any further. We started the arduous task of backing out, pulling with toes and ankles, pushing with fingertips attached to helpless outstretched arms. It was a long, tiring haul back to passage of kneeling height.

Disappointed with this failure, we opted to survey for a bit in the large, dry passages. We took some time to eat and rest, changed into warmer clothes, and surveyed some nice long shots. Due to how physically exhausted we were, along with time constraints, we surveyed only about 250', leaving many hundreds of feet more to be surveyed and explored in this network of passages. These tall canyons could lead us to a more promising upper or lower level, or they could somehow bypass the nasty canyon crawl that kept us from following the Druid Winds.

On the way out, we no longer cared about trying to stay dry. We barreled out of the cave at record speed while the cave did its best to slow us down. We reached the surface one hour and forty-five brutal minutes later, but New Years Day Cave had the last laugh. The Druid Spirits were especially tough on Jason, his cave suit was literally ripped in half, StenLight was out, his carbide lamp working only in fits. My suit was torn in the shoulders, legs, and knees. All of us were physically beat, we were soaking wet and coated from head to toe with mud, and the temperature outside was in the upper 30°'s. We still had to hike up and out of the Cheat Canyon.

To say that the trip was exhausting would be an understatement. We were in cave for about 11 hours, New Years Day Cave time; this probably equates to days in "lesser" caves. The Druid connection eluded us again, NYDC proved to be every bit as horrid as it has in the past, and everyone involved was ready to swear off caving for good... but we know that next time will be different.

All photos by Brian Masney

[trip] Beaverhole Upper

2006-11-08T11:13:00.000-05:00

After a day of brutal ridge walking in the Cheat Canyon, I met up with John Cunningham, John Tudek, and first-time caver Nicole Bodkin at 5pm. We drove down through Pisgah and into the Cheat Canyon, geared up and headed into Beaverhole Upper Cave. There was no shortage of water flowing through the cave this evening; the back passages had insurging water pouring down from the ceiling and infeeder crevices, the back side was full of leaves and sticks. On the way out, I discovered a brand new room which John T noted as looking suspiciously identical to the previous room.

Afterward, noting all the washed-in debris in the back of the cave, we tried to find the insurgence point in the stream down the road, but the dark and the abundance of leaves on the ground kept it hidden from us. We were back home at 9:30pm. Everyone had a good time and Nicole is eager to go caving again soon.

Ridge Walking in the Cheat Canyon

2006-11-08T11:12:00.001-05:00

Kyle McMillan, Gayle Suppa, and myself -- Dave Riggs -- did some ridge walking down in the Cheat Canyon on Election Day. We met at 10am at Coopers Rock, then hiked the trail out to Raven Rock. From there, we followed the power line cutaway straight down into the gorge. This canyon is incredibly steep! Though the forecast called for rain all day, we had a beautiful day with nothing more than a few sprinkles.

After somehow passing right over the limestone outcrop, we continued down to a sheer vertical drop just a few hundred feet from the river itself. We'd gone too far, and started hiking over to a stream falling over a sandstone shelter cave.

Gayle under the shelter cave. The stream flows down from Beaverhole Lower Cave.

We followed this stream straight up the hill and, as expected, found it to be the stream resurgence of Beaverhole Lower Cave. We spent about 45 minutes in Beaverhole Lower, traveling back in it's single straight-line passage until we were sufficiently bored. Some of the walls are polished smooth from all the caver traffic back in the 60's and 70's, as evidenced by the old signatures back there. Hard to believe that so many people made this brutal hike down for such a boring cave. If nothing else, the cave is interesting in that there are no side leads or tributaries, it's just a single passage extending at least 1300' straight into the mountain.

Kyle and Gayle at the entrance to Beaverhole Lower Cave

Then we followed the limestone outcrop, hoping to find something new and exciting. Travel was very slow as the terrain was extremely steep and slippery, at some points bordering on dangerous. We found a 40' high limestone cliff with a 2' - 4' diameter cave passage up in the cliff, but weren't able to safely get close enough to check it out. Vert gear will be required to investigate it.

Limestone cliff with small cave passage visible up towards the top/middle

We traveled a bit farther, just enough to spot a very large valley and an 80' tall waterfall over a limestone cliff in the distance. It's enough to make me want to brave the brutal hike through the canyon again to check it out. We were back to Morgantown by just after 4pm and had a well-deserved meal at IHOP. We then met the WVUSG at 5pm and I went with them to Beaverhole Upper.

See: My Photos

Raese on Vampire Bats

2006-11-02T18:21:00.000-05:00

Republican WV Senate candidate John Raese was interviewed on PBS's Outlook show on Oct. 12. Raese is CEO of Greer Industries, the only group of people who get more excited about limestone than cavers do. The following excerpt from the interview is Raese talking about the sorts of government regulation he'd like to do away for the benefit of small business (like his own):

I sit around and battle the endangered species act when I have to sit around and follow how many vampire bats are in a quarry that I have -- send two people down to see how many vampire bats we have. Is that a good law?

He is likely referring to those pesky endangered "vampire" bats in that derned Hellhole Cave (15th longest cave in the US, home to 45% of the world's population of Virginia Big-Eared Bats). The entire interview is full of great quotes, and I recommend that all West Virginians of voting age read the transcript in full. More info on the issue with Greer and Hellhole is available here.

Update: Raese lost.

2006 Bridge Day Rappel

2006-10-26T22:50:00.000-04:00

Monongahela Grotto Team Photo Gallery from the 2006 Bridge Day rappel.

Jason Thomas rappels off the New River Gorge Bridge. Photo by Don Ferguson.

[trip] Caving in TAG

2006-10-12T16:01:00.000-04:00

On Oct. 5 - 8, Brian Masney, Mary Schmidt, Judi Wasilewski, and Dave Riggs took a trip down to TAG to drop some classic pits. Our original plan was to photograph Fantastic Pit then head to the TAG Fall Cave-In, but we decided to skip the Cave-In entirely and squeeze in as much caving as possible instead.

We hit the road from Morgantown at about 2pm on Thursday and headed South. We met Judi in VA, and then headed down to the tip of Georgia. We finally pulled into the Crockford Pigeon Mountain Wildlife Reserve just after midnight, set up camp and went to bed.

Day 1: Ellison's Cave

We woke up early Friday morning and gathered up all our caving gear. A second, larger caving group showed up as we were getting ready to leave, but they were a bit less organized than we were. The trail up to Ellison's Cave starts down at Blue Hole, the cave's resurgence. The hike is over a mile uphill, and this hike is exhausting when you're loaded down with gear and rope.

Brian ready to hike up Pigeon Mountain with 900' of rope in tow

Brian, Mary, Judi, and Dave at the entrance to Ellison's Cave

We reached the unimpressive crack-in-the-ground which is the preferred entrance to do Fantastic Pit and got dressed. After a climb-down, the cave consists of nice walking stream passage (very dry this day) called The Ecstasy, which leads to the 120' Warm-Up Pit. We rigged from a couple bolts in the ceiling and ran our rope through some deep rope grooves worn into the rock, no rope pad necessary -- hooray for PMI. From the Warm-Up Pit, you head up a few nuisance climbs, then to a 20' ascent. From here, it's a short path to a traverse line under a short ledge to The Attic, looking out over Fantastic Pit.

Fantastic Pit is the deepest known pit in the Continental US, a 586' free rappel down a beautiful vertical-walled shaft. We rigged our 900' rope to a massive boulder, tied a knot in the end, then lowered most of it down using a rack to keep it at a safe speed. Brian repelled down first, occasionally shouting or whistling to hear the amazing echo. All of a sudden we heard him shout "F@#%!" and everything went quiet as we all felt our stomachs sink... Brian radioed up that he was hanging 40' off the floor but had reached the knot at the end of the rope. We'd just barely short-rigged the pit. Rather than risk being lowered from above, he changed over and ascended back up. Even though his foot ascender broke on the way, he still made it to the top in what seemed like record time.

