next--Butler Cave, pg182
articles index
|Names.
|Photos index
|Cave index
|Places and Grottos.
VAR home page
|
previous--Two Views of Miller's Cove prt2, pg180
next--Butler Cave, pg182
articles index
|Names.
|Photos index
|Cave index
|Places and Grottos.
VAR home page
|
Seabolt Cave
On Saturday afternoon, May 19, Earl Thierry and Ed DesRochers left Blacksburg for Wytheville intending to join the Wytheville Grotto in the exploration of Seabolt Cave. Seabolt Cave, located within a few hundred feet of the 143-foot deep Spence Cave, was first explored by the Wytheville Grotto a few weeks ago and found to contain, besides some beautiful calcite formations, a drop estimated to be better than 200 feet deep.
On arriving at Wytheville, it was found that Larry Sabatinos had to work, and so couldn't do any caving that weekend. However, it was decided to go ahead and try the big drop on Sunday. Late Saturday afternoon, Betty Sabatinos, Earl and Ed took a trip to Pickett's Cave, which is located about five miles north of Wytheville. The cave consists of several hundred feet of confusing passages and rooms that are well supplied with flowstone, plus a fair-sized stream in which we alternately crawled and walked. Betty did her best to get the party lost, but they finally ended up in a pretty room containing numerous rimstone pools, calcite formations, and a formation Betty insisted resembled an alligator. Earl took several pictures, and the party then returned to the surface.
On Sunday morning, Earl, Betty, Jean Lowry and Ed set out for Seabolt Cave. The entrance is a small crawlway which opens up to a walking passage after about fifteen feet. This passage ends in a twenty-foot drop into a room about 30x20x50 feet high and which contains considerable flowstone. From this room several passageways lead off, one of which is a narrow slit about 100 feet long and in which both anthodites and helectites are found. A second lead drops through a corkscrew passage into a lower room.
The big drop is reached from this lower room in two places. In one of them the party rigged 150 feet of steel ladder, and Earl was selected as the victim. He was down for about two hours, and then returned topside. He reported that the ladder ended about a foot above a ledge, and from this point he had climbed down on the safety rope for another 75 feet to the bottom. The bottom contains a fair--sized stream, and has a close resemblance to the bottom of Spence Cave, except that here, there is considerably more breakdown, and several possible leads for future exploration. The bottom is also very wet and muddy.-Ed DesRochers, VPI GROTTO GRAPEVINE, May 25, 1951.
Janet Queisserat Paxton's entrance. Photo by. R. E. Clark
|
previous--Two Views of Miller's Cove prt2, pg180
next--Butler Cave, pg182
articles index
|Names.
|Photos index
|Cave index
|Places and Grottos.
VAR home page
|