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 two views of
MILLER'S COVE
Cliff Foreman: |
"I first met Bill Cuddingtonwhile I was in the Army and was stationed at Ft. Bragg, NC. Huntley Ingallshad introduced us, both of us having had been caving with Hunt for some time. Hunt had been the principal explorer of Cass Cave in West Virginia, and one of the first people to accept and use the rappel and prusik system that bill was an advocate of. He had used the rappel-prusik system in Cass, and like all early users of the system, had been open to much criticism from the conventional cavers who had been accustomed to using cable ladders and winches with second safety ropes. The early critics claimed the need for independent safety rope, and for the limitation of the rappel-prusik system to only short drops. Early critics had made many statements that were quite amusing; such as, "A rappel of over 100 feet would cause heart attacks" or "Prusiking would take an hour to progress upward for only 25 feet or so, and was obviously only a danger--ridden technique for mountain rescue, and then only as a last--ditch measure."
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So Bill, Hunt, and myself, who had been independently rappelling and prusiking for some time, had finally started doing some caving together. One particular trip took us, along with Phil Gaylord(who lived with the folks that owned Clover Hollow Cave), to some caves in Tennessee. On that trip, we rappelled into and prusiked out of, among others, The Gouffre and Connelly Hole. The day after these fine pits, we attended the Vertical Caving Session at the Nashville NSS Convention, where we sat in the rear row and giggled as a caver told all present that it was impossible to rappel over 120 feet.
Well, anyway, that's how I met Bill. His home being Roanoke, VA, we occasionally met in that area on weekends and that was the beginning of my caving interest in that region. About that time we occasionally went caving with a Roanoker by the name of Bill Carterwho liked to lift weights and who was a strong caver. He was a good person to have along most of the time. He also was a rock and mineral collector who liked to collect, much to our disdain. Bill Cuddingtonfinally solved much of that problem by directing Carter to a cave, that was being destroyed by a quarry operation near Buchanan, VA.
Well, anyway, because of Carter's collecting habits, Bill Cuddington was prone to keeping some newly-discovered caves secret from Carter. One of the "secret caves" that I had heard about, but never saw personally was located near the VA--WV border, and in it was a section where calcite crystals were being formed in rimstone pools at a rate so fast that items dropped into the pools were covered with solid crystal growth within weeks. Another cave that Bill kept secret was Miller's Cove Cave. I believe that part of Bill's growing list of secret caves was also because he liked to bother Henry Douglas, who, as director of the Virginia Cave Survey, was forever asking him for locations, and was at ropes' end when Bill would give general replies, such as he did In a discussion about the caves of Walker Mountain.
Bill had kept Miller's Cove Cave secret from everyone for a year or two before he took me there. At the time I had moved to Mason Cove, located between the cave and Roanoke. It gave me a cave close to home to explore. When I didn't have energy for a trip there, I used to make occasional trips to Catawba Murder Hole just to go sport rappelling and prusiking, and to race with various caving friends from Roanoke or VPI.
I found Lots of cave that Bill had missed in Miller's Cove Cave. He missed what he did because Vertical Bill had a passion for depth and generally only went down as far as he could. The upstream and uphill leads didn't impress him at the time. As my interest in the cave grew, I started on a fairly low-grade map of the cave, and each trip in I added to the map until I had around 13.000 feet on paper. That is the map published in CAVES OF VIRGINIA, by Douglas, and indicates everything that I had seen in the cave.
Later, exploration by others accomplished two significant things: first, it resolved that there is only one stream in the cave, and that there was an elevation error on my map that indicated that the stream below the triple falls was lower than where the stream reappeared to the north, leading me into the assumption of two streams. Secondly, additional passage was discovered beyond the pond at the end of the stream.
As best I can recall, most of the mapping was routine and the people who accompanied me were numerous. Members of the VPI Cave Club, members of an Explorer Scout Group (very fine pit cavers) from Roanoke, locals and relatives were among the people who went with me from time to time. One fellow, I think his name was Larry from VFI went so often that I heard later he flunked out of school because of it. If it's the same one I think, he was the one who accompanied me when we found roots sticking out of a rock fall at the upstream end of the cave, and we attempted to blast our way out. One shot was a dud, probably because of too much voltage drop over the surplus commo wire that we used. I've forgotten now if that was our last attempt to blast out or not, or if other people since have gone back to try again.
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