During the 2025 Spring VAR, we visited Hamilton Cave, which is part of the NSS’s John Guilday Caves Nature Preserve (3 adjacent caves: Trout, New Trout, and Hamilton). The group included Stefan, Taylor, Piotr, Cat, Jacob, Jillian, Jake, Melissa, and I. The cave is located in Pendleton County, West Virginia.

Hamilton has a maze-like structure once you pass the initial entrance crawl. It is well-known for the diverse collection of fossils, which include Pleistocene-era saber-toothed cats, jaguars, and vampire bats.

Originally, we wanted to make it to the Airblower room, which is a 25 foot long tube/squeeze. However, admiring the vast quantity of embedded fossils along the way took up most of our time in the cave. Most of the maze portion is standing room with very few crawls. I believe we were close to the New Room before deciding to return. A sample of fossils we saw on this trip are included below. 

To exit, you must navigate the mazy section. It is a complex area so we got a bit lost. A good tip if you get lost in Hamilton is to choose larger passages and to go uphill in order to reach the cave entrance. I learned afterwards from a separate group, that you can place poker chips in strategic spots to mark your way back. Of course, you take the chips with you on the way out.

We had a vertical cave weekend on September 6 and 7, 2025. Both Pig Hole and Clover Hollow are located in Giles County, Virginia. We camped at the Bat Ranch.

Pig Hole

Mike Broome and Lisa Lorenzin led the trip. Jacob and I were the acolytes. This was the first cave I got to use my new climbing rope in.

The main rappel is about 120 feet. It is a beautiful moss-covered rock wall leading to a large room of breakdown to explore. From there, we climbed down towards the Mud Bridge and Hess’s Hollow for a second descent. On the way there, a few challenging climbs to different levels will await you. No webbing is needed, but one will want to be careful when navigating the climbs, as they are done on to narrow ledges, with a significant fall if you were to slip.

Hess’s Hollow is another impressive vertical section to explore. There’s a giant stalagmite (pictured) that’s used as part of the rigging. Once we were all at the bottom, we signed the register and saw that many other Tritrogs had also visited this area. At this point, we decided to return to surface.

Clover Hollow

Mike, Lisa, and I did a short trip into Clover Hollow. It was basically a pit bounce, as we did not bring additional rope or webbing for crossing the two drops (8 foot and 20 foot) which lead to the rest of the cave. Before those drops is a fun little traverse that we did. At the end, I decided to haul out a hubcap I saw near the entrance to be claimed as cave booty.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The 2026 Florida Cave Cavort was organized by the Florida Speleological Society and was held at Jerry’s Farm near Archer from March 26-29, 2026. I wanted to highlight the critical need to protect the Florida aquifer, which directly affects access to, and the health, of Florida’s cave systems as well as the entire region. Why is the aquifer so important? The Southwest Florida Water Management District reports:

Most of the freshwater supply in west-central Florida comes from groundwater in the Floridan aquifer system. The Floridan aquifer system is divided into the Upper Floridan aquifer and Lower Floridan aquifer. The Upper Floridan aquifer is the primary source of water supply in most of north and central Florida. In the southern portion of the state, the Lower Floridan aquifer is deeper and contains brackish, or slightly salty water that needs additional treatment to be used for drinking water.

During my trip to the Cave Cavort, I had the opportunity to visit two caves: Warren and Crumbling Rock

Warren Cave Nature Preserve

Warren Cave in Alachua County is the longest known dry cave in Florida with more than four miles of mapped passage. The cave was dissolved out of limestone and limey sandy clay at a time when the water table in the region was at or above the present level of the cave, around 30,000 years ago. The cave was donated in 1991 to the NSS. Warren is a vertical cave with a two-part drop and a climb almost immediately after that. They added a rebelay to the climb, which I feel helps navigate the multi-angled pitch of that section. Some consider Warren to be the premier cave in Florida, as it presents many challenges for the experienced caver.

