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previous--Giley Cave, pg184
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continued
After climbing out of the pit, a meal was eaten and the search for the lake resumed. Several hours of searching was fruitless, so they turned their attention to the purported river. They met success here, although the river was more like a stream, being six feet wide and four inches deep. Upstream the passage continued for 600 feet to a siphon. A passage on the right about 350 feet back from the siphon ended in a second siphon. This passage was mapped since the old map didn't show this side passage.
In this section we found some very strange structures. Laying on a rock shelf and on the floor, were black, circular hollow hoops ranging from one to three feet in diameter, about three inches deep and a half-inch thick.
In four days time 1000 feet of additional passage was mapped and a great deal of exploring done. On their last trip out of the cave, they buried a half-gallon of carbide and leftover cans of food to be used on future trips. --Earl Geil, CAVALIER CAVER, vol. 4, mo. 4, 1962.
Before attending the 1963 NSS Convention at Mountain Lake, VA, several members of the UVA Grotto decided to do their pre-convention caving in Gilley Cave with the objective of discovering possible passage in the ceiling above Devil's Pit. The pit, located 24OO feet from the entrance, is 25 feet in diameter and 61 feet deep. Thirty feet from the top of the pit, a waterfall plummets from a triangular hole in the ceiling down the diametrical center of the pit. Those on the trip planned to assemble a steel pole, with a climbing rope attached to the upper end. They would then raise the pole and rope up into the hole so that a person could easily prusik up the rope and into the hole.
The pole, divided into ten ten-foot sections, was special high tempered steel alloy angle weighing about fifteen pounds each and was on loan from the Reynolds Metal Company in Grottoes, VA.
When the group arrived at the cave, they carried only their sleeping gear, clothes, cooking gear and food to Camp II where they sacked out. The plan was to be up early to avoid carrying the pole sections up the steep hill to the entrance in the heat of the sun.
Returning to the cave the next morning, the group was laden with eight sections of the steel angle, 75 nuts and bolts, and wrenches. At Devil's Pit assembly of the pole began consisting of bolting seven of the angles together, back to back, so that each angle overlapped two other angles by half a length. The pole was then 40 feet long with five feet at each end being composed of only one angle. Two ropes were tied to the top end as guy lines, and a third rope was tied to the bottom end as a hoisting line. Roger Baroody was then tied in as a belay safety to the man at the edge of the pit. With George Bell and Julian Brook handling the guy lines, the pole was lowered into the pit.
The pole weighed approximately 100 pounds, and as long as the angle (A) between the longitudinal axis of the pole and the force of pull along the hoisting rope was small, the pole was not too difficult to raise. But as the top of the pole reached into the hole, ten feet of it still remained below the top of the pit, and the angle A had now increased so that it was exceedingly difficult to raise the pole any further. At this point, Bill Nelson was belayed into the pit to attach another rope to the end of the pole, so that we could pull with two ropes. Bill then climbed back to the top of the pit and a mighty heave-ho was given on both ropes, and CATASTROPHE! We all stood disbelievingly, as we watched the pole bend like a Z and fall into the depths of the pit.
Examination of the pole showed that it was bent and twisted in two places, each bend located at a joint, where two of the angles were bolted end to end. One fact had been overlooked; at each joint the pole only had the strength of one steel angle, otherwise, calculations proved that the pole was sufficiently strong with the combined strength of two steel angles."
With the bent pole dangling into the pit, the still--virgin chamber of unknown dimensions remained an enigma. Disgusted, bot not discouraged, members planned to return with a better design and technique to eliminate weak spots and make raising the pole easier.
--THE CAVALIER CAVER, 1963.
In the October 1963 issue of the CAVALIER CAVER, Earl Geil announced that help was needed to map and further explore in Gilley Cave. At this time he was planning an expedition from December 27, 1963 to January 3. 1964. Plans called for three man mapping and exploring teams with each person mapping two days and exploring one day. He promised that no person would be sent to the same area twice (in a three-day period) unless he chose to do so.
Apparently a large number of cavers responded. Some of the participants included Keith Evans, Earl Geil, Claude Greever, Mason Sproul, and Tom Vigour. After entering the cave late on a moonlit night, the group spent the night at Camp I. In the morning a three-man team checked with no success for leads along the Anthodite Passage. Tom Vigour's group discovered that the downstream water flows into the back side of Echo Lake, a fact that no one had considered.
Keith and Earl pushed a virgin crawl off the upper portion of the stream passage which opened up after 300 feet. This passage was the anticline of the ridge; following the anticline, they found a series of large passages with the usual waterfalls, pits, and breakdown found in other parts of Gilley. Having not brought their emergency supply of carbide and water with them, they had to abort further exploration until the next day.
During the night Earl awoke to the frightening sound of someone violently ill near his sleeping bag. The light from a carbide lamp illuminated Keith to be the sick individual. Soon after breakfast Earl found he was in no condition to go caving. He and Keith memorized the route between their sleeping bags and the latrine while Tom's group mapped the new passage Keith and Earl had found the previous day, Anticline Alley. Tom became sick while surveying, and at Camp I, two others were similarly sick. After returning to Charlottesville, one of the cavers entered the hospital with a temperature of 103°; his illness was diagnosed as dysentery. The cavers supposed that the probable cause was polluted cave water, and warned that future use of water from the cave should be chemically treated before being assumed safe to drink.
Earl Geil mentioned in his 1974 letter that Roger Baroody had frequent nightmares about Gilley Cave. He dreamed once that the ceiling of the Morgue Room, under which Camp II was located, was going to fall and kill everyone. The ceiling at this point consists of a tremendous slab, one-inch thick with dimensions about 25 by 40 feet. The slab was attached only to one wall. One might the group was awakened by some pebbles falling from the ceiling; they immediately moved to a new camp!"
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