2008 SERA/VAR

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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby xcaverx » May 15, 2008 6:28 pm

For SERA/ VAR we’re offering guided trips to Berry Hill Cave in Carter County, Tenn. This cave has over a mile of surveyed passage and the alternatives of doing a 70-foot or 90-foot drop at the entrance. We decided to do the 90 for this trip, because it’s more fun and shows off a complex of parallel pits, plus a traverse to a few hundred feet of paleo passage. This sandy paleo passage leads to another drop. We never taped it but we can estimate from the Compass plot that it’s about 105 feet. That in turn told us that the ceilings in the large hall are about 120 to 130 feet high. By TAG standards this is not a huge cave, but it’s pretty and a lot of fun and very few people have been there. The sparkling stream passage runs to a deep pool. When the water is clear, you can see submarine passages leading off. A long, heavily decorated crawlway leads to another stream. Gary Fielden is going to make this cave his specialty for SERA/ VAR. Trips will be limited to about eight participants each. We’ll keep running trips until Gary breaks down. Parking is limited to just two or three vehicles, so be prepared to pack your gear in with someone else. This is a thoroughly enjoyable cave about 30 to 40 minutes from the campground.
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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby Carl Amundson » May 15, 2008 6:41 pm

xcaverx wrote:For SERA/ VAR we’re offering guided trips to Berry Hill Cave in Carter County, Tenn. This cave has over a mile of surveyed passage and the alternatives of doing a 70-foot or 90-foot drop at the entrance. We decided to do the 90 for this trip, because it’s more fun and shows off a complex of parallel pits, plus a traverse to a few hundred feet of paleo passage. This sandy paleo passage leads to another drop. We never taped it but we can estimate from the Compass plot that it’s about 105 feet. That in turn told us that the ceilings in the large hall are about 120 to 130 feet high. By TAG standards this is not a huge cave, but it’s pretty and a lot of fun and very few people have been there. The sparkling stream passage runs to a deep pool. When the water is clear, you can see submarine passages leading off. A long, heavily decorated crawlway leads to another stream. Gary Fielden is going to make this cave his specialty for SERA/ VAR. Trips will be limited to about eight participants each. We’ll keep running trips until Gary breaks down. Parking is limited to just two or three vehicles, so be prepared to pack your gear in with someone else. This is a thoroughly enjoyable cave about 30 to 40 minutes from the campground.

Do we sign up for this trip online or at SARA/VAR registration?
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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby reeffish1073 » May 15, 2008 9:34 pm

Hey all

Concerning trip sign ups! Each trip that is guided will have a designated time for sign up. These will posted at the registration area. This is being done this way so people that come in really late Friday night or early Saturday morning will be able to make some of the trips as well. Extra standby slots will be available on the sign up list in case someone bails. Read each trip sign up list for time and meeting place for trips. Each trip will leave at designated time. These are going to be some awsome trips. You want to be there at the time the list goes out, to get your place. Most will go verry fast!!!!

Thanks
John Christie

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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby xcaverx » May 16, 2008 5:23 pm

Thanks, John, you said it better than I could have.

Here's some more vertical caving at SERA/ VAR:

The Cat Hole property near Duffield, Virginia will be open for self-guided tours by vertical cavers. Cat Hole, Millers, and Caine are clustered in one big compound sinkhole at the foot of Purchase Ridge.Baileys Pit is on the other side of Highway 421/ 58/ 23 from the Cat Hole property. Caine, mapped by Tom Roehr back in the 70s, seems to drain into both Cat Hole and Millers. Caine has a big, very slippery entrance that takes water, a two stage drop with vertical of about 20 and 100 feet, a tall canyon passage and a 40foot flowstone wall that was penetrated last fall for the first time. Not a lot of passage, but a pleasant pit and quite interesting, with large salamanders in the canyon stream – try not to step in the water. Millers was sumped when Tom Roehr visited and apparently no one else came till Jason Lachniet went in and found a virgin pit last fall. It taped at about 68 feet from Jason's self tapping bolt. There's some apparent passage about halfway down, in the direction of Caine, that might explain the wind coming out of the pit, but it would take an expensive bolt traverse to get there. Since the survey last fall, no one has dropped the pit. You have to squeeze through a narrow space to reach a comfortably wide ledge on the left – it turns out to be a lot less grim than it looks. Scrutinize that bolt very carefully and back up to the bedrock on the left, eight feet back of the tight spot. This cave begins at a shale contact; the entrance area is obviously unstable, which is why we were never tempted to explore the crawl going right just inside the entrance. Millers is a small cave with little to recommend it, says Robbie. Millers is well worth the pleasant drop, says Jason. Cat Hole is a longer cave with the potential for a lot more passage. It has a low crawl entrance and a 15 foot horizontal area leading to a 70foot pit. You can rig outside to something substantial, or do what Don Feathers and Bill James do, tie two runners to projections on each side of the passage, and … pray?

