next--Geenbriar 3
articles index
|Names.
|Photos index
|Cave index
|Places and Grottos.
VAR home page
|
previous--Greenbriar 1
next--Geenbriar 3
articles index
|Names.
|Photos index
|Cave index
|Places and Grottos.
VAR home page
|
|
The Endless
Greenbriar Organ - Hendricks - Culverson - Creek - Ludington's West Virginia cavers have a tender spot for this landmark. Photo by P.C. Lucas |
Sometime in this era, either in 1951 or 1952, John Rutherford came into the picture. I had been dating his sister, Anne, and she told John that I was interested in caves. He immediately picked up on that and started going caving with me. One of the first caves that he went into with me was Lipp's #1, I think it's called, and we went quite a long way down; we may have gotten to the drop and to what is called the Waiting Room.
On another trip in the early fifties, Rutherford, some of his friends and I entered what we called Erwin's Cave which later turned out to be the Humphrey's Entrance. Erwin's is another cave nearby. We pushed debris of all sorts (logs, cans, bottles, etc.) out of the small entrance in order to get into it. We went down about a twenty-foot drop which we managed to negotiate with rope. A little further beyond we found a forty-foot drop and had to retreat. We returned later that evening to go down this drop, leaving word with Mr. Erwin that if we were not out by the next morning to send for help. Beyond, this drop we got into even bigger cave than we had seen in Organ-Hedricks. We did not get to the end of it. It was still forty by forty or larger when we quit. It was really a tremendous cave.
One weekend when we were working in this cave with Dave Bowen we discovered that Lipp's and Humphrey's were connected. We worked across from the drop in Humphrey's on over towards the main stream in Lipp's, and came to an apparent passage end. I was digging around a little bit and found a small hole which we were able to enlarge. All of us got through except for Dave Bowen, who, at the time, was a six-foot five, 230 pound fellow and pretty much on the heavy side. Dave proceeded to strip down to the point that he was able to work his way into the small hole, and actually seemed to flow through! On the other side he redressed, and that room then became known as the Dressing Room.
So here we were with two really big caves, running within a half mile of each other with no interconnections. We worked and worked trying to connect them; it later turned out that due to some misconceptions, we were looking in the wrong places. During this time, Dave Bowen found the Bowen Room, a 120-foot-high room, with a formation spilling down over one side of the room and filling most of it. At the base of the Bowen Room, there was the Big Canyon, as we called it. It ran down to the sump, and toward the lower end of the canyon was the Meat Grinder, a small crawl over rimstone.continued
|
previous--Greenbriar 1
next--Geenbriar 3
articles index
|Names.
|Photos index
|Cave index
|Places and Grottos.
VAR home page
|