We re-rigged the rope, and this time I was the guinea pig to try it out. The ride down seemed to take forever, and the amazing reverberating echo from the pit was absolutely haunting. I finally reached the bottom of the shaft, got off rope, and discovered that my cheap radio no longer worked. Communication from top to bottom is practically impossible without one, and Judi was halfway to the bottom before I knew for sure that she was on rope! One by one, the rest of our team made it to the bottom and got ready for a long wait and a long ascent. I was the first to ascend back out, and was admittedly nervous about it. Not only would I be the first one up our only rope, the biggest ascent I'd ever attempted, but I'd be also be helping Brian photograph the pit by firing off several flashes on the way up.

Brian gave me a quick lesson in the operation of a flashbulb. I was to screw the bulb into the trigger without looking at it, wait for the signal, then look the other way with my eyes closed and fire the unit away from me to ensure that I didn't lose my sight. Oh, and I should also be careful since they sometimes explode if they come in contact with water. Great. I started frogging up at a very slow pace -- the rope would bounce more than 10' with each stride. Every 30 or 40 strides I'd stop and dig through my duffel bag trying to find a fresh flashbulb, arm it, and fire off a shot for the camera. Even with all the breaks, I managed to get incredibly hot and dehydrated. The climb seemed like it took hours.

A composite of 10 different individual photos and the result of hours and hours of cave photography, Brian's photo of Fantastic still can't do justice to how enormous this pit is.

Judi headed up next, also armed with a few flashbulbs to light up the rest of the pit. She and Mary flew to the top with their ropewalkers, then Brian frogged back up a second time loaded with all his photography gear! Pulling the rope back up was a huge effort, as was hauling the damn thing back out of the cave -- it's amazing how much your rope and gear expands when you're trying to get back out of a cave. Back down the nuisance drop with that monster rope, and then back up the Warm-Up pit, and then derigging the Warm-Up pit, and then hauling everything back out... we were exhausted, and not looking forward to the hike back down the mountain. We opted to dump our ropes at the cave entrance and hike down lightly, a hike that seemed to have doubled in length since the previous morning. We finally made it back to camp at 4am, after a long but incredible day of caving. After a good breakfast in the morning, the hike to retrieve our ropes seemed like a piece of cake. We found a fraction of the other caving group getting ready to go back in, they had showed up to finally rappel Fantastic -- they'd run out of time the previous day and half of their group had abandoned the trip; the poor remaining three cavers would have to haul the entire party's gear and ropes back out on their own!

Day 2: Neversink Pit

We left Georgia that afternoon and headed to Alabama to drop another TAG classic, the 162' Neversink Pit. We took a quick detour to check out the nearby rock zoo, then parked and geared up. Everyone hiked up the hill and found over a dozen cavers there -- TAG Fall Cave-In traffic.

Beautiful view of Neversink Pit

We waited for a good rigging spot to open up, rigged to a tree and waited some more. Finally enough people were out of the way that we could rappel down with our rope. This pit is gorgeous. It's an open-air pit where the sun shines down in, the layered walls are covered with moss and ferns and small waterfalls. We were all able to get to the bottom before the sun set and were treated to an incredible view. This pit seemed tiny after doing Fantastic the day before! After Neversink, we headed to a nearby camping site, complete with bathrooms and hot showers.

Day 3: Cagles Chasm

Sunday we opted to squeeze in one more pit before heading home; we drove to Tennessee for Cagles Chasm. We parked next to a kennel full of barking beagles and got geared up. Time for another hike up another hill, but at least this one was an easy one.

Mary Schmidt rapells into Cagles Chasm

Cagles Chasm is another open-air pit, a 186' vertical shaft which intersects a maze of cave passages on the way down. The view from the bottom looking up is spectacular, especially if you're a geology fan (you are, right?). With no traffic to contend with this time, we bounced the pit quickly and were ready for the drive back home by late afternoon.

Judi and Dave at the bottom of Cagles Chasm

We made it back to Morgantown by 2am Sunday, after a great weekend full of amazing pits. Everyone was glad that we'd opted to skip the Cave-In to squeeze in more actual caving. After visiting these TAG classics, it's easy to see why this area is the best vertical caving in the country!

All photos by Brian Masney

See: Brian's trip photos
See: My trip photos

[trip] Geology Field Trip to Bowden

2006-10-04T23:55:00.000-04:00

On Sunday October 1, Dr. Henry Rauch took our Karst Geology class on a field trip into Bowden Cave in Randolph County. We took the class in the main entrance, up the main trunk to the breakdown room, up into the shower room, then through the water course to the gate. It's amazing how many solutional features, structural and lithologic controls, and evidence of paleo-flow you find when you're actually looking for them.

2006 WVU Karst Geology class in the entrance of Bowden Cave. Photo by John Tudek

NYDC Push Trip

2006-09-30T20:40:00.000-04:00

Greg Springer, Brian Masney, Bob Griffith, and myself trekked into New Years Day Cave today with the intent of making the elusive Druid Cave connection.

Before...

We met at 9am and headed to the parking area at the rim of the Cheat Canyon. We hiked down the hill in the rain, geared up, and were in cave at 11:20am. Despite the rain, the cave's water level was still fairly low; we mostly stayed dry except for the rain-soaking we received outside. The outside temperature was roughly the same as underground, so the Druid winds were non-existant. After the rock-on-rock crawl - a 15'-long crawl with both chest and back against solid bedrock, roughly the half-way point of the current cave length - the group decided that we weren't feeling up to the torturous journey the the back of the cave. Rather than push past our collective limits, we aborted the mission and headed back out. I noted at least six crayfish on the way out of the cave, including one "lobster" about 5" from tail to claws. We exited the cave at 3:30pm, four hours underground, cleaned our gear in Lick Run and hiked back up and out of the canyon by about 5pm.

After.

Brian swears that next time we'll make the connection... (sound familiar?)

Choice quote from Bob Griffith: "This cave sucks. It sucks in more ways than one would think one cave could suck. It's a veritable smorgasbord of suckiness... But I've gotta see the Whack-A-Mole™ passage."

All photos by Brian Masney

[trip] Beaverhole Upper

2006-09-28T23:36:00.000-04:00

This Wednesday, the WVUSG took an evening trip into Beaverhole Upper Cave, located just over the Preston County line. Myself, Kyle McMillan, Brian Masney, and John Cunningham were there, along with three cavers new to the grotto, Rachael, Tom, and Aaron. We left the Rec Center at 6pm and headed down into the Cheat Canyon.

Brian, Kyle, Aaron, Dave, Tom, Rachael and John at the entrance to Beaverhole Upper.

The cave entrance was completely dry. I'd never noticed this before, but the cave stream actually sinks in the entrance room and resurges about 20' down the hill from the cave entrance; you can't tell that the water is being pirated at normal levels but we saw it sink right into the floor. We took the usual high route to the back of the cave, stopping to check out different nooks along the way. I poked around in some of the passage that usually moves water towards the back since it was so dry; we found a 4" crayfish stranded in a 6" puddle waiting for a good rain to wash him out.

John Cunningham defies gravity.

On the way out, a few of us followed the stream passage the whole way, then everyone met back up again. As I was exiting the front passages, I looked down behind a large rock and saw Rich Finley lying there in street clothes, grinning and waiting to jump out at someone! He, Cara Doud and Dave Olsen had popped in the cave just to say 'hi'. We all headed out, changed clothes and got back to Morgantown at 10:50, only to find that the new IHOP closes at 11pm. Damn. We were in cave for 2.5 hours.

Photos by Brian Masney

[trip] Clover Hollow at Fall VAR

2006-09-24T20:53:00.000-04:00

This past weekend was the 2006 Fall VAR, hosted by the VPI Cave Club in Glen Lyn VA. Judi led a trip into Pig Hole on Friday, but I didn't arrive until late Friday night. We didn't actually go to VAR itself until Saturday evening, and it rained the entire time we were there.

On Saturday morning, we took a trip into Clover Hollow, one of the classic Virginia caves. Ray Sira and Judi Wasilewski led the trip; also along were Alice and Brian from VPI, Rich and Eric from the Front Royal Grotto, Josh from BATS, and Terry from Raleigh NC.

The cave entrance is an oblong-shaped pit about 60' deep, and at the end of a small blind stream bed. Even though it rained intermittently, the main entrance didn't take any water while we were there. After rigging to a large tree at the lip of the pit, we rappelled into the entrance room, then headed down a hallway shaped drain corridor.