Scott Thompson led the trip. We navigated the vertical section and moved on past two squeezes: the first, Cashew (“catch you”) and the unnamed second squeeze. Once past these two squeezes, you enter the main part of Warren. Before the squeezes, the passages have ample standing room. However, once you pass the second squeeze, it becomes mostly a crawling space which requires worm crawl/belly crawl, as well as stoops and traversing various canyon-type sections. 

We went to the Sand Room which contains a register. Then, we did a loop around the mud section, the Flat Room, and past the Virgin Rooms. Near the Flat Room, you can see a dugong (manatee) bone embedded in the rock as well as a shark tooth. There are fossilized shells throughout Warren as shown below.

The cave does continue southward from the loop that we did. However, it becomes progressively difficult to navigate as you have to crawl essentially the entire way to the end. Thus, sheer fatigue limits who can access the farther sections. 

There are resurvey efforts, as well as active digs to open new sections of the cave. A dig has also been completed towards the southern end to bypass the aptly named Agony Alley.

An interesting story about Warren is that they ran telephone cable into a part of the cave. Some cavers were in the cave when the JFK assassination occurred. To commemorate the event, they installed a plaque in an obscure area.

Crumbling Rock

This cave is located near Floral City. Due to drought conditions, the water level was very low and you could call this mud city in such conditions. Billy Renkaur (sp?) led the trip along with Derek. 

Crumbling Rock is one of Florida’s more recent cave discoveries. In contrast to most caves in the region, it features well-developed speleothems, many of which are periodically submerged as water levels fluctuate with the local aquifer. The cave’s namesake comes from its unstable, friable limestone, which can break loose if handled too roughly.

The cave has two entrances. I descended on a cable ladder and exited through the side rigged with a rope. Did I mention that the cave was muddy? It also has a lot of crawls. I didn’t see many formations in this cave beside a small flowstone and a small helictite growing on a stalagmite. I didn’t bring my phone for pictures in the cave, as it was almost unbearably muddy.

Making the through trip between the Bone entrance and the Norman entrance of Bone-Norman cave has been a trip I’ve heard many members of both our grotto and other cavers speak about. Oddly, all I’d really ever heard about from people making the through trip was that there was a really long, nasty, super-dry, brutal crawl that connected Bone to Norman. Worse, it was recommended to bring a literal mask because of how dusty it was. A tad apprehensive over what I’d heard of this cave, I decided to brave it and go anyways.

But, lets start from the beginning. There were three of us on the trip. Myself, Jacob, and John. We left Friday a bit early so we could stop by the Low Moor Cave on the way up. There was a section of the quarry I wanted to investigate, as I noticed a rather substantial section of orphaned cave that had been bisected by the quarrying operation. We were able to find this section and spent a good couple hours exploring it. There was quite a lot back there! Tall canyon passages that created a maze of sorts. I also asked Jacob to investigate a crawlway that looked really unpleasant. He did so, and confirmed it was indeed terrible.

After a quick stop at Low Moor, we stayed the night at the WVACS cave research station. We woke up early the next day and began our adventure into Bone-Norman Cave. At first, it was dry. Very dry. So dry, in fact, I was glad I decided to actually bring a mask. I used it for most the Bone section of the cave, but as the crawling continued onwards, the cave got wetter. Eventually, I took the mask off.

We made quick progress through Bone Cave and then got to the crawlway. I was prepared for the worst, but, honestly, it really wasn’t that bad. We made quick time through the crawl as well, and finally came into Norman Cave proper.

Once we got to Norman Cave, however, I was in awe. This cave was absolutely amazing! Huge, Worley’s Cave’esque passageways with a stream going through the middle were there to greet us. We delved deeper into the cave, and were met with a mysterious noise that almost sounded like a loud engine or helicopter. Our group decided to investigate the source of this noise, which echoed down the mysterious passage before us. It got louder and louder until it was right around the corner. And then, we entered a large room with a stout, but remarkably beautiful waterfall falling into a large pool. It was the source of the noise.

