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 >

So glad I got to join Phil Sullivan and Nick Taylor for a brisk survey in Buchanan Saltpeter Cave. After a prolonged effort to calibrate multiple electronic instruments, I think Sully was glad that I had Suuntos along to provide backsights. Still in the twilight zone, we started surveying  across a wide, decorated room but stopped when the 30-foot-wide pool from wall to wall got 2” deep.

From there we headed back toward the entrance where Sully had identified multiple other leads breaking away from the twilight zone. I felt embarrassed bumping my shoulder as I tried to swing my torso up onto a ledge. Fortunately Sully helped me with the climb (by hauling me) and rigged a bit of webbing to facilitate the climb down.

We found a short passage out of the cold January temps where a tri-colored bat was wintering. That short room felt like a sauna compared to the other entrance areas we surveyed (areas where big brown bats were sleeping). The upper passage seemed to continue beyond a great pit, but the cliff where we stood offered no access. I assessed that I might be able to find the room at the base of the pit from the entrance ( it worked!), and we set a survey station in the middle of a huge decorated room with multiple rimstone and flowstone banks.

From the entrance again we surveyed a walking passage to the huge decorated room with multiple rimstone and flowstone banks. Along the way Sully climbed into another upper passage that brought him to the same place that Nick and I walked to. I noticed a 2”-deep pool at the far end of this room but chose to survey a crawlway that returned us again to the entrance.

We sketched the cave passages that we had measured. I proved that I didn’t need Sully’s help at that torso swing climb, and we closed the loop between the two leads with 2” of water. Nick and I appreciated that we were wearing Wellies. 

We wanted to assess a few leads from the huge room to start the next trip. One climb led up to the continuation of our upper passage. The other one snuck past a flowstone cascade into a passage that may be the prettiest I’ve seen in Smyth County. Ready for the next survey trip.

Rehoboth Church is known for being the oldest existing church building in West Virginia. It surely holds many secrets but one of the coolest ones is definitely the entrance to a beautiful cave nearby. On the 30th of September Ken Walsh, Emily Graham, Taylor Tibbs, Mark Daughtridge, and I headed there for a cave photoshoot.

We got some great photos featuring Mark and Taylor in the Zoo Room and Emily on the way to the Kondasum Room. In Kondasum we saw the beautiful spiral column formation. Then through the Long Room we got to the muddy “sliding board” room. It holds a muddy slope steep enough that with a bit of water poured over it, it turns into a slide which we very much enjoyed multiple times while getting progressively more muddy and wet, to the point where we needed a webbing just to climb a couple of feet on a much less steep slope on the other side of the slide.

On Sunday we went to Links Cave for a quick trip. We saw disk-like formations with stalactites flowing down from them which could be shields although they were not as smooth as one might expect which indicates that they could be flowstones which formed over piles of dirt before that dirt got washed away. Ken also pointed out to me a very beautiful white formation flowing down along the wall in the shape of the tangent function.

The cave ends with a tight curved tunnel after which there is one more small room which Mark and I managed to squeeze into. The room does not have any interesting formations but there is a squeeze leading from it which unfortunately was not large enough for any of us to even hope to fit in. Overall, it was a fun exercise in squeezes and crawls.

Mike Broome’s GPS found a neighborhood shortcut as we left the Convention campsite, so we missed one of the landmarks (a low water crossing) as we drove to Tolly’s Cave in the Elk River Valley. However, it was just a quick turnaround, good parking, and (to me) a short walk up the hillside. Mike Broome, Lisa Lorenzin, Emily Graham, and I explored Tolly’s after a short climb past a salamander and spiders. We had a map along, and a great blow-by-blow description of the cave’s character.

We climbed and wriggled from room to room past some nice formations. Because many different geologic layers are sandwiched in and above this cave, we saw some cool blending of color, such as black dendrites decorating the walls. Nice rooms and good to cave with Mike and Lisa again. And it broke up the drive home from the NSS Convention. Thanks to Emily for picking this trip and gathering all the information.

On Wednesday at the NSS Convention, I took a morning class in speleothem repair practices. It followed all the steps from inventorying, matching puzzle pieces, drilling holes for support pins, building supports and splints from PVC pipes, and then mixing and applying epoxy. The class was led by Mike Mansur and Kirsten Bahr, and he brought along a full set of wooden blocks and cement pieces that we had to repair to create speleothems in a vertical box. Emily thinks that the instruction manual is well produced and certainly inspiring.

In the afternoon we took off for the entrance area inside Hamilton Cave on the NSS John Guilday Cave Preserve to try our hands at our recently learned skills. Although my big role was discovering stalactite pieces that had no matching pieces on the ceiling, the group did manage to repair four formations that afternoon. It was definitely a class that I learned a lot in and was excited by the prospect that other people might repair broken speleothems. It is exacting, patient work, and I hope to be able to support such repairs in the future.

Back in the 1960s, Perkins Cave was surveyed using carbide lamps to mark stations and trying to extend the cave in many directions at once. The 1972 map shows blobby walls and no passage detail over in the U Survey section. Naturally there must be some leads going north that they missed. 

The blobby northern section is mostly a massive wall of breakdown. Our March trip tried to survey a way over or to the right of the massive breakdown pile. We met only dead ends too small for humans. On April 8, Emily Graham, Piotr Suder, and I headed to the lower section and to the left of the breakdown pile. We still hoped that the breakdown pile could be surveyed over/under/around/through.

The previous day’s deluge left the breakdown drain area wet and slippery. Piotr and Emily pursued the slippery lead into a hole that quickly became too tight for humans. Off to the left we scaled and surveyed our way up into a room of pickup truck-sized breakdown. Off in one corner we found a dead bat clinging to the ceiling and covered in white nose fungus.  Behind that Piotr squeezed past other fungus on the floor and into a breakdown-choked passage.

Alas, no good leads. Piotr did a great job leading us out of the cave without ever consulting the old map. And I fastened the lock on the cave gate in under thirty seconds.