The Clover Hollow entrance pit as seen from below.

We did a short crawl and then came to a 3' wide straddle pit with about 15' exposure at the far end. It took a bit of people shuffling, but everyone made it across fine. There's a nuisance hand climb, then a short 20' nuisance rappel followed by another short rappel. We finally came to a big drop - around 90' - into some big passage with an audible waterflow below. Except for the drainage at the entrance of the cave and the bit of water falling near this big rappel, the cave was completely dry. We ditched our vertical gear and headed through some mazey anastomotic passages and a few climbdowns.

We eventually made it back to a dead-end room in some steeply-dipping passage called the library. This is where VPI stores all their top-secret training documents. I believe it also doubles in function as a time capsule for future civilizations to discover.

"I swear, I only go caving for the articles!"

After grabbing some lunch, we headed back out - taking a different route back. This way led us through the "mud river", a bone-dry crawl which is only about 12 inches tall and seems about 100' long while you're traveling it. We took a small detour to check out a passage loaded with formations and an amazingly-tall rimstone dam. Everyone ascended back up the big pit, up the nuisance climbs, and headed back out. We were in cave for about 5 hours.

Judi and I pose in the entrance room.

See my Clover Hollow photos.

Via Ferrata

2006-09-24T20:52:00.001-04:00

After the WVUSG's beginners weekend, we climbed the via ferrata at Nelson Rocks WV. I've never rock climbed before (but I've got plenty of rappelling experience), and I was able to do the course easily. The entire course is bolted with steel rungs and steel cable. You have two lanyards attached to your harness so that when clipping into the next piece of protection, you always have at least one lanyard attached. You get some serious exposure and the views from up on the rock cliffs are absolutely breathtaking. In my opinion, it is easily worth the $35 fee to do the via at least once. Sadly, there was a fatality there the weekend after our visit - I believe the first major accident there ever.

Rich and Dave ascend the first wall of the via ferrata. We are carrying rappelling gear that we never actually got to use. (Photo: Jason Thomas)

See also my via ferrata photos.

[trip] Tucker County Survey

2006-09-24T20:52:00.000-04:00

Brian Masney, Mary Schmidt and I went into our current Tucker County cave this weekend (2006-09-16) with the original intention of resuming the survey from where we left off last time - about 2.5 - 3 hours back into the cave. We were in cave around 10:30am, and the water level was the lowest I have ever seen it in the cave (which is also what I said last time).

We made it to the end of the main survey in 3 hours, 45 minutes, including two side-excursions to push tributary leads. Frustrated with the time and effort required to get back here, we decided to abort the survey trip and push forward to either find better passage or another entrance. The upper, main passage continues forward for a ways, and goes from walking passage to stooping passage to crawling on breakdown flakes. It primarily zig-zags following regular joint sets. At some point we dropped down the the middle level, but were kept up off the stream level the entire time. Travel became slow and painful through the breakdown flakes. We passed several right-hand side passages, though none looked very promising. Airflow was very weak and we were not having fun.

We eventually came to another right-hand side lead, this one very curiously keyhole shaped, while the "main passage" continued as a nasty breakdown crawl. Both appeared to be virgin passage - we chose the keyhole. This passage went for 30' or so, then got wider and more rectangular with one or two small, meandering, phreatic tubes in its side. We found a window in the floor, for the first time in several hundred feet revealing water to us again. Excitedly, I rushed on to find a way down, scurried down a nice chute, and shouted back up "we've got cave!" This interesting passage has almost vertical walls, about 3' wide, and almost completely parallel, making it look like an aqueduct (at least, it would have had the cave not been so dry - it was more of a mudduct). The passage had faint airflow. Mary took the lead and scooped about 150' - 200' of walking passage which kept getting larger and eventually taking on a meandering shape. Deciding that we needed something to coax us back into this cave again, we turned around in nice walking passage. We had travelled at least 500 (unpleasant) feet from the current survey.

We were out of the cave at 7:45pm, stopped by Kevin's house to check in, and then had pizza at CJ's.

[trip] Simmons-Mingo at OTR

2006-09-06T18:16:00.000-04:00

On Saturday of the 2006 OTR, Judi Wasilewski, Llew Williams, Brian Masney, Bob Griffith, Mary Davis, Garth Dixon, and myself (Dave Riggs) took a trip into the historic entrance of Simmons-Mingo Cave. Most of us had been to this entrance of the cave less than two months ago but had been stopped by a wet stream crawl. Our intention this time was to bypass the stream crawl by rappelling a ledge that bypasses it.

We met at 11am at the Monongahela Grotto's tent. We very carefully 4-wheeled out of the muddy OTR campsite and caravanned to Mingo Flats. Llew bribed the landowner's mean-looking dog with a granola bar, and he instantly became Llew's best friend. As we were almost completely geared-up, the Cleveland Grotto showed up behind us; they planned on taking a horizontal trip into the PSC passage. Even though there had been very significant rain the last several days, the stream at the parking area was low and sunk into its sediment bed, and the spring at the cave entrance was dry.

The way to a mean dog's heart is apparently through his stomach. Llew with his new best friend.

Our team descended the entrance climb, aided by the existing handline. We headed down, down, down the mountains of breakdown, taking a quick detour to peer into a really deep pit on the right. Continuing down, down, down the breakdown, we spotted the Cleveland team on the breakdown mountain above us coming down like a line of christmas lights, which was a cool sight. They followed us to the start of the PSC passage, and Llew gave them directions from there. We eventually made it down to The Etrier room.

This is a 12' overhung ledge rigged with an old webbing etrier which leads down to a mid-level room. The mid-level room goes to a small, wet, stream crawl on the left, and a 30' ledge to a lower room on the right. We decided to rig a rope above the etrier, down the drop, around the corner, and down the ledge. This turned out to be a bad idea due to the large number of rub points involved. Next time, we'll either get wet in the stream crawl, or we'll rig the pit to the right just before the etrier drop (which looks like it connects to the later stream passage).

Anyway, everyone descended the two drops, ditched our vert gear, and headed down a passage towards the stream. It's here that Simmons-Mingo Cave really starts. The stream passage moves a lot of water and has carved a giant canyon passage. The floor is filled with potholes that make it look like swiss cheese. We climbed down into the canyon passage and headed upstream since it looked like we'd stay dryer than going downstream. Though the water didn't seem very high, we all got wet before long. After touring the upstream branch and poking leads, we decided to head back.

Bob and Mary in the big canyon passage. The cave stream is about 10' below them.

One-by-one we ascended up the first ledge. Progress was slow as several people were working out kinks in their frog systems. I was the last one up, pulled and stuffed the rope, then realized that my pack was sitting back down at the bottom. Damn. Rather than make everyone wait on me to rappel and ascend back up, I opted to try out the stream crawl instead. As I'd heard, it was definitely a wet crawl, with my chest in the water and butt against the ceiling. It's obvious by the size of the cobbles in this stream that it moves a good bit of water. We'll need to bring spare dry clothes if we take this route next time.

After derigging the rope, the climb back up and out all that breakdown began. This was pretty tiring work while wet, muddy, and carrying rope and vert gear. Brian took some good photos in one of the big rooms on the way out, then he sacrificed one of his flash units to the cave gods. We were back outside after about 6 hours, and the Cleveland Grotto had already left. We packed up and stopped for dinner on the way back to the campsite.

Group at the historic entrance to Simmons-Mingo Cave. (L-R) Brian Masney, Dave Riggs, Judi Wasilewski, Bob Griffith, Mary Davis, Llew Williams, Garth Dixon

All photos by Brian Masney

OTR 2006

2006-09-06T17:54:00.000-04:00

The 2006 Old Timers Reunion has come and gone; the rain seemed to scare away some of the kooks making it pretty enjoyable. Unfortunately, the rain also made it cold, wet, and incredibly muddy... but you'll have that. Judi and I did some truck camping to avoid sleeping in a nasty tent, but we still wound up leaving at around midnight on Saturday to head back to warmer and dryer quarters.