We ventured further, guided by Jacob and his cave wayfinding. Sometimes we’d follow the stream. Other times, we’d pop up into a higher level and continue through sculpted canyons and winding passageways.

One of our goals on this trip was to reach the Great White Way, which is a particularly beautiful section of passage that is notorious for being hard to find. Thankfully, with some careful observation of the map, we managed to find what appeared to be the entrance to this section of the cave. After a quick peek around the corner, we jubilantly confirmed it did indeed look to be very grand, gypsum-covered, crystal-laden passageway that could very much be thought of as a “Great White Way.” Had we found the fabled area of this cave?

We pressed further. The passage continued for what felt like half a mile at least. It just kept going and going and going. Gypsum and white crystal encrusted the walls. The passage was large, and easy to walk in. The ground was flat. A very easy walk. As we pressed further, the passage branched and we found a wealth of beautiful helictites, soda straws, small columns, and gypsum flowers. This was indeed the Great White Way! We spent over three hours admiring this section of the cave. It was like a garden of stone with no end.

There was much more up here than just crystals and gypsum, however. We explored every corner of the Great White Way we could find, including crawling into every hole and investigating every passage we saw. One of these led to what I nicknamed the Guillotine Passage, for its tendency to require you to stick your head above a blade of rock in a rather remarkably narrow canyon passage. This passage, a tall, narrow canyon passage, winded back and forth and doubled back on itself. We pressed onwards as far as we could reach until we could no longer fit. The passage seemed to keep going, but we turned back after we had satisfied our curiosity.

Finally, realizing the time, we decide we must continue our journey to make the connection to the Norman entrance. The cave just kept surprising us around every corner. In some parts of the cave, the floor appeared to be a giant sponge, laden with holes and pot marked like a golf ball. In other places, we saw towering stacks of flowstone, donned with draperies and pools with sparkling crystals in them. The stream was an ever-present guide.

Finally, as the stream was becoming smaller and smaller, we heard another mysterious roar off in the distance. As we got closer, it became clear we had found a gigantic waterfall. This one dwarfed the one we saw earlier, and was no less quiet. It was roaring, sending out a cloud of mist towards us. Unfortunately, while we have a video of the waterfall, I do not have a photo to post. Even more unfortunately, it seemed that while we’d found this waterfall, it marked the end of our journey to follow the water. There was no way we were climbing up to the top of it.

So…. now what?

We figured we were probably pretty close to the Norman entrance, but we weren’t quite sure exactly where the entrance was, nor how to get to it. After a glance at the clock, our group turned to leave this room, destined to back-track to figure out how to connect up to the entrance so we could leave the cave. “Matthew!” Jacob yelled over the roar of the waterfall as we were walking back down the stream. “What?” I responded. The sound of the waterfall was too loud for complex speech to get through. Only simple words and gestures would do. Sure enough, Jacob pointed up into the ceiling of the room. I simply nodded. There was a hole up there, and it looked climbable. I found may way up the climb and began looking around. There was a large void up there, and then what appeared to be a breakdown crawl that went off towards the top of the waterfall. Furthermore, it sounded like you could hear the waterfall from in the breakdown. I investigated. I ended up popping out in the stream passage above the waterfall. Jacob and John were to see me standing atop the passageway that the waterfall came out of, and I merely gave them a thumbs up. Speech wouldn’t do.

Getting the message, they found their way up the climb and through the breakdown crawl, meeting up with me. Surely this must be the way out, right? Well… I’d only looked just around the corner before feeling confident this indeed did keep going. Around the corner after, however, we were met with the water flowing out of a crack in the rock which was absolutely not traversable. After a bit of confusion, we managed to find another breakdown crawl/climb that went upwards. I checked it out. After climbing up, I saw what I thought was a headlamp in the distance. A headlamp? No, it was not a headlamp. It was light. A large white spot. Upon closer inspection, it was the exit! We had found our way!

I wrote almost all of this right after the trip, and then waited six years to edit and post it.

