While for me it’s been a perennial favorite cave, given my general reduction in caving the past few years, I haven’t been to Perkin’s cave for a while. I knew the annual open house was taking place so I’d had the idea of swinging by in the back of my mind, but I didn’t commit to going until the day I drove there. I messaged Ellen Hoffler Friday morning asking if it was still okay to tag along even though the sign-up had closed a couple days before. She responded “of course”, and I started packing during my lunch break. I didn’t get on the road until ~6:45pm, but I made the sub four hour drive from my house safely, and was able to hang out by the gas fire in front of the field house for an hour before sleeping in my car for the night. 

The next day, I got ready, and spent a lot of time marveling at how amazing the whole site looked. The road is in really good condition. The fieldhouse is very inviting, nice to hang out in, and somewhere I’d be happy to sleep. What a change from what things looked like when I started visiting the property. Huge kudos for Steve and Jeannie Bailey for the incredible amount of work they’ve done to beautify the property!!!

Three different groups visited the cave on Saturday. Two groups that did shorter trips to ghost town and back, and one that did the main loop with the stream exit. I was one of seven in the group doing the longer main loop. 

Once in the cave, it didn’t take long before things to got exciting. On starting the climb down from the register room into the hum room, Brooke Barthen fell the entire distance, about 10’, with little more than a scratch on her shoulder. She curled up and slid for most of the fall, but it was rapid, scary to watch, and could have been much worse. Often when we have less confident cavers we will have spotters on that climb, but given everyone on our team was strong, and prepared for a strenuous trip the idea of having a spotter there didn’t even cross my mind. Given the same set of people I still wouldn’t add a spotter, but appropriate caution should be taken at that location. 

After the early excitement, the rest of the loop was just fun. Jason led us into a few side things I’d never seen before that he’s open to having included in sport trips where the group is up for a little extra. The most interesting thing to me was the downstream push Jason squeezed into. After reaching the stream level, we traveled to the 50’ rope climb, and on the way, noticed the water levels were really low compared to normal conditions. Since we were about to exit through the much larger upstream passage, this seemed like as good a time as any to see if the downstream passage can be pushed. 

Jason started into the stream with a belly crawl where even under these low water conditions you can’t avoid running the entire front of your body through the water. After the sounds of his crawling started to fade around the corner I followed, keeping in hearing distance so I’d know if he found anything interesting. The crawl does eventually open up to a hands and knees crawl in places with a solid chert colored floor. The crawl is pretty grabby, requiring both of us to stop multiple times to unhook our clothes from some of the rock. Jason may have traveled 100’ or so in, reportedly turning around where the passage that was only a few feet wide at times spans to be about 40’ wide, but only about 1’ high. He chose not to push this. I’m guessing I crossed 2/3rds of the distance he covered. Between where I stopped and where Jason stopped did require fully submerging in the stream, but we observed that even when the water levels are high, the passage we were in should always be passable by humans. A light wetsuit would be required for any return survey trip, but this passage appears to go outside the bounds of the original map, where we’ve yet to come up with a major breakout. Feeling satisfied for the day, we exited back out of the stream, wet, and much dirtier than we’d normally get underground. Despite this being a tourist trip, it was nice to add a small amount of new knowledge to our understanding of the cave that day.

The exit through the stream was uneventful, and felt shorter and less agonizing than I remember. Maybe that’s because someone else was leading it, or maybe it’s just easier when you haven’t been surveying for the past 10 hours. Oh, and no hauling vertical or survey gear this time either so packs were relatively light.

For dinner we had a lovely pot-luck style hamburger dinner with a guest speaker! Ed Morgan, former mayor of Abingdon, and one of only five names on the original Tom Roehr map, talked of his involvement with the original exploration of the cave. I was literally on the edge of my seat for much of his talk. He spoke about his start with caving with the now defunct Iron Mountain Grotto at Emory and Henry College, and how his exploration in Perkins was a highlight of his life. To me, the most mind blowing part of the story was that during their survey of the cave, as part of their deal with the original landowner, O’Dell Little, they were not allowed to run mixed gender trips. The result of this is that all of the original surveyors were men. I skimmed my cave journal, and I don’t know if I’ve surveyed anything without women contributing to the effort. He was the first to find the 1400’ walk, and is one of the finite number of people to have ever traveled past the 800’ crawl. He didn’t go in the cave that day, but he publicly stated he wants to make it underground for the 2025 open house next year.

Sunday was the ACC meeting which I didn’t attend, but instead was finally able to make the hike up to the Channels Nature Preserve on the top of the ridge near Hayters Gap. With the sandstone boulders being so large and close together it had many of the same appeals as squeezing through and exploring a cave.