Highlights:

- Instructions at the gate on the way in: "Do something weird."
- Caving trip into the historic entrance of Simmons-Mingo Cave
- Bill Biggers told me that I look just like Lew Bicking
- I picked up the Northern Pocahontas WVaSS Bulletin, the Karst Hydrology Atlas of WV, and the '89 SERA Guidebook
- Being videotaped for the blockbuster new film, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Druid Cave
- Seeing lots of friends and meeting lots of new ones

[trip] New River Cave BSA Trip

2006-08-14T17:27:00.000-04:00

Judi Wasilewski and Pete Sauvigne of the VPI Cave Club and myself, Dave Riggs, led Boy Scout troop 140 of South Carolina into New River Cave this weekend. Our group consisted of 18 scouts, four adults and the three guides.

Troop 140 along the road below New River Cave

New River Cave is the longest cave in Giles County, VA, at over 5 miles in length. Access to the cave is forbidden without written permission from the owner, Tim Kilby. Parking is along the New River, and the sole cave entrance is up an extremely steep hillside. We slowly climbed up to the entrance, did a final equipment check, and all met in the entrance room just inside the cave. The land-owner had prepared a nice written statement to introduce everyone to the cave and to caving.

We broke the large group up into three smaller groups of 6 scouts each. My group, age group 15 - 18, spent about 3 hours in the cave. We headed back in to the register room, through lots of decorated passage, and back to a big fault chamber with a steep dirt slide down the fissure. They had a great time, asked lots of questions, and did an excellent job of traversing the cave terrain. Upon exiting the cave and realizing that we were the first ones out, they were eager to head back in and explore the cave aimlessly (and to try their best at surprising the other groups)!

The last group made it out after about 4 hours in cave, and everyone headed back down the mountainside to eat sandwiches. The scouts and the trip leaders both had a good time on this trip, and I'd enjoy leading another BSA troop in-cave again.

[trip] GVKS Survey 2

2006-08-07T00:34:00.001-04:00

Another survey trip for the GVKS again last week, this one 16 hours with zero feet surveyed!

Terry McClanathan and I ascended the Southwest Dome, currently the tallest known pit in WV, to get an accurate measurement of its height. There's a rebelay about 185' off the floor; it's at a small loft so you can get off rope onto your feet when you cross the rebelay. The loft is large enough for a couple people to stand and keep clear of rockfall from above. You pendulum about 10' to the left and continue upwards, the top of the dome slowly getting narrower and narrower to the point that there's a nice "helmet check" shelf to avoid near the top.

The very top of the dome is really just a mud-floored shelf; another pit is visible to the left, and there's no obvious passage from there, though I never unclipped from the safety line to check. There were several small solutional passages intersecting the pit on opposite wall on the way up, but no water was noted from below the rebelay to the top of the dome.

The rebelay pendulum was a bit tricky on the way down, but from there you've got a straight rappel down the rest of the pit - at least, you would if the rope weren't so muddy. I had to feed my microrack most of the way down because it was so gritty! The last 75' of rope seemed clean, presumably from the small amount of spray present (we did not get wet on rope). The pit measured 247' from bolt to floor, 240' from the upper ledge.

It was amazing to follow the bolt route up this huge dome, what an incredible effort it must have been!

Frogging up the tallest known dome in WV... 20' off the floor, only 220' left to go!

This cave is NOT open to the general caving public. It is only open for survey by the Germany Valley Karst Survey under contract to Greer Industries. OTHER CAVING IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.

Photos by Brian Masney

Misc.

2006-08-02T22:35:00.000-04:00

Judi and I drove down to Mingo Flats/Elk River Valley and met Llew Williams, Bob & Mary, and a few others for a trip into the historic entrance of Simmons-Mingo Cave. Llew had his camp set up in the mouth of the cave to keep cool. We climbed down and down a few breakdown hills, then descended a cable ladder to a nice pit and a wet crawl. Nobody had on vert gear, and the majority voted against getting wet, so we never made it to the Good Stuff.

One of my New Years Day Cave trip reports was published in this month's West Virginia Caver, does this make me a BNC?

Hellhole is now the 16th longest cave in the US at 23.90 miles. (Edit: 2006 season closed with 24.92 miles, passing Sloans Valley for 15th place!)

I got my TRA membership in the mail today... not bad considering I mailed it in the day before the deadline. See you at OTR!

Judi Wasilewski and Dave Riggs in Simmons-Mingo Cave. Photo by Llew Williams.

[trip] Barton Cave Beginner Trip

2006-07-13T09:30:00.000-04:00

Doug McCarty, Brian Masney, John Tudek, John ?, and myself met at the Exxon on route 857 at 6pm for a beginner's trip into Barton Cave. We waited for half an hour, but the beginners never showed. We drove to the cave, geared up, and headed in. The cave takes about 45 minutes to get to from Morgantown, and is a 10 minute hike from the parking area. It's a very easy cave, horizontal, not too crawly, and mostly dry. It's formed in very sandy limestone or limey sandstone. We were back in Morgantown in time to get Mexican for dinner.

[trip] GVKS Survey

2006-07-09T21:58:00.000-04:00

This weekend I managed to get on a GVKS survey team into a legendary closed cave. Brian Masney and I were on a survey team with Dwight Livingston; we were to find and survey a lead off a particular large room. We rigged and dropped the beautiful entrance drop around noon on Saturday and traveled about 4.5 hours into the cave, doing three more rappels on the way. Parts of the cave felt like going on a hike in the mountains, climbing steep hills or walking rocky trails in wide-open, massive passage. Of course, there were also plenty of squeezes and crawls, which were just as nasty as the borehole was spectacular. We spent a few hours investigating every lead we could find in the area, but couldn't find any that had not yet been surveyed. At least Brian got some awesome photos of the area. The trip out was exhausting but still enjoyable. We were above-ground at 1:30am.

Beautiful view of the entrance pit

Brian Masney models his new boots in some big passage south of the large room

Dave Riggs and shadow in another large room south of the large room

Photos by Brian Masney.

[trip] Biology Study

2006-06-12T23:14:00.000-04:00

Bob Griffith and I helped Dr. Daniel Fong and Dr. Horton Hobbs on a biology study this week, cataloguing invertebrate cave fauna. We took them to Beaverhole Upper, Maiden Run #2, and Maiden Run #1 on Monday, then to Beaverhole Lower on Tuesday. I'm now an honorary vertical biologist.

Horton Hobbs, Katie Schneider, Dan Fong, Dave Riggs

[trip] New Years Day Cave Survey

2006-06-12T22:52:00.000-04:00

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

Hiking Maiden Run

2006-06-03T23:10:00.000-04:00

I went for a nice hike along Maiden Run this afternoon. I took some photos of Maiden Run #2, Maiden Run #1, a FRO above Maiden Run #1, and a small opening that may be Maiden Run #3 (see better photo from last visit). I also tried to find a sinkhole that the Mon Grotto dug in 1975 (see email discussion), but didn't have any luck.

Entrance to Maiden Run #2 is a down-sloping crawl to stooping passage with a cave stream. This cave lightly blows cool air.

[trip] Caving in Tennessee

2006-06-01T06:06:00.000-04:00

We had a large turnout at TAG this past weekend: Rich Finley, Jill Pile, Jason Thomas, Melissa Parker, Dave Riggs, Judi Wasilewski, Bob Griffith, Mary Davis (both showed up on Monday), Ryan Ellers, Garth Dixon and myself (Brian Masney).

We camped in Fall Creek Falls State Park in Central Tennessee on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

On Saturday, we went into Rumbling Falls Cave. We split into two teams: Jason, Brian, Dave and Judi comprised the first team that went in to get everything rigged. Later in the day, the derigging team (Rich, Garth and Ryan) came into the cave. Rumbling Falls has a 70' entrance drop. You continue upstream through walking passage. There are two 20' up climbs along the way. You continue upstream and the passage eventually becomes a hands and knees crawl and then it becomes a belly crawl in the stream. At this point, I thought: "Why did we come here? We have this kind of stuff back home in Morgantown!" It eventually opens up a little bit and it requires several climbs, crawls, chimneys, cussing, etc. to continue through the passage. You eventually cross a drainage divide. At this point, the passage slowly starts to get a little bigger. You walk a short distance and you come to the Rumble Room. It is 5 acres in size and there is a 201' rappel to the top of the breakdown. This is the biggest known underground room in TN and it is big enough to fit the Lousiana Superdome in there.

