Cavechat.org

I have posted the contents of the Schoolhouse Cave register on the PSC website. The url is...

http://psc.cavingclub.org

The register is under "Trip Reports and Discussions" and then "Trip Reports."


The book was retrieved from the cave on September 24th by Gordon Brace, Paul Gillis, and Mike Frisina. I (George Dasher) transcribed the thing in November. The book is 4 by 7 inches in size, and is in TERRIBLE shape. It has a bad smell and working with it has left a bad taste in my mouth. A large portion of it is totally unreadable. Most of the trips are from the mid-1970s.


Schoolhouse Cave is located in Pendleton County's Germany Valley. This is West Virginia. It is one of the caves where the NSS has the oldest history of exploration, and the cave was first entirely explored by a local mountaineering club. Few caves in this country have received the literary attention of Schoolhouse and nearby Hellhole, and Schoolhouse was for a long time considered the "toughest" cave in the United States. Even today, it dominates the NSS Photo archieves, and it is the cave where the NSS familar half circle logo originated.

The cave is about one mile long and about 400 feet deep. It is closed year round because of endangered bats (plus the landowners don't want people in the cave), and has only been opened briefly in the fall for survey trips. The cave is also one of the oldest saltpeter caves in West Virginia (perhaps the second oldest) and may be the only cave in the state that was mined by the North during the American Civil War.

So will another register be put down there?

Hatch

Interesting stuff. Thanks for taking the time to transcribe it.

No, another register will not be put into Schoolhouse, as the cave is closed again and no one can go in. It is both gated and fenced.

I would say about 2/3s of the info in the book was unreadable. So A LOT has been lost. That book was nasty.

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One of the Organ Cave registers was burned by lost kids trying to keep warm in the mid-1980s. There was A LOT of history in that book, as it was both bigger and more full.

The story...

About eight kids went into the Lipps Entrance. They explored down the Mainstream, then returned and went into the maze. They had been in the cave a couple of hours and their carbide lamps ran out. The two leaders then two the only flashlights and went exploring deeper in the cave. They finally gave up, retreated to the register (which is quite a ways from Lipps Maze), and burned it to keep warm. They also lost their bung. Poor boys.

The rescuers found the first group pretty quick, which was a good thing because one of them was a diabetic; however, they couldn't find "Lewis and Clark," as they were in an entirely different section of the cave. Finally a team led by Mike Dore did the Lipps-to-Organ connection route and found them. They also found the bong, but didn't return it.

I just thought the idea of a register sitting there, even with the cave closed, would be a nice continuation of the tradition. Why are the owners being ornery about the cave right now?

The cave is closed, gated, and fenced because of endangered bats. That's why the cave is closed.

The owners arn't thrilled about cavers going in any more, but it is the state that really has the cave closed.