Sunday, the day you wake up questioning if you really made the best choices the day before. What would your parents think of your decisions? Are you too old for these shenanigans?

These are common thoughts during caving weekend. You go into the weekend stoked about getting in multiple days, but then after you make a hard push on Saturday, you consider scaling back your ambitions. Disney+ just came out, maybe we should go home and try that instead.

But no. We’ve got caves to ‘splore.

This weekend, the trip the day before wasn’t actually too bad, but I’ll leave the details and color for that trip to someone else. Helpfully, we also made a fairly leisurely start to the day, not getting to the vicinity of the cave until after 11am.

The cave of the day was Stones #2. In past years the Tri-trogs surveyed the nearby Stones #1 and Cassell caves, but ended up saving this one for later. During the survey of those caves, Dave and I located the entrance to this cave and did some quick exploring to get an idea for what to expect. One thing we learned from that trip was that our access path was less than ideal. We basically climbed down and up a cliff to get there. Was there a better way?

At a later date, Ken had made a trip to checkout the possibility of non-cliff access, and thought he’d found something very convenient just across the river. When we drove there this time, “what, No Tresspassing”?! So we drove around to find another way. What did the top of the cliff look like? Oh, a brand new fence, thats nice, and annoying. We also didn’t have permission to park where we had been parking previously. Talking to strangers is hard. We did, however, find a way.

There was a nice parking pull out where we could walk along the river to our destination. Before suiting up, we made the short trek through the woods to determine the feasibility of access, and determined this new path would work out great even if we did step over a deer carcass to get there.

So, back to the car, then back to the cave. Cross the river. Don’t slip and fall. Oh, the water went over the top of your boots, too bad. It was cool that day, but not too bad. The sun was shining with almost no clouds in the sky. Once we got inside out of the breeze, the cave was rather pleasant. A little animal scat, but compared to Big Sink it was unremarkable.

As for the survey, it was rippin’ speedy. I was setting stations, Ken was on book, Taylor and Rodney were on instruments. After a bit of struggles with the first shot, we were off to the races. On a couple occasions I got ahead of the team with my station setting, and was able to do a little solo surveying, leaving my red LED at the opposite station, getting foresights and backsights of course, and recording the numbers in my book separately to hand off to Ken.

The cave itself has two entrances, very close to each other that lead into the main room. There is a side passage that seems to parallel the cliff/river, but eventually got too tight for my hips. Through a steep uphill crawl too tight for hands and knees, there is an upper room about 15 feet high. Weirdly enough, in that room there were roots embedded in the climb to the top part of that room, and there was also a slug on the ceiling, something I’ve never witnessed in cave before. The cave also had four bats scattered on the ceiling throughout the cave. Neat, better than Hancock.

The best part of the whole trip was that although I was rushing the pace a bit so I could get back in time for my ultimate Frisbee games, we got the whole thing surveyed. Yeah, all of it! The whole thing. 334 feet in the book! Woo-hoo. It felt super good. We left the cave feeling accomplished and made a quick change back at the car.

On the way home, the real world started to creep back in. Things like grad school, unemployment, and ultimate were the topics of the drive. The highs and lows of the weekend started to fade into the background as we made sure Ken didn’t fall asleep to the freeway lullaby. It was great to get outside, but we couldn’t stay there forever. It was nice to get away for a moment though, however brief it felt. We should go caving more often.

The Rail Valley Cave survey is finished…

…except for the bowling ball sized hole blowing air into your face like a fan.

Just about anyone who reads this trip report will have seen one of the emails I sent out the day before our planned trip. We needed a third surveyor, or the trip wasn’t going to happen. When we planned this trip, we knew it was going to be a hard sell for the local cavers, but we were determined, and tried to get the word out early. Then we crossed our fingers. I thought we had a third until it was almost time to leave. In a mild panic I re-emailed everyone I could think of. I got a number of responses from friends wishing me luck in my search, but for many, alternative plans were already made. Thankfully we had a taker from the Walker Mountain grotto.

I’d never met Zac Lynn before the trip, but I was glad to have him along. After he emailed me his interest, we chatted on the phone for a while and he seemed up to the task. Hiking, crawling, climbing, rappelling, surveying, bushwhacking, eating spiders, water, mud, risk of the cave flooding, whatever. Yee-Haw!

We stayed at Tanya’s Friday night, and Zac met us there at 9am Saturday. Of course I was still packing when he arrived. Fortunately the drive was short. On the hike to the cave I don’t think anyone actually ate any spiders, but Dave kindly offered to take the lead after I wrapped a few large webs around my head. With vertical to be had, we carried about 150’ of rope knowing it was serious overkill, but we didn’t have any shorter pieces available. At this point of the trip I expressed my concerns about the rain for the day. Although Marion was only forecast to have a small amount of rain, reading the scientific discussion informed me of the possibility of up to 2” with storms potentially parking in front of the mountains. We discussed the risks and decided that we should at minimum rig the drop. Worst case we’d get bored trapped in the liquor cabinet for a few hours.