Judi at the top of the Rumble Room.

The 5 acre Rumble Room in Rumbling Falls Cave. Thanks to Jason Thomas and Dave Riggs for helping light up the room with their Sten Lights while I did a time exposure with my camera.

On Sunday, everyone went to Conley Hole. The cave is about 9/10 of a mile from the parking area. The first half mile is easy walking through a field. The rest of the hike requires bush whacking through the woods to find the cave. There isn't a trail to the cave. Luckily I had good GPS coordinates to the pit or else we wouldn't have found it. The entrance to the pit is 20' in diameter and it really opens up about 50' from the top. The pit is about 186' deep.

Judi at the entrance to Conley Hole. Photo by Dave Riggs.

The entrance to Conley Hole from the bottom. Notice the rappeller on rope.

Ryan and Dave standing under some formations in Conley Hole.

On Monday, everyone went to Mystery Falls Cave. This pit is 286' deep and it is the deepest known pit in Tennessee. The cave is gated and it requires a permit to visit the cave. There is about 100'+ of horizontal passage that leads you to the top of the 286' pit. The pit is highly decorated and it really bells as you get closer to the bottom.

Dave at the top of the 286' drop in Mystery Falls Cave.

Mary at the bottom of the 286' drop in Mystery Falls Cave.

All in all, the entire trip went really well. We had too many people in the pits though. This made some of the trips really long. Next time, we need to split up into smaller groups.

I uploaded photos from the trip to my Flickr account. Special thanks to everyone who helped out with the photos. See also Dave's photos from Conley Hole.

Photos by Brian Masney unless otherwise noted.

[trip] New Years Day Cave Push

2006-05-17T20:49:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday, May 13, Brian Masney, Jason Thomas, Bob Kirk, and myself (Dave Riggs) made another trek into New Years Day Cave. NYDC is believed to be the still-unconnected upstream trunk of Druid Cave. The goal of this push trip was to get past a boulder blocking further progress into the cave - Bob had helped us past similar obstacles at the downstream dig, and was making his first trip into NYDC to help us continue forward.

We met in Morgantown around 9am, drove up to the lip of the Cheat Canyon, and started the trek downhill. All four of us suited up in wetsuits with warm layers over top, carried spare layers sealed up in dry packs, and packed in hand warmers, candles, and a heat tent. Armed for battle with a brutal cave, we headed underground at just after 10:30am.

Brian Masney, Dave Riggs, Jason Thomas, Bob Kirk prepare for another relaxing day in New Years Day Cave

Luck seemed to be with us; the water level was low and the moderate temperature outside meant that the cave air was relatively still. Because we were able to stay dry, we actually had to stop and cool off halfway through the sandy "beach" crawl - a wide silt stream bank with a very low ceiling. Everyone was soon soaked after trekking through the cave stream and going headfirst down into a much-loathed water crawl. From here, we did a short jog through the Mon County Borehole and made it to the rock-on-rock-slab crawl at the end of the current survey.

We went ahead and to the Whack-A-Mole™ passage, so named because the finger-like protruding shelves needed whacked with a hammer to comfortably walk through. This was my first time past the last survey station, and I was honestly impressed with the size, the speed we were able to travel, and the distance that this passage covers. For New Years Day Cave, being able to stand upright and walk forward for more than a hundred feet is a welcome treat. I expect the next survey trip to add a good bit of distance because of this passage. Notable here was a large number of shell fossils embedded in several of the limestone beds along the walls.

Finally, after close to two hours(?), we reached our destination: a narrow trench going down from an upper passage to the stream level below, blocked at the very bottom by a boulder just barely larger than the opening it guarded. Jason, Bob, and I started to work on it immediately. Jason and I each drilled a hole, but progress was slow. The passage was apparently blocked with the only sandstone boulder in the entire limestone cave - it would quickly crumble and fill any hole we drilled, while the edges would crumble under the pressure. Meanwhile, Brian suited up, grabbed a shovel, and pushed a parallel lower path in the stream. He made it forward almost to where our boulder was, but was obstructed by more breakdown.

After unsuccessfully trying to tug the boulder out of the way with webbing, it was decided that our best bet against the unwilling rock was to simply pulverize it with the hammer. We easily rounded all the corners, but it was extremely difficult to swing powerful blows in the bottom of the 18" wide slot - progress was again slow. In addition, we were very weary of some sketchy breakdown seemingly balanced on the rocks adjacent to our sandstone foe. We took turns pounding on it, gradually chipping it smaller and smaller, and keeping us from becoming too chilled.

Near 4:30pm we succeeded in rolling the deflated boulder out of the way, leaving a huge mound of powdered rock behind in its place. I squeezed through the opening, being careful not to touch the breakdown on my side, and crawled forward in the stream passage. I shouted back, "It goes... but it sucks!". I went about a body length in and could see that the tunnel shrunk up ahead to painful proportions, with no visible place to turn around. Worse still was the backside view of the sketchy breakdown... the protruding bottom rock itself appeared to be held in place just by the weight of the piles of rock above it. I squirmed out and Jason popped in to confirm that this was at best an obstacle to tackle another day, and given how unstable the adjacent wall seemed, could at worst be the end of the line for New Years Day Cave.

Everyone huddled up above to discuss the situation. Frustrated that this nasty cave could defeat us after all the trips in and out over the past two years, Jason decided to prove to NYDC who was in charge. He went head-first into the sketchy upper "passage", a pile of breakdown supported by breakdown with a roof made of... breakdown. He started pushing and shoving rocks aside, and inching his way forward - head-first, downhill, without room to turn himself around. And after at least 15 grueling minutes of this...

Jason Thomas triumphs over NYDC

...Jason had broken into a virgin room.

We clamored one after one through his wormhole, each of us prying or tossing aside a rock or three so we could fit. The room is about a dozen feet tall, one side frighteningly walled by a mudslide. You drop down to stream level, follow the stream forward a bit and the ceiling becomes lower, to stoop height. A dome, 15 - 20' high awaits, with the first real formation I've seen in New Years Day Cave. From here the stream meanders a bit, the ceiling gets lower and lower, the passage gets very very wide - probably 40' at its widest width, 2.5' at its lowest height.

A couple-hundred feet in, there is a boulder intersection, which we went around and followed the wind down a crawl. Here the passage becomes very different - fingery canyon passage, narrow but 6 - 8' tall, meandering with the water. The "limestone" has a black coating and the fingers can be easily broken off, as if composed of some rotten mud-rock. The Druid winds continued, but we turned back to save the booty for another survey trip.

Jason in the virgin canyon passage, note the rotten limestone walls

The trip back out was exhausting. The pointed shelves in the Whack-A-Mole™ passage are shaped such that they poke and grab at every piece of your suit and pack on the way out. We were all coated with sandy mud, and our packs were filled with gear (Bob measured his with a fishing scale afterwards - 50lbs). We finally exited, before dark, scrubbed ourselves off in Lick Run, then hiked back up the brutal hill with mixed emotions. Brian summed everyone's feelings up by saying "Jason, I don't know whether to hug you or kick you!"

Photos by Brian Masney

2006 Spring VAR

2006-05-02T21:00:00.000-04:00

This is not a trip report! Brian and I drove down to VAR in Grottoes VA this weekend. They went into Grand Caverns, I didn't. We went to the Devil's Marble Yard in the Jefferson National Forest, which was awesome. I picked up an original printing of WVaSS Bulletin 5, Caves of North Central West Virginia from Speleobooks. On the way home, Brian and I hiked to the top of Seneca Rocks.

Brian Masney, Carrie Blankenship, Sam ???, John Tudek, Judi Wasilewski, Dave Riggs at the Devil's Marble Yard

See Brian's photos for more of a trip report than this posting is.

