WVGES

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



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

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

[trip] Tucker Co. Mar. 25, 2006

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



Doug McCarty sketching, photo by Brian Masney

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

Rainy Vertical Practice

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

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

[trip] Sharps Cave

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

2005 Caving Review

Oh 2005, you came and went so quickly. So many caves, so few weekends. It's hard to believe that just 12 months ago, I'd never been in a cave; in just a year I've gotten 16 different ones under my belt, hundreds of feet of rappelling experience, surveyed on several projects, and helped dig open a new cave. I hope to do at least twice as much next year. Here's all the caves I visited this year...

Beaverhole Upper



Entrance to Beaverhole Upper

Llew Williams took me and a few other newbie cavers to see this close-to-home cave in early February. The entrance room was full of huge ice stalactites and stalagmites, and the stream was high and icy cold. We took our time and I got to do lots of exploring. It was my first time in a cave, and I was instantly hooked. Thanks Llew!



Rich Finley initiates a new caver

I made it back into Beaverhole Upper a few other times this year... Once with Rich Finley, who took a group of people from his church. Since I'd been in the cave once before and had a good sense of direction in it, I got to help him lead the trip - an honor considering my relatively small experience. I also visited this cave one weekday evening with the WVU Student Grotto, another very fun trip.

Acorn Cave
Wilfong's Pit



Me on rope at Wilfong's Pit

My trial-by-fire first vertical trip, I got to drop Acorn Cave having never been on rope before. The 6-bar rack was way too much friction for me, and I had to feed it on the way down. I did a pretty good job frogging back out (IMHO), and even managed to recover from my ascender eating the rope pad. Wilfong's Pit was a beautiful 65' open-air pit - I used a microrack and rappelled much more gracefully this time. Thanks to everyone on this trip who helped coach me!

Sharp's Cave
Pinnacle Cave

As Bob Griffith and I waited on the side of the road for Llew and company to arrive, a 4-wheeler approached. The driver recognized by the bat sticker on our bumper that we were cavers, and informed us that he had a cave on his property that he'd like us to come see. What luck! We followed, and found what we believe to be Pinnacle Cave, a tall and narrow cave with sharp sword-like vertical flutes along the walls. Justin Williams and I were the only two agile enough (read: skinny enough) to make it through a squeeze above an 8' drop, and we followed the cave back and around to a connecting stream. We turned back at a particularly low spot which had a permenant survey station placed, but it's obvious this is a cave that very few people have ever seen.

After that lucky break, we went across the road to Sharp's Cave for an enjoyable trip - another cave I'd like to go explore more.



Bob Griffith tries to get his manly chest through one of the squeezes in Pinnacle Cave

New Years Day Cave

This newly-discovered cave interested me because it's located so close to home, here in Monongalia County. My first trip in was spent in a small stream lead with Bob Griffith. We spent the entire time on our bellies, digging sand and gravel out of the way so we could crawl upstream towards an interesting opening beyond. We eventually dug enough of a trench that I could make it to the tiny stoop-sized room, which I believe I'm the only person to ever visit. Unfortunately, some large rock blocks the passage beyond, meaning we dug to a dead end. The low ceilings, crumbly sandy limestone, endless mud, and bitch of a hike up the canyon weren't enough to keep me from coming back however; I've gone back to NYDC to assist in some passage enlargement and to survey, but have decided that I'm not going to do it again until Winter is over.

Devil's Den

This was my first real outing with the Tucker County Survey. We received very "general" directions to two caves. The first, A Pretty Little Cave, turned out to be a tiny little rabbit-hole infested with spiders - it wasn't surveyed, and I didn't hop down. We did a few hours of ridgewalking, hacking through some incredibly thick jungle forest, and eventually came to a huge limestone outcropping - with no cave. We followed the trail further and amazingly found the Devil's Den, a rather boring joint-formed cave that pinches out before long. Unfortunately, it turns out to be just a few-hundred feet into Preston County - oh well.



This is unfortunately the only thing you'll see in Devil's Den

Bowden Cave

Rich Finley took me in the Bear Haven entrance, and out through the Third Entrance. This through trip was really enjoyable. We went in the main entrance aftewards, since I'd never actually been into Bowden before. Somehow I got convinced to crawl the connector between the water course and the breakdown room past the shower room...by myself. It was pretty frightening, but I don't think I'll ever forget the joy I felt when I finally heard voices from the room outside and knew I'd made it. I've been back in the main entrance a few times since.