In the entrance crawls, the the dirt and mud had shifted around notably since our previous trip a couple of months ago. Getting wet was unavoidable and I started my time underground by filling one of my shoes with water. Other than that, having a short trip to the start of our leads was really enjoyable.

Upon arriving at the leads we quickly realized something about that area we weren’t prepared to notice on the previous trip. That room is cursed. Okay, maybe not, but that room felt significantly colder than the rest of the cave. Entering the room felt notably colder, and when we left later in the day, the main passage felt much warmer. To add to the chilly feeling, there was air moving in that room, yet despite some frenetic searching, we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.

On to the survey. We started by rigging the pit. There is a thin stream at the bottom, but too tight to be entered up or down stream. Across the pit, the passage was well decorated, but not new to humans as there were some old boot prints. It also didn’t extend very far. Bummer. It looked really super exciting. We wrapped up that room, then surveyed a couple other passages from the liquor cabinet before moving on. One notable aspect of the pit stream was that we believe it could be heard upstream in a small room we called scholar’s cove. This means that we could have three independent streams of water in this small cave. The entrance stream, this one, and the one we were about to go survey.

Near the entrance of the cave, we left a side passage with what was advertised to us a great blowing lead that needed only a little hammering to pass through. Knowing this, we skipped it thinking we’d attack the known stuff first to save the exciting things for later. On the previous trip I explored that passage briefly to determine what sort of tools we might need, and concluded the blowing lead was going to be a lot more work than was advertised. With low expectations, we wrapped up our survey for the day in this passage. However since we were being more thorough on this trip, we realized I’d been looking at the wrong hole. My expectations came from an old sketch that placed the blowing lead in a different location from where I would have drawn it. Yes, a hole does blow there, but there is a much better hole a hidden nearby. It’s about 6’ off the floor and will require some creativity to safely expand, but the air and location make it worth a return trip at some point.

So, until we decide to break out the digging tools, the survey is done. That is the only lead left. We’ll stay off the property for hunting season, and until next summer only the bold will be bothered to return crawling through the fresh snow melt of spring. With Rail Valley off the list… for now, It’s time to find another project.

Survey total for the day: 333.4′

I had a blast on my first real caving adventure. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was just what I was looking to do. I have been in caves before, but this was the first time I had the freedom to go where I wanted and had the potential to go into uncharted territory. The small cave entrances were a bit of a surprise to me. I didn’t really mind, but I was glad to get past them. Once we got into the cave, I couldn’t wait to continue exploring. Our original goal was to take some climbing gear and a scaling pole somewhat far into the cave to get up onto a ledge. We had no idea what was beyond the ledge, but that is the nature of exploring new territory! It’s possible it would dead end right away, or it could have been a whole new cave to discover. We decided to use the pole at another location near the cave’s entrance to climb up a wall. The pole ended up failing when Mark climbed up it about 15 feet. We had to abandon our original plan so David, Brian, and myself just explored the more accessible parts of the cave. Many of the rock formations were absolutely beautiful. Since this cave has only been explored by only a handful of people, the rock formations were in great shape. We also got some amazing pictures that I did not expect to get due to lighting. I decided not to bring a camera so I could just focus on the experience. Brian luckily had a great low light camera and experience with using head lamps and flashlights to get some great shots. One of my favorite parts was going down into the drain at the bottom of a huge room. It wasn’t an extremely tight fit, but it was nothing like I’ve ever done before. Several vertical climbs surrounded by rock that appeared to dead end just a few feet ahead. This eventually lead to a hallway that brought you to a huge room with a big vertical drop known as the pit. This is where we had to turn back because we didn’t have gear. I would definitely consider returning to this cave to go beyond this point.

On day two we went to Radon cave. I thought Snocone had some tight squeezes, but the entrance to this cave was about as tight as could be. It was about four feet wide, and the height was such that you had to crawl on your belly and couldn’t even take a deep breath at one point. What made this cave fun for me was that none of us had been very far into the cave so we didn’t know what to expect. I also got to learn a little bit about how to survey a cave. This cave clearly had been explored by “many” cavers over the years. I got to explore the cave a little bit by myself while the others were preparing to survey. I climbed down a wall and found a hole that we would eventually explore. The hole was about an eight foot drop so I had to wait for Dave to setup something for us to climb up and down. The anticipation to see where this would lead was very exciting. It didn’t go as far as I had hoped, but it was a good amount of space to survey in one day. I’m really lucky that Dave, Mark, and Carlin were willing to take a chance by bringing me on this trip without knowing my caving ability. Another caving trip is definitely in my future. This trip was just what I was looking for!