Purchase Ridge is one of those places where I can almost guarantee you'll find new cave if you look around for a while. We have two projects left over from last fall, Austin Sink Cave (of interest only to masochists and push cavers) and a "bottomless pit" up on the ridge, not to mention the planned resurveys of Caine and Cat Hole. Bailey's Pit was taped at 119 feet and still apparently has some potential for more depth or passage.

All these caves are only ten minutes from Natural Tunnel State Park. If you drive to them from the campground, NTSP is off to the right after you cross the Clinch, just a few minutes from the highway. You can drive up to the main NTSP parking lot, jump out of your car, and run to the edge of the gorge and back in about five minutes, but I think you'll want to stay at least a little longer.
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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby caverwoody » May 17, 2008 7:29 am

Hey guys

Sorry we haven't gotten more of a cave list up but as you can tell we are adding more caves to the list every week or so. We are adding more verticle and horizontal stuff all the time. So if you like caveing we have a cave for you. Can't wait to see everybody there.
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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby xcaverx » May 17, 2008 2:35 pm

We are offering access to the Kerns caves in Hunter Valley, which parallels the Clinch River in Scott County and opens up near Rye Cove, not far from Natural Tunnel State Park. Kerns Smokehole was long the pride and joy of MEG's survey team. It has a 72-foot entrance pit at the bottom of a slippery slide. If it's wet out, you might want to place a hand-line near the entrance, because getting out can be an adventure. We'll have a bolted safety line leading to a rebelay that gives you a nearly free drop. The word rebelay should not deter novice vertical cavers, because this is an easy one where you can sit on the lip and rig to the main line. There's a sharp ceiling ledge that can cut the rope in two and nearly did once; we started using a directional after that. About 20 feet down, you can see passage going off to the left (relative to sitting on the lip). It leads to the Hall of the Mountain Rat, where Paul Gaskins and I first met Ratbert, King of Smokehole. You wouldn't believe the size and audacity of Ratbert unless you saw himself yourself, so I won't bother to tell you. Ratbert loves nylon, so the rope needs to be coiled up off the floor when the last person comes down or climbs up. If you pass up the chance to visit Ratbert and rappel to the bottom, you'll see a pretty straightforward flowstone-lined passage that is especially pretty when it rains hard and water sprays from covert spigots in every direction. At one of the steep flowstone down climbs, there's a canyon branching back to the left that drops into some pretty stuff -- if you choose to go that way, be sure you can climb back out. Farther on, there's passage going to the left that leads to the lowest part of the cave, where you might find some of John Holsinger's original survey marks from 40+ years ago. But the new part of the cave is perhaps the most interesting -- just 40 or 50 feet from the bottom of the drop, turn left into the canyon and keep crawling until you pop up into a big room and just start exploring -- Paul was the first to discover this, back around 2000 or 2001. We think Smokehole might someday become the longest in Scott County. As with Berry Hill, long Thursday night survey trips wore us out, with many leads remaining to push.

The Kerns caves also include Kerns Saltpeter, a small but fun horizontal cave that offers some gymnastic challenges as you strive to get to the far back. Please try to step over the wood artifacts, we assume they are mining related. Remember your elbow pads for this cave, there is a narrow chimney down climb. Kerns Water is a gnarly crawl over sharp cobbles. Though it eventually opens up, Kerns Water has terminated a couple of caving careers. Water has the air flow the reverse of Smokehole's, suggesting a connection. Kerns Swallet is another gnarly curiosity that takes a lot of water which may feed into Water or Kerns System. The System is a nice horizontal cave, very easy for the first 800 feet. A stream bed crawl takes you into the big new area (discovered ca. 2002) which has some very pretty parts. There's a climb up to the roof, maybe 40 feet, that apparently comes very close to the surface. Back in the stream bed, you can crawl on to the Kerns No. 2 entrance and walk out of the cave. There's an easy but fairly tall climb to get out. The System can blow an awesome amount of air, we never figured where it comes from.

This cluster of caves is about one hour and 15 minutes from the campground. Smokehole alone is well worth a day of your time; it's still one of our favorites.