My Cave

I met Justin and Llew, who spent the weekend camping on the Elk River, and we checked out My Cave. I got to see the cool limestone pavement on the Dry Branch, and poked my head into the Black Hole, which sucks down part of the Elk when the water level is up. *finish me*

OTR
Cass Cave



Ryan Ellers and I pose next to an incredible alian-looking formation in Cass Cave

M*ll Run Cave

For several months, this cave has been the focus of the Tucker County Survey. Early on, Josh Keplinger and I pushed the cave as far as we could go to look for another entrance. The survey has finally caught up with most of the ground we covered, but no end is in sight yet.



Me on station in a side branch of Mill Run

Bradshaw Run Cave
Dreen Cave

I almost missed this awesome trip, failing to make a critical turn and winding around the wrong mountain and way off course. I sped along past the Greenbank Observatory and up the twisty Route 66, to the tiny town of Mace, and raced down the Dry Fork of the Elk River, past the meeting place and by sheer luck came across Llew, Doug, and Justin, suited up and ready to go caving.

Bradshaw run was a very cool cave; we rigged to a fallen tree outside the cave, and rappelled down the short entrance drop. The limestone here is a beautiful, pure white color. After a bit of crawling, the cave opens into a large phreatic tube, in some places the size of a subway tunnel. There's a large fault in the middle, where the tube changes direction. We spent some time here shouting and listening to the incredible echos bouncing back and forth from both directions - Doug even sang a melody with himself. We didn't go past the second vertical drop, though it looks like lots more cave is beyond. Left Tit Pit is just next door, but we weren't up for doing it that afternoon.

Afterwards, we visited Dreen Cave, very easy to get to and a very easy walking cave. From the entrance, it's split into two arms; the left an easy horizontal passage, the right a horizontal passage with a deep vertical crack in the floor that goes the entire length. Apparently the cave has at least two lower levels along this arm, I'd like to check them out some day.



Doug McCarty, surrounded by white limestone, going over the lip in Bradshaw Run

Maiden Run

The WVUSG hit this cave on a Friday night, and it was a lot of fun. It's so close, I'd like to go back and poke around the other holes in this area.



Rich poses with the unidentified poo in Maiden Run

Cave Mountain Cave



The gated entrance, high up on Cave Mountain

New Years Eve Cave



Me, smiling and slimed after my first virgin cave

Photos by Me, Brian Masney, Doug McCarty, Llew Williams, and Garth Dixon.

I saw a Hodag the other day...

Now listen up...

If you know me from my other speleo posts, you'll know that I'm a completely straightforward kinda guy, who is quite willing to share my linear knowledge with others, especially those cave folks, so they can improve their crooked situations. Well, what I'm about to tell you is the most straight-up bit of news you'll ever hear. You see, I saw a hodag the other day with my own two perfectly good working eyes and the site mortified me so bad that I've decided to turn over a new leaf.

If you don't know what a hodag is, to get a picture in your mind, imagine a wish bone at Thanksgiving dinner that's already been broke. That's right, one side is shorter than the other, and that's the way it is with hodags. Hunh? you ask. Yah well, that's probably a perfectly good question cuz you still can't visualize it quite right. Think about this: its an animal that walks on two legs, one shorter than the other, but it ain't a beast, or a wild animal, its more like a yeti or one of them 'bominable snowmen. If you caught one and you cleaned him up real good, you would probably get a WVU Mountaineer, but with one leg shorter than the other. That's a hodag.

They live in Appalachia, where I've lived all my life, and where the hillsides are so steep that it would make plenty of sense to have one leg shorter than the other so you could walk around those hills, rather than having to go up and down em, but until the other day, I had only heard tell of these hodag creatures. Most of those stories came from cavers who went to that Germany Valley cave called Schoolhouse, which I think has a funny name, cuz when I went in caves (avoid 'em now all costs), I was trying to get away from the Schoolhouse and the teachers. Anyoldwho, cavers were in some high-angled passage in Schoolhouse that had a slope from one side to the other like when they made that cave, they forgot to take out about half the dirt, except it weren't the top half, or side half, it was the top-side half and it sloped down just like an Appalachian hillside. So these cavers, to go forward they had to scrunch up one leg real tight up under 'em and the other would be at its normal length and they go walking through the passage like that.