-Mike Hammock-

Just got back from Perkins cave today. My elbows and knees are a bit sore but having spent 14 hours underground yesterday I’m feeling pretty good. We got a lot accomplished. The trip consisted of three excellent teams who each surveyed over 1000’. In total we logged over 3200’ for the trip. Official numbers will come later after Jason gets the data in the computer.

Participating in the trip were:
Team #1: Jason Lachniet, Steve Ahn
Team #2: Amy Skowronski, Nick Socky
Team #3: Myself, Elliot Edling, Janet Manning

Rough timeline of my trip:
Friday:
4pm – Sent out a late note to Jason confirming I was joining his trip. Still needed a place to sleep. Also, I had nothing packed and was still at work.
~6pm – Got off the phone with Bill Grose who even though he wasn’t caving, offered me a bed in his house for the night!
10:40pm – After braving the grocery store, and then later I some very heavy rain near Mt. Airy, NC, I landed at Bill’s place.

Saturday:
7am – Woke up for the day. Before I could leave, Bill spoiled me by making sausage and eggs. Much better than the food I had planned. Yum!
8:30am+ – Met up with the team in Meadowview, VA before caravanning to the cave property.
10:40am – I was the last to enter the cave. I think the longer I’ve been doing this, the longer it takes me to get ready.
10:45am – Met everyone else who was already in the register room checking instruments on a survey course Jason had setup to make sure there were no issues with anyone’s equipment.
1:??pm – We arrived on the other side of the 800’ crawl. From here we Jason and Steve went their own way while I led the others to leads Steve and I generated earlier this year. My team started by resurveying a shot I took issue with at the end of our last trip while Amy and Nick went off into passage where the flagging hanging in the walking passage was moving in the breeze.
Our passage was not quite as expected.
Although it began looking great, we quickly seemed to reach the end of our lead. This didn’t make a lot of sense considering the old map seemed to show a very long passage in the direction we were headed. Around this time Elliot dropped his glove down a small hole and couldn’t get it back. This motivated him to downclimb a hole originally perceived as something we’d rather try to bypass. Turns out the drop was not only the way to the glove, but also the best way forward. The bottom of the drop immediately produced three leads. Since we had a DistoX with us I was motivated to do the awkward shots first. After four shots, we decided we didn’t want to push that lead further as we found ourselves chimneying in less than stellar passage. Back to our other leads. Having poked my head in both directions I suggested we take the worse looking lead, saving the nice lead for something we could look forward to later. We never got back to that lead.
Survey where went started off crawly, but eventually opened into nice straight canyon passage. Just before reaching the steam we encountered an area we’ve come to call the “Juice Bar”. At the time Elliot was on point and he started giggling to himself after discovering it. Janet thought he was being weird until she met up with him and discovered what the fun was all about. There is a layer of “rock” in this area that we saturated such that it would ooze out water when pressed. We all agreed it was pretty neat.
We left one lead near the Juice Bar going downstream then continued upstream for some distance. We reached a point where two streams converge and we continued the tradition of starting into the less appealing passage. We stopped where it looked like we would get wet. Elliot checked the lead and reported it opens back into walking passage after 15’. He got his hands and lower legs wet going in, and not wanting to get wet myself I opted for the other stream lead. It started great with a lot of water and a pretty 4’ waterfall below us, but eventually we ended up in passage frequently narrower than my shoulders, but it was at least tall enough to stand. As a sketcher, it was especially annoying because the floor the stream meandered along was typically about 10’ wide but only 1-2’ high.
Finally, things in front of me started sounding better when Elliot reported pretties, but unstable looking breakdown. I ran ahead to join him to see if things were as fragile as he claimed. I climbed though with no issue and suddenly realized I was in known passage. Jason, Amy, and Janet had surveyed down to this level on the last trip. I started yelling with excitement about the loop closure we just managed. To add to it, I knew Jason and Steve were expected to return right over our heads before leaving, and before I could catch up with the sketching, they had descended to our level to fill bottles before leaving.
11pm – Everyone meet at the planned location and time just before the 800’ crawl. We snacked and chatted a bit before heading for the exit.
11:11pm – Entered Crawl.
12:40am – Arrived back at the cars. Made pretty good time on the way out having exited through the stream passage
After everyone was situated, we totaled our numbers and excitedly reflected on how productive we all had managed to be. It’s quite rare for every team on a cave survey trip to be so productive.

Steve and Jason left for home that night while the rest of us camped on the property. We exited for home the next day before the morning haze had fully cleared off the mountain.

Perkins cave makes me happy.