Summary

Description

Lisa and I drove up to Marion, VA Saturday night and stayed with Tanya. Had fun playing with her dog, Daisy. Had a relaxing morning and breakfast at Appletree (a local place on 16 near the interstate overpass). Got a call from Ken and Dave during breakfast saying that they were just having breakfast in Christianburg and would be driving down after that. So we waited around for them back at Tanya's after breakfast.

Ken and Dave showed up around 11:30, and we all got ready to head to the cave. We left for the cave around 12:15pm and arrived around 12:40pm. The walk to the entrance was short through snowy woods. The interesting part of the approach was crossing the stream that was partially covered in ice.

The cave is in the Sugar Grove area, off of Flat Ridge road. There are a bunch of caves in the area, tucked all along under the flt ridge feature. The cave gets its name, Wide Mouth Cave, for the fact that the entrance is a really wide room, open to the outside. This is the room that Tanya wanted Ken around to survey because it's so big. Because of the size and openness, that entrance room was the same temperature as the outside which was about 20 degrees when we got there and probably never got much above freezing throughout the day. For the first part of the afternoon, it was nice and sunny outside. Later, clouds moved in. One of the interesting things I noticed first were the icicles hanging from the room of the big entrance room like long stalagtites. There were even little ice lumps under them where they had dripped and formed stalgamites.

The survey started with Ken sketching, Dave keeping book, and Tanya and I reading instruments. Lisa and Dale headed back into the cave to do some exloring and sending Lisa down small leads. They were gone for quite a while, and we started joking about what they might be doing back there.

Lisa came back covered in mud and looking pretty tired. She had goen down a very small lead and had a struggle to get back out, up a muddy slope with a constriction. She stepped out to have a bite to eat and some water before swapping with me on instruments so I could head back into the cave with Dale and take a look around.

Not a huge cave, but very pretty and interesting back there. Some mud, low crawls, a couple of climbs to dead-ends, pretty formations -- including a flowstone bridge and a couple of reflecting pools -- and some very tight squeezes. I decided not to follow the tight path Lisa had taken. I think I could have made it, but I was wearing a fleece pullover that's a pain to pull through mud. I'll come back with a smoother work shirt or coveralls and give it a try sometime.

When I came out, Tanya had subbed out of the survey because she was getting cold so Lisa and Dave were on instuments. I joined them, keeping book, and Tanya headed back into the cave to get warm, with Dale as tour guide once more.

When Tanya and Dale came back out, they decided to head back to Dale's van. The rest of us decided to end the survey at 20 stations. Ken finished up the sketch while Lisa and Dave headed back into the cave for a quick trip so Dave could get a look around.

We got back to the vehicles and changed out of our caving clothes, piled in and headed out. We quickly found that the ground that was frozen when we had driven in was now thawed, and Dale's minivan kept spinning in the layer of surface mud on the very low angle slope up out of the field we had parked in. He tried a few times at different angles, but it was no use. I suggested that maybe we could hook up some webbing straps and Dave could pull us out using his pickup truck. (I'm not sure whether he has 4 wheel drive or not.) Instead, we got everyone out of the van other than Dale, and all of us helped push it. Got the shoes a little muddy, but we got him over the hump. Dave had no problem in his pickup.

We headed back to Tanya's and change before going to the Mexican place in Marion for dinner. Lisa and I had thought about staying over Sunday night and caving again Monday, but she was pretty sore from struggling in the tight passage, and we had things we wanted to get done at home on Monday so we packed up our stuff and ended up getting on the road right after dinner.