Coal Mine Opened in Morgantown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.