[trip] Ridge Walking Rt. 7 Part 2

2006-04-28T00:07:00.000-04:00

Brian, Jason, and I did some poking around Rt. 7 this evening. We checked out the entrance to Maiden Run #1, found the entrance to Maiden Run #2, and checked out a resurgance and FRO between the two. Both Maiden Run #1 and #2 were blowing cool air.

We then drove down the road a bit and found Nuttinbuttawett Pit, a 20' deep crevice that completely swallows a small stream. The water resurges a few dozen yards down the hill, and looks like it might drop underground again on one side. This area is also peppered with springs and lots of weathered limestone outcrops.

Jason Thomas checks out an interesting karst feature between Maiden Run #1 and #2

Me descending Mon County's deepest pit by hand, Nuttinbuttawett Pit

All photos by Brian Masney

[trip] VPI Picnic / Newberry Cave

2006-04-25T14:33:00.000-04:00

I spent this past weekend in Bland County VA with the VPI Cave Club for their annual Picnic weekend. Their campsite is in a beautiful karst valley, apparently filled with vertical caves. The VPI folks know how to throw an event - there was lots of good food and drink, plenty of great people, and an enormous bonfire roaring all weekend.

I went on a trip led by John Deighan into Newberry Cave. A small party went in before us and rigged the cave, then our party of 5 followed shortly after. The entrance to Newberry is a vertical crevice, at first about a foot wide then opening up a bit towards the bottom. It's about a 60' rappel down the crevice into a small entrance room.

From the entrance, we followed a stair-stepped passage down, then crossed a ledge with a bit of exposure, to a second rappel - this one only about 30'. A cable ladder was rigged here for the ascent back out. Just below this nuisance drop was a beautiful 180' pit, Bill's rappel. We dropped it to the room below, then followed some twisting passage down, eventually taking us to the bottom of triple wells - an amazing 220' perfectly-vertical pit.

From here, we headed back up and followed the "devil's staircase", a series of winding hand climbs that brings you back above the 180' drop without ascending rope. Two spots were a bit hairy, but everyone made it up without incident. We derigged the big drop, then ascended the 30' one - some of us opting to frog it out rather than deal with a cable ladder. After derigging, we took a slightly different path back, which brought us up to within 25' of the entrance slot. We handclimbed/chimneyed up the remainder of the entrance crevice with ascender backup.

We arrived at the surface to sunny weather and had just a 2 minute hike back to the campsite where dinner was just about ready. It was an enjoyable cave trip, a beautiful cave, and an all-around excellent weekend.

The author picnic-ing with VPI's cutest girl

See also photos by Richard Cobb

Rappelling At Iron Furnace

2006-04-21T10:04:00.000-04:00

WVUSG went rappelling near the Iron Furnace at Coopers Rock on Thursday evening. Brian rigged a static line for rappellers, and Cara rigged a top rope for climbers. It turns out that the Iron Furnace really is as creepy as people say...

Jessica Morning frogging up the cliff. Photo by Brian Masney.

See also: more photos by Brian Masney and by Dave Olsen.

Rappelling at Army Rock

2006-04-06T23:19:00.000-04:00

Ryan, Brian, Rich, Jill, Jason (fireman-Jason, not Jason-Jason), and I went rappelling at Army Rock this evening. Army Rock is much quicker to get to and from than Cheat View (if you're in Morgantown), but it's only about 60' high. I got some practice in with 5 bars of my 6-bar rack (eh) and with a foot ascender (awesome!).

Time to pack for a weekend at the Bat Ranch.

[trip] YTR / Bone-Norman

2006-04-03T21:34:00.000-04:00

This past weekend was my first Young Timers' Reunion, and I had a really great time. Friday afternoon's weather was 72° and sunny, but as soon as Ryan Ellers, John Cunningham and I met up, the sky turned black and rain started pouring down. Mother nature didn't let up on us the entire drive down to Greenbriar County; the combination of foul weather and several stops along the way (including almost getting lost in the Tamarack parking lot) kept us from arriving at the campground until about 9:30pm. That night remained damp and dreary, but a nice fire kept everyone warm.

Saturday morning we woke up to a beautiful clear sky and sunshine, definitely a welcome sight after the previous evening's crappy weather. At around 10am, David C. of the VPI Grotto (and without shoes) led a large group of 15 ("no wait, how many people do we have?") cavers from WVU, VPI, JMU, and Maryland on a through-trip of the Bone-Norman Cave system.

The entrance to Bone Cave is on the face of this old quarry, obscured by trees. Note me in the bottom right for scale, and several other cave passages higher up along the limestone face.

The entrance to the Bone Cave side is at the ground level of an old, large limestone quarry. The first part of the cave is mostly large walking passage, then consists of a series of alternating low phreatic tunnels and smaller rooms. The Bone side is dry. Really, really dry. Its floor consists entirely of fine dust, so deep that it feels like you're walking on a beach. As you can probably imagine, with 15 people trudging through dust like this, and with wind whipping through the smaller tunnels, it wasn't long before everyone had filled their mouths, noses and eyes with cave grit.

Carrie Blankenship of VPI models her sweet new Howie's Harnesses cave pack in some Bone Cave canyon passage.

Eventually, Bone gets lower and lower, until you spend a lot of time on your belly. We made it to The Devil's Pinch, and everyone squeezed through the 7" slot without incident. After a bit more crawling, then down a large dusty slide, everyone dove headfirst through a slot 4' off the floor (except for a couple crazies who went feet-first).

From here, we headed left down a few dusty corridors and finally came to some deep, damp canyon passage - Norman Cave. This side definitely has a different character than does the Bone side - the former still feels live while the latter is dead and "bone dry". Our group got split in two after a bit of miscommunication, but with some sharp thinking and teamwork, everyone was quickly reunited and headed back on our way.

We generally followed a decent-sized meandering stream through the Norman side. Our path continually crossed back and forth over the stream, which occasionally ducked underground, leading us over a lot of extremely slippery silt banks and some very wide rooms. We next spent a lot of time climbing over a very long stretch of breakdown, which necessitated several rest stops. After more breakdown than I cared for, we headed into the stream for a very cool, very long watercourse. The ceiling was of stoop-height for a large part of it, and the swift water has cut some great potholes throughout the course - some were easily waist deep, thus making this an official "wet cave". The banks of the stream for a large part of this water passage are formed entirely of flowstone, and there are many sections where the limestone has been corroded to the density of a giant Swiss cheese.

Finally the watercourse leads you to a roaring waterfall that crashes down through the ceiling probably 40' or more. It's quite a sight, and was a treat after trudging through the not-quite-high-enough stream passage for so long. From there, a nuisance climb led to a waiting room, which led to a nuisance climb, which led to.. a real nuisance climb. I was the last one up, and I'm glad there was no one below to see my ungraceful ascent.

From here, we climbed up to an absolutely enormous room, floored by a massive breakdown hill. Some large, dead columns stared down from the top of this humbling room. Starting to really feel tired, I trudged up the underground hillside until I finally saw a tree root jutting up from the ground. I pondered this for entirely too long until a dim light bulb lit, and I quickly looked up to see a speck of moonlight at the very top of the room. Everyone bolted for the exit, hopped out of the mole-hole and we were greeted with a beautiful, clear, night sky full of stars - an excellent ending to an excellent cave trip.

I believe we made it back to camp around 9pm. In contrast to the previous night, Saturday night was excellent - warm weather, a clear sky, live guitar with upright bass, and lots of great people. Door prizes were handed out to everyone - I walked away with a VAR hat and a roll of primo duct tape. Most importantly, WVU spanked JMU and VPI by number of attendees, winning the trophy for a 2nd year in a row.

So, in not nearly as many words, YTR was excellent - thanks to everyone who made it great (you know who you are).

All photos by Brian Masney

WVGES

2006-03-29T00:02:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-27T23:25:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-12T21:03:00.000-05:00

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.

[trip] Sharps Cave

2006-02-26T20:31:00.000-05:00

The Mon Grotto took an enjoyable trip to Sharps Cave Sat. Feb 25, 2006. Three ladies from the Parkersburg Area Grotto joined us, as well as a few beginners - two were students from my high school alma mater.