Please distribute freely.
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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby xcaverx » May 19, 2008 4:43 pm

Scott County Blowing Hole is a few miles from Natural Tunnel. I'll call it a horizontal cave, even though most of it is at the bottom of a little 17-foot pit. This cave taped out at about one mile. It takes about seven hours for two speedy cavers to see most of it. It's mostly narrow canyon passage. There aren't any parts that really strike me as difficult, but the trip as a whole is strenuous. Dr. Holsinger surveyed this in the 60s; the cave was reported in Caves of Virginia. Since he was there, no one else dropped that pit until MEG DUST (Deranged Underground Survey Team) surveyed there. Gary Fielden found the very spot where someone on Holsinger's team stood looking down the 1000-Foot Scoop and decided that was enough. The first time we went down, there were gas jets blowing out the floor, making a loud buzzing sound. Could have been our imagination, but we all felt a little woozy considering the distance we had come, so we cut the trip short. The sleepy gas doesn't blow anymore, but a trip to SCBH can still wear most people out. If you want a challenge, consider a trip to Scott County Blowing Hole. And keep an eye out for mussel shells and other anomalies down in the basement. Non-vertical cavers should go with someone who can rig and supervise the drop, which is not quite climbable without some gear.
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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby Komebeaux » May 21, 2008 8:04 am

SCBH is a fun cave! That's one I would like to get back to sometime.
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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby xcaverx » May 21, 2008 8:10 am

Yeah, I enjoy SCBH, too. A lot of people seem to have problems with it, though. --robbie
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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby caverwoody » May 21, 2008 8:47 am

yeah this is a really neat cave it is tight and knarly there are some really nice pretties in the bottom section as well as the top section.I would highly recommend knee pads when you visit this cave.
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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby Komebeaux » May 21, 2008 9:51 am

Lots of popcorn in there. Definitely knee pad caving. Even elbow pads if you got em.
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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby xcaverx » May 21, 2008 10:44 am

Remember, SERA VAR pre-registration ends today. Please distribute these posts far and wide.

Here's Wil Orndorff on two of our planned trips:

Rocky Hollow -

Come help remove graffiti from one of Virginia's most significant caves, Rocky Hollow Cave on the side of Powell Mountain in Wise County. Vandalism was discovered in 2007 during the biennial bat count. The perpetrator of this vandalism has been ordered to help us remove trash and spray paint graffiti, including multiple copies of his name.

The trip will leave the VAR at 0800 on Friday, June 6. The cave involves a hike down the face of scenic Powell Mountain, so we won't reach the actual cave until about 11. Pack a lunch and snacks and water. We'll stay at the cave until 5, and should be able to return to the VAR site by 8 p.m. Caver participants are welcome to combine the clean-up trip with some caving in Rocky Hollow, and are welcome to 2-3 hours of caving with 3-4 hours of restoration work.

Email Wil.Orndorff@dcr.virginia.gov if interested.

------------------

Unthanks Cave (beginner, horizontal, 6 hours in cave, 10 hours total - limited to 10 participants).

Unthanks Cave is located in Lee County, Virginia, just under two hours away from the VAR site. With over 8 miles of mapped passages, Unthanks is one of the larger horizontal caves in Virginia. It is owned and managed by the Virginia Natural Heritage Program as part of the State Natural Area Preserve System. The cave is very significant biologically, and is the type locality for the cave snail genus Holsingeria (sp Holsingeria unthanksensis).

The cave consists mainly of walking passages, with some short craws and scrambles, and one or two slightly exposed climbs which can be belayed.

Warning: lots of poison ivy in changing area at cave entrance.

Email Wil.Orndorff@dcr.virginia.gov if interested.

---
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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby CaverScott » May 21, 2008 12:39 pm

Dropping ours in the mail today! :bananabat:
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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby xcaverx » May 21, 2008 5:54 pm

Thanks, Scott. Hope to see you there. Here's news about some horizontal caves, etc. at SERA VAR in Bristol, Tennessee:

Our Saturday night musical offerings are the Jugbusters (OTR 2007) and Dave Foster's Soulgrass. Dave was a charter member of Mountain Empire Grotto before he went on to Horse Cave and the ACCA. Yes, we have free beer. We also have a new liquor store about one mile from the campground -- sorry, no free liquor. The campground is of epic, TAG-size proportions, a bicycle would be a handy thing to bring along.

We have three more vendors to add to our list: The NSS Bookstore, Crystal Creations, and the ACCA. I learned more about Terry Ragon's new venture, the Maxwell Mountain Trading Post. He offers traditional bows and arrows, stone knives, lances, mandalas, leather shields, and other replicas of Native American craft.

I've described several featured vertical cave trips. We have plenty of horizontal caves that will interest you, including Worley (Morrell), which is over five miles, Carter County Saltpeter with big rimstone dams, a deep pool near the end, and a passage I was shown just last December that goes off the Laurie Adams map. There's Grindstaff, a complex cave that's currently the largest cave of record in Carter County.

