Date: 07/21-23/2006
Cavers: 16
Caves: Greensville Saltpeter(Saturday), Rehoboth Church (Sunday)
Camp: Moncove Lake State Park, near Union, WV
Raining Friday night, but weather cooperate well in the next two days. We spend about 5 hours underground the first day. Diana led a photo group. They had a few of nice shots. The other two groups are led by Matt and Ken. They explore various sites such as a few of entrances, the saltpeter maze, the formation factory, the haystack, and the watch tower in this cave.

Saturday dinner is organized by Brian. Hot dogs, corns and marshmallow are hot of the fire and the grill. Unfortunately there is no salad in the menu so a group has to drive to Union for it.

On Sunday, 7 cavers went underground for about 4 hours. It is more rocky than the previous cave. It has smaller passages with less walking opportunities. There are some climbings, but are easy ones. There are more formations than the first cave. The team explores two big rooms including the Main room. Due to hungry stomach, the rest(most) of the cave is left for later.

This is the first survey trip for Melanie (Booker), Mike(Backward) and Yu (Forward), class of 2006. Dave is the sketcher. Ken is the “mentor” or the “explorer”. The team spent about 9 hours underground! The team realized this until they are out of the cave! Teamwork such as in the first picture is practiced to reach a high lead before the TJ’s trap. One on the cave artist is attached too. More photos in this trip is available in the TriTrog Gallery.

Here is a historical email from Ken:

You surveyed 200.5 feet, not enough for a free meal. The total cave length is now 2.07 miles.

The 12-shot Vertical Maze loop that you closed was 159.6 feet long, and the loop was off by 0.66 feet, rated Good by the software I use.

The loop into TJ’s Trap was just nine shots and 124.65 feet, and your error was 1.52 feet, still rated Good. Things do change in the software as interlocking loops get changed, so these stats may change.

I do need to mention that this was after I corrected a few cases where someone apparently read the small compass numbers instead of the big ones.

Thanks for the help yesterday. You knocked six question marks off of my draft map.

Ken