Peter, Ken, Emily, Julie, Sergey, and I left Peter’s house in Raleigh a little before six on Friday evening, February 14, 2020. We stopped for dinner at Los Tres Magueyes In Danville, and got to the RASS Field Station at around midnight.

After a mild to warm week, and entire winter, in Raleigh, it was scary-cold in the Virginia mountains. When we arrived it was 19°F under a clear sky, and the Milky Way could be seen. I stepped out of the car long enough to determine that enough people were looking for the key to the cabin, and that I would probably just be in the way, so I got back in. Eventually the cabin was opened and made habitable, and we got settled for the night. There seemed to be a skunk situation, likely under the rear of the cabin, but this was practically a non-issue in the face of the bitter cold. Note: if you are having to heat the cabin, that there is a small, round duct that collects air from above the wood stove and pushes it to the far room. We didn’t discover until the next day that there is a fan inside the wall, it works, and can be turned on from a nearby switch.

The next morning, we took plenty of time eating breakfast and getting ready. The cave is not a very long drive from the field station. There was another small group getting ready to go in when we arrived. No one in our group had ever been to Crossroads Cave before, but we had two different maps, and some beta from Mark. The main entrance leads into a broad room with a short ceiling. We went around in circles a lot, trying to figure out how to get into the farther reaches of the cave. The actual passage seemed not to correspond to the maps, and it was discussed that perhaps some breakdown had occurred since the original survey, closing a key passage. We had seen signs above the entrance indicating that there was a survey in progress.

It became apparent that a few people in the cave were named Emily. The other group wasn’t sure of where to go either, and they were splitting up and scouting around, while we were trying to make sense of the map. The leaders talked and figured out where everyone would go, and then our group let them go on ahead while we took a break. We crossed through the entrance room again, and three of us popped outside. It was still brutally cold, but the sun was shining. Emily talked to someone who was waiting topside. 

We went back in and poked around some more in the first room. The upper part of the cave that we had been exploring was only about 50°F, and it wasn’t until we got to the lower parts that it was typical cave temperature, around 55°F. Another group, including a few kids, came in and passed us. One of the kids leapt or jumped noisily, and Ken mentioned something to them. We saw a bat. We were able to get to an end point before turning around.

Our group definitely took the more challenging route in a place or two, since it was intended to be a sport trip. We arrived at one spot where Ken announced that it was “a junction to remember”, but I failed to do that, and I was baffled when we got back there an hour later. I think I’d been leading the way out for several minutes, up until that happened. 

Ken, Julie, and Emily headed out of the cave, while Peter, Sergey, and I delayed for a few minutes and looked for signs of life. Peter found some flatworms in the stream trickling through the entrance room. The top part of the cave wasn’t getting any warmer, so we decided to head for the car as well. After that, we also decided to drive back to Raleigh instead of braving the cold again in the RASS cabin.

We were told that Crossroads was a beginner cave that attracts church groups, but it was actually a tricky maze with some intermediate obstacles.

I wasn’t surprised to see the creek in front of Hancock Cave flowing fast Saturday morning. Snow melt from the north side of the mountain takes days to run off, and it was raining as we left the restaurant—and pouring while we walked from the cars to the cave entrance. I carefully rigged the entrance while Jacob, Jillian, and Jim adjusted gear for the newest caver (Jim, son of the cave’s neighboring landowner).

The shower nozzle in the Entrance Room was set to high with streams of water pouring from the formations. Many more formations dripped in the Grantham Room, along with a cave salamander. We didn’t spot bats there, but the idea was more about getting my team moving and warming up. 

A loud rumble greeted us in the Octopus Room, but we progressed up to the Flying Zamboni and down the Corn Cob Crawl to get everyone warmed up. After a resounding trip to Hickory Dickory Pit, we traveled to TJ’s Trap. The soaked stalactites supplied a seasonal stream right through the clay in the middle of the room. That stream fed another loud rumble further down into the trap.