A few weeks ago Gary Fielden and I got permission to take visitors to the Cook caves, guided trips only. There's Bull Cave, little Big Arm Branch Cave, and Wind Cave (aka Foster's Pit), also The Death Sink and a couple of other digs that would have very limited appeal to most people. According to dye trace, these caves drain into Worley. Fosters is a vertical maze of less than 2000 surveyed feet but don't let the limited size fool you -- this is a fascinating cave. It has a 38-foot entrance pit, but most of the rest is climbable without gear, except for the 40-foot descent into the deepest part -- I think we called it Cold Storage or something like that. Bull is a cool horizontal cave with a big entrance and some interesting climbs; it takes so much water from Big Arm Branch that the whole cave sometimes fills up and spills into the Cook backyard.

Hall Bottom No. 1 (Lathams Cave) is a nice, easy stream cave that ends (we think) at a deep sump. There is a crack in the rock across the pool, though, and we know that one person has claimed to swim across to find going passage -- not that I recommend trying.

Perkins you know about -- 10+ miles of big, mazey horizontal cave. Cribb is at the bottom of the mountain from Perkins, it's a mostly dry maze -- about 8000 feet in the Collings survey?

Grays near Lebanon, Virginia, is a nice caver's cave with lots of interesting diversions. My favorite part was a traverse on a tricky little ledge about 10 feet over deep water, through a pretty flowstone canyon.

Thomas No. 1 was my first survey cave. It's a maze with several climbing challenges and some new passage that we haven't put on the map yet (hint -- near the pit). Red Wolf is a tight horizontal cave that I think of as a training ground for Corkscrew, lots of crawls and climbs and tight places.

Marion Quarry Cave -- a pretty, gnarly cave with two entrances and about four levels, a couple of streams. It's somewhat strenuous, somewhat dangerous; we had more accidents there than any cave we've surveyed. The quarry cut through the Silver Bullet end of the cave and you can see a tiny, unexplored entrance on the far side of the quarry. You might also find blasted flowstone debris in the quarry rubble. Recently designated a Virginia significant cave.

Please distribute. I look forward to showing you through Perkins.

Thanks,

--robbie
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Re: 2008 SERA/VAR

Postby xcaverx » May 24, 2008 4:54 pm

More news on the upcoming SERA VAR:

Campground fires are welcome, as long as they're restricted to fire rings (supplied by the campground). Bring your own firewood or buy some from the ACC and MEG -- they can use the money.

As Brian mentioned on TAG-Net, we have a trip to Rowland Creek in Smyth County, Virginia, about one hour from the campground. Dave Duguid will lead a trip there Saturday, up to eight people. They must be agile, competent vertical cavers. He would appreciate it if a couple of people would help him survey a couple of leads. I think I know what they are, from the last time I helped survey there -- a couple of virgin pits. Dave said he's open to taking some cavers there Sunday, too, if they are willing to help survey. So what is this Rowland Creek? It's a two-entrance cave in the side of a hill. The lower entrance had amazing air flow last summer, leading me to
think this is Smyth County Lech. The cave has only 2500 feet of survey so far, with no obvious way to the big booty. The current area of survey is down a 40-foot pit, which was first dropped by one of the owners when he came back from service in Vietnam along with a couple of his buddies. They used the hand-over-hand technique; they're lucky they made it out. Anyway, no one else went down there until Dave and his survey team arrived. Brian took a lot of great pictures there; I put some of them on the MEG website at caves.org/grotto/meg. We found a lot of dead bats that day, about the time I was first hearing of WNS (but no sign of the white mask on the bats, living or dead). If Rowland Creek had a couple of miles of passage, it would be a legendary sport cave. The big upper passage has some huge formations, Diane Gietl has been photographing up there.

I think I missed a couple of very enjoyable horizontal caves in previous posts, both in Scott County, Virginia. Both are targets of survey or resurvey by MEG. Coley No. 2 was just "rediscovered" by Bill James, who likes to track down forgotten caves. Coley is a pretty canyon cave with extensive sections of flowstone-covered walls. On my one trip there last July, Will Clark and I pushed through a virgin crawl into a wet and windy breakdown maze, hoping to find a lower entrance but ultimately defeated by a boulder we couldn't move. Just south of the Clinch River across from Rye Cove, Jack Cave is narrow canyon cave with pretty sculpted walls. It's an easy cave but there is a steep climb that bypasses a vertical waterfall -- I'll guess about 20 feet of exposure. The two caves would be easy to visit in a pleasant Saturday of caving, with plenty of time for a visit to Natural Tunnel State Park.

A couple of oversights: I failed to mention 150 feet of rope should be more than enough to rig Caines Cave. 100 feet will do Cat Hole, if you rig to the ceiling projections, quite a bit more if you rig to a tree outside.
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