[trip] Beaverhole Upper

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!

[trip] Beaverhole Upper

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.

[trip] Biology Study

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