Members of the Triangle Troglodytes began visiting Lowmoor Cave and its connecting mine regularly when the most recent re-survey was underway. The easily-traveled natural passages made it an ideal place to guide beginners, and the massive mine passages reminded some of the legendary Mines of Moria. The only issue with visiting seemed to be the neon-colored spray paint arrows pointing in all directions.
Maybe spray paint wasn’t the only issue. As an alternative to a low belly crawl, a horizontal rickety soldered rebar ladder connected the back sections of the cave. TriTrogs spent time measuring, fitting, and installing a safer aluminum ladder that no longer rocks from side to side. Graffiti also had covered the walls beyond that obstacle.
Working from a draft cave map, I guessed where graffiti locations were that we might reach without needing to haul buckets up climbs or through long crawls. On March 7, 2026 six TriTrogs went in search of enough graffiti to keep dozens of people busy cleaning for a day. Historic signatures, out arrows, and lewd messages adorned the walls, generally near the terminal points in the passages. I marked these spots on the five-page map of the cave.
Fortunately the recent drought made it easy for vehicles to cross the ford. On May 1, Meredith Hall Weberg, Emily Graham, and I determined that Meredith’s vehicle could climb the hill to Lowmoor Cave’s Natural Entrance. We carried flagging tape back to mark the cleanable areas and to identify historical markings that should be preserved. Some signatures dated back almost two centuries. We also laid a trail of safety cones to help teams navigate the maze.
On the following day (May 2, 2026), the VAR cleanup began by everyone showing up at the truck stop ON TIME. Everyone who registered showed up, and everyone who showed up had registered. Twenty-eight punctual volunteers easily divided into teams of four, with Rich Geisler as surface watch and runners to help re-supply the teams. Teams spread out from the Natural Entrance all the way back to Fossil Alley, separated by roughly 1700 feet of passage and a horizontal ladder crossing.
In addition to the force and angle they put behind the brushes, the teams discovered that graffiti removal depended on the spray paint color, the surface roughness, and the porosity in the rock. Rubbing small splotches of spray paint sometimes revealed entire lines of graffiti, so volunteers also took to creating mud pastes to smear across the splotches (to patch up the mud smearing that had happened a decade ago). It would have been great to have a mud slurry sprayer for those surfaces, but I imagine the nozzle would often clog.
And one passage (the Art Gallery) had been filled with mud worms spelling out names on the walls. When the worms were removed, spray paint stencils of the names remained. Many teams worked in that passage all day to clean out the spray paint but leave behind the historic signatures of carbide soot, chalk, and hard etching that lay below.
Emily Graham’s team spent time that morning repairing a broken stalagmite just outside the Ship Room. They learned some lessons about formation repair and the importance of not rushing through the efforts. Maybe they’ll be ready to take on repairing a stalactite next time.
The lunch delivery service seemed to confuse Lowmoor Cave with a commercial quarry in the town of Low Moor. Carol Tiderman straightened the driver out and shared a really good on-site lunch that included cheeseburgers, grilled chicken sandwiches, rice bowls, crispy chips, slaw, and macaroni salad, thanks to donations from the TriTrogs and the VAR.
After lunch teams hustled back up the hill to reach places they hadn’t seen in the morning shift. Every team scrubbed in the afternoon, but some team members shifted. I found myself near the mine passages trying to scrub graffiti off one wall while standing on a scree slope. The harder I pushed with the scrub brush, the further I slid from the wall.
When done with the scrubbing, teams pulled flagging tape, clocked out with Rich Geisler, and exited through the mine entrance. The runners and I ran sweep and picked up webbing and cones. Everyone exited before the “If you don’t want us searching for you, you’d better be out by” time.
I’m so grateful that we had help from TriTrogs, Blue Ridge Grotto, RASS, James River Grotto, Front Royal Grotto, Baltimore Grotto, DC Grotto, BATS Grotto, and even new cavers. I think that everyone enjoyed the lunches enough that it was easy to convince seventeen volunteers to join us for a restaurant dinner that included a Christmas tree (thanks to Eric for lighting it).
It turns out that some of my scrubbing gear stopped in Roanoke for a weeklong visit. In addition I ended up with extra scrubbing gear when I returned home. I opened the bag Monday evening in my condo and recoiled from the most pungent odor I’ve ever smelled from a caving trip. Did someone puke in a bucket? It turned out that one bonus bucket Taylor Orr didn’t want to take home had originally stored fifty pounds of dill pickles. Now it only smelled like fifty pounds of pickles.
Photos from Meredith Hall Weberg, Matthew Brown, and Mark Daughtridge