[trip] Pendleton Caving - Sinnett, Sites

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

[trip] Cass Cave

Brian Masney, Mary Schmidt, Jason Thomas, and Dave Riggs took a trip into Cass Cave, one of WV's most amazing (and infamous) vertical caves. We met Saturday night and spent a chilly night camping at Oildrum Falls. In the morning, we grabbed some breakfast at Snowshoe, then headed to Cass. We packed up a ton of photography gear, and a large "emergency pack" in case a sudden weather change caused an extended trip. We hiked up the valley to the cave entrance, geared up, and headed in cave around 11:30am.

Brian and Jason headed in first to haul gear and rig the drop. Mary and I followed with the remainder of the gear. The entrance passage was relatively dry, but we still managed to get our arms and legs wet in the stream crawl. We met back up at the climb to the belay loft, passed our gear up to the top, and climbed into the windy upper passage. Brian chimneyed out and picked the two best of the available four bolts, and backed up with a safety traverse line back on solid ground. To get one rope, one must slide out across a slick ledge for about 8', and then shimmy down into a narrow canyon where the bolts will keep rappellers safely out of the spray from Suicide Falls.

The 180' rappel takes you down about 30' against walls and ledges, then it's a free rappel into a huge room... Suicide Falls crashes down on one side, the other overlooks a giant mountain of breakdown with an enormous boulder wedged between both walls, frozen in mid-tumble. After you climb the breakdown pile, the enormous borehole passage stretches as far forward as you can possibly see. We set up the gear for some photography of this amazing passage.

Brian, while incredibly skilled in photography, is not nearly as well known for his electronics skills... and for good reason. Brian constructed several flash guns using radio shack parts, duct tape, and cardboard. He handed these fine units out to his unwitting sherpas and sent us all out into the borehole passage to try and light it up. As I screwed my first flashbulb into the untested flash gun, I heard a loud pop, my vision went completely white, and felt a sharp pain in my ungloved fingers as they were singed by the magnesium flashbulb. Brian helpfully recommended that I "make sure that I'm not pressing the button" on the gun, and then suggested that I contribute to the photo by screwing the next bulb in on the count of "three" (to which I very politely replied "NO.") I made him screw the next bulb in, and it worked correctly, giving me a false sense of security. I tried another and was rewarded with yet another pop and the stench of melted neoprene glove.

We headed further on into the cave to check out some amazing rimstone dams and the birdbath formation, as well as lots of great bacon and flowstone on the walls. A lower passage leads to a pristine lake surrounded by formations, which we didn't go near for fear of messing it up with our filthy boots.

Cass Cave "big room", photo by Brian Masney.

William E. Davies

Unless you just crawled out from under a rock, you've most certainly heard of William E. Davies. Davies authored Caverns of West Virginia for the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, published in 1949. This book has been the most popular title ever put out by the WVGES. The WVGES received so many requests after it had sold out that the book was revised and re-issued in 1958, this volume completely selling out within 6 years. Demand was still so high that the book was again re-issued, along with a supplement, in 1965. The work that Davies did for Caverns was the inspiration for WVaSS. That's probably the extent that most West Virginia cavers know about Bill Davies.


W. E. Davies, photo from the National Cave and Karst Research Institute's Davies biography

Davies (NSS 345) was President of the National Speleological Society from 1954-56, and served as Science Vice President from 1951-53. He was chairman of NSS Research Advisory from 1951-53, and the editor for the Bulletin (precursor to the Journal of Cave and Karst Studies from 1957-63. He is listed as one of the original three of the board of directors and one of the original seven of the board of trustees from the NSS articles of incorporation. He was awarded Certificate of Merit in 1950, became an Honorary Member in 1960, and an NSS Fellow.

W. E. Davies passed away in 1990, but the efforts he helped put in motion live on today.



http://www2.nature.nps.gov/nckri/map/maps/engineering_aspects/davies.htm

http://www2.nature.nps.gov/nckri/map/maps/engineering_aspects/text.htm

http://water.usgs.gov/ogw/karst/kigconference/rco_proposedmap.htm

http://www.caves.org/nss-business/bog/app-c.html

http://www.caves.org/nss-business/bog/table-4e.html

[gis] GIS Data For Cavers

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