Brian and I got there early and went looking for Pinnacle Cave. Since I forgot to bring the coordinates with me, we went from my memory... in other words, we couldn't find it. We followed the limestone outcrops along the ridge for a bit and found several interesting spots that could use some digging.

Our group of 12 cavers suited up, descended the entrance slot, and met up in the first big room. Brian brought three slave flash units, so we spent a lot of time setting up and taking photos in this cave. We took some more photos in Halloween Hall, then headed over the breakdown area to the left and went to the mud sculpture room where we rested for a bit.

A nice group photo in the entrance room

Checking out the mud sculptures

Afterwards, we headed below to the stream passage and walked upstream to the double waterfall, which was moving a good bit of water. We took some more photos, and a few people went up the lefthand stream tunnel to check it out. The group headed back downstream, and eventually back to Halloween Hall... for some more photos.

Climbing Sharps waterfall

Since it was still early, we decided to check out the other half of the cave. We dropped down into the canyon passage to the right of Halloween Hall. This passage is an abandoned stream passage, but shortly exposes in a few small pits where the active stream is flowing directly beneath it. The stream flows from here, under the canyon passage, and eventually reappears as the top stream at the waterfall. Moving forward, you are eventually walking in the stream, but it's mostly dry travel.

After about 15 minutes, the passage opens up into a large room, Catfish Hall. As I cleared the breakdown and looked up into it, I saw a dozen lights pointed at me - I was completely surprised and couldn't figure out how our entire party had passed me and was now staring at me from the next room. It turned out to be the Pittsburgh Grotto, 11 strong, waiting there to surprise us! We mingled for a few minutes, then couldn't turn down the chance for another photo.

We're a happy family - Mon Grotto, Pittsburgh Grotto meet underground

The Pittsburgh group headed back the way we'd just come, and some of our party headed out of the cave. The rest went forward, over some more very large breakdown, to find another impressively-sized room, the Z Room. Brian and I stayed here to take some more photos, while Doug and the remainder of the group explored for a bit beyond.

Lighting up the last big room

We headed back out, exited the cave to find daylight and very nice weather waiting for us.

All photos by Brian Masney

Alternate trip report: Doug McCarty, Additional photos: Mon Grotto Sharps page

[trip] Ridge Walking Rt. 7

2006-02-19T17:19:00.000-05:00

The roads were pretty slick yesterday morning; after sliding off Rt. 7 (between Dellslow and Masontown) several times, I decided that it was probably not the best idea to drive all the way to Parsons for the Tucker County Survey. I turned my car around at a pull-off and noticed what looked like a cave on the side of the road. Since I was pretty close to Maiden Run Cave, and I was itching to do something caving-related, I decided that it was the perfect opportunity and location to do a bit of ridge walking along Rt. 7.

I checked out the shelter cave, which had a good bit of water coming down from inside. It turns out that it has a tiny bit of solutionally-formed pseudo-cave moving water visible from the underside. A stream also flows over the top and down.

Limestone shelter cave from the road

Following the stream up from this shelter cave took me to a real FRO cave. It didn't seem to move air, but there's a good bit of water flowing out and the small cave passage definitely goes back into the hillside. Unfortunately, the caver-sized passage goes back less than a body-length.

FRO cave with glove for size reference

The next drainage valley over was also very interesting. Here I found some small cave passage which connects to a 3' deep limestone sinkhole. The small passage at the bottom of the sinkhole appears to go back into the hillside also. I moved some of the fluted limestone breakdown, like the kind you find at the bottom of a dome-pit, but it'd take some tools to clean it out enough to get a good idea of what's below and beyond.

Sinkhole with glove for size reference

Small cave passage down the hill from sinkhole

I also walked along the road for a bit just checking out the outcrops for geologically interesting features.

Limestone crossbedding seen from the road

Much more photos with individual descriptions are available at: http://gl1tch.com/gallery/WalkingRt7

All in all, it was enjoyable and interesting considering that I didn't walk more than half a mile. I wish I had a copy of the North Central West Virginia WVASS bulletin to compare with.

[gear] WVU Student Grotto Shirts

2006-02-15T23:25:00.000-05:00

The WVU Student Grotto shirts, designed by John Tudek, came in and look really good. They're $15, cotton, and come in any colour you like (as long as you like WVU gold).

Yes, he's really using Woodburn Hall as a rig point, but at least he didn't bolt it

[trip] Simmons-Mingo Cave

2006-02-09T22:07:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday I drove down to the Elk River Valley and met up with the WVU Student Grotto to hit Simmons-Mingo Cave. Most of them had camped out at Oildrum Falls the night before.

Brian and Jason squeezed their way into the Oildrum Falls entrance, a very narrow tunnel with a stream flowing through part, and decided it was not worth rigging and dropping. We trudged up the Dry Branch a bit and peeked into the Stan's Blowing Rock entrance, which requires vert gear. After first thinking it'd been filled in, we crawled down the Zarathustra... Zurothoarsty... Zerostoaster... the other entrance.

The entrance tunnel goes down and to the left, then down a slot to a small muddy room, then down a 15' molehole which has a handline rigged. You come out on a large breakdown slope which takes you down to Edigar's Dome, an impressive 90' dome-pit that drops from the passage above at the Stan's Blowing entrance. Another smaller dome-pit faces it on the opposite side - this room had lots of bats clustered close together along crevices in the ceiling.

Edigar's Dome, as seen on the NSS 2000 Convention Guidebook

We followed the passage up to the top level, then down a narrow slot in the floor. A narrow phreatic tube goes forward for a ways, but we turned left into a very large and long paleo-passage. We followed it to its end, down some breakdown and back up into a room with very strong airflow but no leads out. Backtracking, we dropped down a hole in the floor to a smaller tunnel. There's a hole in the floor here with an old, twisted strand rope etrier rigged. We put some backup lines in place and climbed down.

This lower level contains a steep muddy bank which opens up to a very large room containing the underground Elk River - called the Canadian River here - this was an impressive sight. We travelled upstream, crossing the icy water too many times, for a bit. The roof lowers and the water sumps out, so we didn't travel far. Going back to the right we followed the river to where the Oildrum Falls stream comes pouring out of the ceiling as a 35' waterfall. The water started getting deeper at this end, it sumps and connects to My Cave here, so we headed back.

Going back up the etrier was quite a pain. It's an unforgiving rock crotch with nowhere to put your feet - it probably didn't help that I tried to do it with a pack strapped to my back. The climb back out the entrance passage was tiring as well, but everyone made it out in short time. We were probably in cave less than 4 hours. Since the weather was not on our side, everyone packed up camp and headed to Mama's Kitchen for some dinner.

Me climbing back up the etrier. Photo by Brian Masney

Know Your NADs

2006-02-07T09:50:00.000-05:00

Are those GPS coordinates NAD27? NAD83? WGS84?? What I'm talking about is the "datum", or ellipse model used to approximate the shape of the earth - it's not a sphere because it bulges around the equator. Coordinates for the same location, but using a different datum, will have different values.

Way back in 1866, somebody started in Kansas and manually surveyed across the continent. The government used that data back in 1927 to come up with a model of the earth's shape, NAD27 for North American Datum 1927, and that's what the USGS used for all their maps. Believe it or not, manually surveying the planet back in 1866 turned out to not be exactly correct, so in the 80's they used all that Star Wars technology to make a new model of the earth, NAD83. This model was expanded to work for the entire planet instead of just our continent, that's called WGS84.

I use WGS84 because that's what Google Maps uses, and it's probably what most GPS devices default to. However, all the old USGS maps use NAD27. My GPS stores waypoints in some agnostic format so all I have to do is switch the datum it's using and all my points are magically converted for me.

As chance would have it, WV's location happens to fall so that both NAD27 and NAD83/WGS84 are pretty close together - within tens of meters. They're almost the same near TAG, but 300 meters off towards the West coast, as seen below.

The difference between NAD27 and NAD83 coordinates by location

[trip] Bonner Cave #1

2006-01-09T00:18:00.000-05:00

Tucker County Survey took an off-week trip to check out the Bonner Caves. Brian Masney and Aaron Bird worked an above-ground survey, while myself, Josh and Kevin Keplinger pushed Bonner Cave #1.

