next--Photos.
articles index
|Names.
|Photos index
|Cave index
|Places and Grottos.
VAR home page
|
previous--Roy and Earl 2
next--Photos.
articles index
|Names.
|Photos index
|Cave index
|Places and Grottos.
VAR home page
|
Several hundred feet from the entrance of Hunt Cave, I was going down the main passage. The pool was a little bit difficult to cross; you have to be quite careful chimneying across the top of the pool. Earl, Jimmy, Jeannette and myself were coming out with Jeannette leading. She was up about six feet above the pool. I turned my head just for a second to see what Jim and Earl were doing. I heard this "Kpushhmmmm" and turned my head in time to see a little water spout on the pool, and no sign of Jeannette. She had slipped and gone completely out of sight. The pool was eight feet long and three to four feet wide. I thought, "Oh, lands, I've got to go in after her." No sooner had the thought crossed my mind that she surfaced swimming so hard that her shoulders were completely out of the water. Never even lost her hard hat. This was in the middle of the winter. We got her out add back to the tent, and dried out somehow without freezing.
My brother Harvey came out of lndian Cave and was Pressing to leave when he said, "Look at this. Did you ever see a man's tooth this big?" He had a tremendous tooth, big as a quarter. It looked for all the world like a human molar. Well, he showed it to a person at North Carolina State. They said they thought they knew what it was, but would not say, but that he shouldn't let it out of his possession. So I took some plaster casts, and sent it up to Harvard. They identified it as the extinct tapir. They couldn't exactly identify the species without the tooth, but it had been known in Florida, although not from West Virginia.
There were other interesting things we discovered. I was caving with Earl and another fellow. We were hiking across somebody's back yard. They told us there were some caves behind the hill there. We were hardly out of the back yard and were spread out. I stepped, on a rock, and it sounded like a drum. "Earl" I said, "there's something funny here." So we moved the rock, and here was a little vertical slot. Tight, my lands, it was tight! We got down through it, dropped about 15-20 feet into a real pretty formation cave. We explored around in that thing; I reckon we were in there half an hour or so before we realized we weren't the first people in there. We found some real pretty writing; one was carved in the floor, oh, it was six to eight feet long, the entire thing, Gothic print. Another was Old English script. I would say this stuff is quite old. It was dated in the 1860's. So we got to thinking, well, maybe someone hid something in here. We looked and looked and looked and couldn't find anything. There was a line of characters who stood there; I reckon one with a cavalry style boot on, narrow heel with a steel edge around the heel, sorta like a horseshoe one place one of them took his shoe off, lost his balance and stuck his toes down into the mud. Well, in talking to people, I believe it was Bill Stephenson who said he didn't think anybody would have lost or hid anything in there during the Civil War. He suspected they were saltpetre hunters which I think is a pretty logical conclusion.
| Benedict's |
|
I did a lot of caving with Roger Baroody , Bill Biggers, Lew Bicking and quite a few of the other WVACS cavers.
We did right much at Benedict's Cave. Virgin exploration. Tim and Jeannette and myself got through the breakdown into the C passage. On another trip, I asked Roger Baroodywhich way to go. He got to grinning and drew a map in the mud; Earl, Alan Boudreau, Jim, and myself followed Roger's directions into some of the doggonodest crawly-holes and vertical mesa. You could stand in one place, then wiggle around. and stand back up in a little bit different position. slide along, wiggle up and down, and crawl spread-eagle over water. Finally we got back in some muddy canyons that didn't look like too much. Alan, Earl and Jim were resting; I got to thinking about Hunt Cavewhich had what we called a North-South passage. It was higher than the rest of the passages and cut across the drainage system, cutting every drainage lead draining into it. I had seen this passage up in the top of Benedict'sand I got to thinking, that looks like that passage in Hunt. I went and climbed up into it, and sure enough, here was a passage cutting across the present drainage. I went sailing a hundred. yards or so down this lead and the bottom dropped out; it was another drainage. Monstrous passage. I didn't have enough light to even see what I had.
Finally Bill Biggers took Roger Baroody back there, got through that little hole which opened up. They got back to where all the junk was, and it turned out to be the Persinger's entrance. I helped Roger one whole weekend; we hiked the surface. Finally decided that sink down near the Persinger house had to be the one. We dug down in it enough to realize that there was some air movement coming out of the sink. Had to get rid of some dead animals, all kinds of tin cans and things. I wasn't on the trip when they dug it out,
|
previous--Roy and Earl 2
next--Photos.
articles index
|Names.
|Photos index
|Cave index
|Places and Grottos.
VAR home page
|