MEAT MOM

White stalagmite beside Mike Yang

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.

Columns, mites, tites, and draperies

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.

silhouette of Mark Daughtridge

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.

Melanie stooping near flowstone

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 >