Bonner #1 is a smallish sink on the side of the hill, surrounded by briars, but not difficult to find. There are several good rigging trees lining the opening to the sink. The entrance is a very steep drop - if not vertical, then pretty close. We needed ascenders to get back out, and kicked ouselves for not ascending in full vert gear. The view back out the side of the hill is quite beautiful, with just a bit of water dripping down from the entrance.

The the entrance room continues sloping down. The floor is lots of small breakdown and large animal bones, however it does not stink like Bonner #2 (Josh and Aaron dropped this carcass-filled pit first and recommended that we not follow). This entrance room slope goes down to a slot in the floor where the wind whips out furiously - Josh's hair was literally blowing. This slot drops about 7 feet onto some sloping breakdown which continues down a few more feet to rubble and more large bones. The slot can be hand-climbed, but a rappelling rack definitely helped here too. It should be noted that this room and the entrance room contain the largest spiders that I've ever seen in my life.

The cave at this point is about 25' tall canyon passage with some shelves at about head-height and up towards the ceiling. A small stream appears here from beneath the slot and under the breakdown, and it more or less stays with the main passage the entire cave length. The existing maps says that there's an upper level to the cave, but it doesn't look like you could travel it here at the beginning of the cave, at least not a human (hint: this is what writers call "foreshadowing"). It winds for a bit, but generally follows the same straight path set out from the start.

After a few hundred feet of walking, a large 25' - 30' dome is encountered. A small stream pours out of the top, from the direction of Bonner Garbage Cave. It looks like a bolt climb or scaling pole would be necessary to reach passage at this level. Several interesting scratch marks were noted on the wall here, looking not unlike the claws of some animal...

The walking passage continues, from this point frequently interrupted by breakdown blocks in the passage which must be scaled over or snuck around, but movement is still easy. The cave then does a short zig-zag. In this zig-zag, there's a layer of white calcite crystals on the wall - not nearly as pretty as Cave Mountain, but cool to see. The water flows underneath the floor by about two or three feet, and is occasionally visible. There's a nice resting spot, a shelf table, a couple hundred feet ahead. There's also a side lead ahead and to the left, but the water and air continue forward, so we did as well. According to the map, which I didn't see until after we'd exited the cave, there's a traversable upper passage somewhere along this point - we did not notice it.

Here, the walking passage gets constricted and the water passage gets crawlable. This was the first time we really got wet in the cave. It's hands-and-knees at first, but eventually becomes a chest-in-the-water crawl. The water is only an inch or two deep, but it's just enough to be a pain. At this point, Kevin wisely chose to wait for Josh and I back at the resting area.

We crawled forward, scooting across the Tucker County asphalt, observing lots of white soda straws and small formations up towards the ceiling, and wishing it were big enough for us to stay out of the water. There's a kneeling point where we believe the final survey station, some orange tape, is placed. The ceiling here is filled with formations, including a 3' long soda straw. From here, the floor is too low to continue crawling, but the middle tube - about 10" by 10" with side, top, and bottom slots - is big enough to continue. Movement is very constricted, and is made especially annoying by how rough the sides of the passage are. We both eventually had to ditch our packs to keep going. Josh was 30' - 40' ahead of me, and we were both concerned that we'd have to try and back out of this tube. I waited at a "convenient" spot, he rounded a bend to where the passage gets a bit wider with some more soda straws, but continues as a nasty tube crawl. The wind in this constricted passage is incredibly strong, visibly blowing the orange survey tape around.

We managed to get turned around, eventually went back to meet Kevin, and headed back out. At the big dome, Josh and I examined the claw marks on the wall, speculating about what sort of animal would make them. As we headed forward to leave, I shined my lamp out towards the canyon ceiling, and Kevin shouted "Look at those eyes!" Two pair of glowing yellow eyes, moving around up above, were watching us. Raccoons! While the Keplingers are the kind of folks that hunt 'coon with their bare hands, I was just a bit nervous thinking about how my accident report was going to sound..."150lb City-boy Caver Mauled By Rabid Cave Coons". Apparently these raccoons were well-fed at the time, because they chose not to attack us as we briskly jogged the rest of the canyon passage back to the slot. I kept my light pointed towards the ceiling just in case.

We used hand ascenders to climb back up the slot, then each slowly and un-gracefully climbed back up the wet sinkhole entrance. We probably spent only 3 hours in cave. Josh and I walked around the area afterwards, finding a very small sinkhole that didn't move air on the far side of the hill, and a tiny resurgance with no cave passage on the bottom of that hillside.

[trip] Virgin Druid on New Years Eve!

2006-01-01T23:09:00.001-05:00

Saturday, New Years Eve 2005, just 364 days after virgin cave was entered at New Years Day Cave, I got the honor of breaking into virgin cave (my first ever) at the downstream dig! The new cave (edit: officially named "Hero Hole") is obstructed upstream after about 200', but considering the strong wind and the much better limestone than the upstream (NYDC) side, we know there's lots more cave to find. This cave, and New Years Day Cave, are presumed to be the downstream and upstream arms of Druid Cave.

Aaron, smiling at another successful speleo-project - photo by Brian Masney

[trip] Cave Mountain

2006-01-01T21:46:00.000-05:00

Friday, 2005-12-30, the Mon Grotto woke up painfully early to visit Cave Mountain, in Pendleton County.

Everyone gradually arrived at Seneca Rocks, then milled around for a bit waiting for our trip leader to arrive. Since Rocky Parsons and Aaron Bird both had a good idea where the cave was, and since the leader was quite late, our caravan set out over the twisty mountain roads to locate the cave. We made it to the parking area no problem, though the cliff up on the mountain looked like it was miles away! The hike turned out to be enjoyable one - there was a well-kept trail the entire way up with a spectacular view of the valley.

The beautiful view from our hike up the mountain

The cave was literally at the top of the mountain! We suited up and headed through the entrance gate (Cave Mountain Cave is closed during the summer as a bat nursery). Because of the steep strike of the limestone, most of the passage and rooms had diagonal walls, giving the cave a bit of an amusement park funhouse feel. You can tell that at one time, the cave had a good bit of nice formations, but it's had a lot of traffic over the last 150 years (it was once mined for saltpeter), and it now looks very worn. It's also a very dry cave - I was able to wear my cave suit the next day without washing it!

Most of the passage is large walking passage and nice-sized rooms. We climbed down to a lower level, and Aaron rigged up a field harness, belay line, and hand line on the spot to help people down a climb. In the lower and upper levels, many bands of limestone were completely covered in fossils of shells and large crinoids; I kept Aaron and Rocky busy with geology questions the entire trip.

Fossils cover the walls in Cave Mountain

We finally headed back to the upper level in search of an alleged "crystal wall" which we had some scribbled directions to. The group probably looked like a bunch of lost tourists, but we found it after more debate than should have been necessary... and it turns out that the crystal wall was actually pretty impressive. It was probably an 8' high layer of dogtooth spar, in one spot completely covering the sides and top of an archway you could walk under.

The much-hyped crystal wall

We left the cave, hiked back down the mountain, and were all on our respective ways home before dark.

Alternate trip reports: Doug McCarty

Photos: Mine, Doug McCarty

[gear] Sten in the shop

2005-12-23T20:52:00.000-05:00

So my StenLight shows some green corrosion on the positive terminal, and green corrosion apparently only occurs from copper, not the tin connector on the StenLight. Since I'm one of the very few problem reports they've received, and since my lamp shows this odd corrosion, they presume my lamp has some connector-related defect and requested that I send my unit in for them to examine. They paid postage and offered to send me a temporary replacement lamp to tide me over. Considering that they contacted me directly after me posting about my issues in a web forum, I have nothing but praise for their customer support.

[Trip] Tucker Co. Dec. 17, 2005

2005-12-18T23:51:00.000-05:00

Tucker County Survey met on Saturday and continued the mapping of M*R Cave. We finally hit the Good Stuff™ - the big walking passage, formations, crystal floors, and the cool white flowstone. I guess now that everybody else has seen it, I don't have any more stories to tell them! I must have worn myself out as I slept for nearly 12 hours afterwards.

Kevin Keplinger in awe of the white flowstone. Photo by Brian Masney