Well it just so happened on one of their excursions in this sloped up passage, these cavers came upon a mountain-man looking creature standing right there in the passage with his short leg up the hill and his long leg down. The hodag, that's what it was, and the cavers took a good look at each other and both turned around in fear to skeddadle out of there, cuz neither of em liked the look of the other too much. But those cavers had barely got turned around and scrunched their up-hill leg up under em, had to switch scrunched-up legs you know cuz now they were going back out, and this took some time, but when they glanced over their shoulders that Hodag was already way down the cave passage and out of site. So eventually those cavers came of of the cave in their scrunch walk and went to the country store and told the proprietor about the hodag they had just seen and because everybody had to go to the country store on occasion, word spread rapidly about that Hodag in Schoolhouse Cave. Other folks, cavers too, claimed to have seen em also, so there's no doubt they existed, at least at some time ago.

And that was a long time ago and I ain't heard much from folks about hodags in a while. So I was beginning to think that the strip mining and road building that's been going on in Appalachia for the past hundred or so years was eliminating the need for em to have to one leg shorter than the other. Well, turns out there is still places out there where its a benefit to have legs like that, cuz I saw one, and that place is deep in the Cheat Canyon of northern West Virginia.

We were out looking for caves (I mean my pals were, I was along for the ride) and while I was waiting for em to check some limestone outcrop, I happened to look out across the hillside and there stood a big fuzzy looking creature with a short leg up the hill and the longer one down. He saw me too, and from the look on his face, he was a little more than worried. At first I didn't know why because I'm none too frightening in stature, at least not to a giant wild mountain hodag, but then I saw what his problem was: he was a left-leg shorty and he was facing me on the same contour. What this meant was that his route of escape was straight through me cuz if he turned around and ran the other way, his long leg would have been uphill and running like that ain't a hell you'd want to wish on anyone, hodag or not.

So anyway at that moment the two halves of my brain was having one of them "fight or flight" kinda arguments and they couldn't decide which way to go with it, so I took control and said, "Now listen up, Hodag. I ain't out to hurt you and I know you gotta come this way to git on about your business, so I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. Seeings how you have to stick to this contour on the hill, I'll be the one who moves off the contour. I'm gonna git out of your way by going up the hill a little ways. But in return, you gotta show me where the caves are around here. Deal?"

I thought this was a very reasonable proposition and was about to give myself a pat on the back for thinking of it when I looked up just in time to saw that Hodag skeddadling right toward me at a very high rate of speed. Those two halves of my brain that was arguing earlier got caught in another argument and this time I couldn't do nothing about it before that Hodag hit me like a truck in fifth gear. He knocked me straight on my back and kept right on striding around the hill like he owned the place and he'd done it a thousand times before. He was out of sight in a couple of long seconds and I was still on my back trying to figure out what was wrong with my proposal and why he hadn't accepted it. It dawned on me that he probably didn't speak English and that I should of used some other language, like Old English.

So anyway, I spent some time pondering this, during which I checked to make sure nothing was broken, nothing was, but I decided to rest a little longer just to make sure and just then along comes my pals who had missed the whole thing cuz they was still looking for them damned caves. "You guys missed out!" I told em. They just laughed and said that it must be nice to lay on the hillside and take a nap in the sun all day while they looked for caves. "No, I'm serious!" I tried to tell em. "I saw a Hodag! It knocked me down!" but they just kept on walking, not at all interested in hearing about it.

I stayed there for a few minutes more thinking about that Hodag turning down my proposition. I had already decided that it must have been a language barrier but I couldn't help wondering if maybe I had gone down the hill that he would have taken me up on the offer. I've been thinking about that ever since and I've decided to turn over a new leaf in how I do things from now on: everytime I see a Hodag out in the woods, I'm gonna go down the hill, not up, and then he'll definitely tell me where the caves are.

If you see me on the street tomorrow, you'll know I'm a new man.