Jacob, Jillian, and Jim enjoyed a snack before I introduced them to a descent using the Breakdown Staircase. Heavy currents a few feet deep ran through the parallel passage at the base of the Staircase and at the base of Harrington Hall. 

While driving out the night before, I had mentioned to Jacob that one walking spot in the cave is unusually slippery beneath Rapunzel’s Tower. I looked at the tower and saw that the water level was likely chest deep. No Under or Over that day at the Over & Under. After I slid into a pool in In-The-Pendants Hall, my group couldn’t find the webbing in my pack but were able to pass me a sharp rock to carve out some footholds. Jacob also got to know how much heavier I am than he.

The water in the first Toilet Bowl was likely about 14 feet deep, so we didn’t travel to the Funnel Tunnel. Hancock Cave is significantly shorter when in flood stage, so we beat a hasty retreat to ensure that no one would get too cold in the cave. The bat count would be incomplete this year.

Outside the rain continued to pour, and the creek outside the cave entrance was noticeably higher and fast running. A walking stick was useful for three of us to cross the creek but broke when Jacob tossed it back for Jillian. Her balance was better than ours anyway. We noticed that a creek overflowed the road in front of neighbors’ houses, and that was only the beginning of the drive back to Marion.

Water flowed across the road over the mountain in many spots all the way to the top. When we reached the southern base of Walker Mountain, we noticed water levels rising to the foundations of the local houses. The river crossed the road once, but we were stopped when the water got much too deep for Jacob’s coupe. Fortunately a local gentleman directed us on a detour back to Marion. Tanya shared hot cider and tea with us to warm our cores before dinner and the drive home.

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.

Outside Boones Mill Virginia as we were driving to Moncove Lake Campground, Taylor Tibbs declared that the best part of the weekend was going to be seeing a license plate that left so much to our imaginations: MEAT MOM. Obviously her expectations for the planned cave trips weren’t high. I started questioning whether I had chosen caves that the group would enjoy after they spent a week at the NSS Convention earlier in the month. The TriTrogs were a very young grotto last time I had been to Patton Cave (~1992), and so I wasn’t sure I should trust my memory.

After a gloriously comfortable night camping, we eventually got to the nearby parking area for Patton Cave to a warm welcome from friendly dogs and an even-more-friendly landowner. Her instructions for finding the cave entrance were exacting, but once inside, the ceiling was a bit lower than I remembered (5- to 6-feet high) although nice wide passage. We stopped in a few places to take photographs of the small formations we found.

Then the passage ballooned out to 40- to 50-feet high, and the formations got much bigger. The flowstone featured more sparkles and signs that the soot from long ago is being covered by milky white calcite rivulets. While Melanie descended from an 80-foot climb (while Mark Daughtridge helped guide her downward-facing feet), Mike Yang, Taylor, and I found a side passage snaking through the formations into yet more trunk passage. When the floor eventually rose toward the insoluble cherty ceiling, Taylor and Melanie relayed that their crawlway was at an end.

Then we explored a wetter passage with a clear blue pool off to one side and reddish tinted rocks on the walls. Melanie and Taylor pursued a near sump with very slippery banks, and then we beat a hasty retreat from the cave in search of dry clothing.

Sunday we had permission to visit Haynes Cave at the other end of Monroe County. It had likely been close to thirty years since I had been there, but the entrance was right where I thought it should be. The nearby roads and properties had changed a lot though. The drinking trough in the cave was pretty spectacular, but we saw no big sections of flowstone, soda straws, mites, or bites after that. We found lots of threading cave passages filled with gypsum formations and evidence of the abandoned salt mining operations.

I had remembered that the landowner’s tour ended at Windlass Pit, but I didn’t recall that it was located in the center of the threading passages. We had fun finding the top of the pit and got to observe all that the upper level had to offer, including some biologically active drops on the ceiling. Mark did not carry out a taste test to identify the species.

If only for me, the two cave trips definitely beat out the MEAT MOM.

< first photo taken by Ken Walsh and other three by Mike Yang >