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previous--Clover Hollow2, pg193
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Miller's Cave
The worst instance I ever had on a bosun's chair was in muddy Miller's Cavein Giles County. Oh, that was something! They had just blasted the way into Miller's when I started caving. Bob "Red" Forehand, I believe it was, talked real enthusiastic about going back, but he didn't sign up for the trip. And I soon learned that when Red Forehand did that, you had better look out. I got caught a couple of trips like that.
But anyway, we went into Miller's. I was leading the trip and had never been there before. I borrowed Joe Lawrence's jeep. I wasn't too familiar with mountain creeks. When we came to the ford crossing Big Walker Creek, I noted it wasn't muddy and assumed it wasn't flooded. Well, I was mistaken. We dropped that jeep across that sunken bridge and the water came up in the floor board. I don't know why the engine didn't drown out, but it didn't. Or why the jeep wasn't swept off the edge of the bridge into deep water.
Well, I reckon that cave was one of my first virgin caves. Every time we went in we would find a little bit more. The first trip, just as I was about ready to leave, I forget the boy's name, Barr Willey, I believe it was, came back. "Roy, let me show you something." Well, he had found a hole back in some breakdown. It dropped back ten or fifteen feet into a sizeable breakdown. Well, we pulled it out.
Next weekend we went back and found a tremendous well. Third trip in we carried 600 feet of 3/4 inch line and a bosun's chair to rig the well. Somehow or other I was the one to ride the bosun's chair down the well expecting to find another Clover Hollow at the bottom of it. About halfway to the bottom the bosun's chair intersected a waterfall. I was thoroughly drenched. I got to the bottom, looked all around, and couldn't find any passage. The water was going out the gravel in the bottom. Got back in the bosun's chair and the rig jammed. The two lines coming down to the chair wrapped together so thoroughly that they finally just had to haul the two lines out. They just had enough men there to haul it out~ and didn't need to use the traveling block. The thing was cutting rocks loose and they were coming by me with a 'wump'! Just a vacuum when the rocks went by. And then you could hear the crash down below you. I was hollering and screaming. They finally got me out. Well, true to this cave, just about the time we were ready to leave, someone, I believe it was Ed DesRochers, said, "Come, Roy, I got something to show you." And he's found a little crawly hole, a little inclined passage down in the breakdown. It had an air current in it. We didn't get through that trip.
Came back with Joe Lawrence. Joe was following me and all of a sudden he said, "Roy! Roy! Where are you? I don't see you!" And he wasn't six feet behind me. I had found a break in the breakdown and just slipped right on through, and into another room. And in this room was the top of the final drop into the bottom of Miller's down to the Flowstone River. At the far end of the Flowstone River was a slot with air blowing through. We never were able to get any further than that penetration. Somewhere on that mountainside there is a cold stream of air pouring out in the summertime. We inquired and inquired of the local residents but nobody seemed to know where this could be. One of these days somebody will find more cave there.
One hair-raising thing I did in Miller's Cave; next to the last level we were exploring around. Adam Chou and myself were together and we found a pit. We had a line and no place to rig, so we threw the line in and didn't check to see where it fell to. Adam got back and belayed, and I rappelled I didn't know how I was going to get back out. I came to the knot on the end of the line, and I missed the ledge that I thought I was going to rappel to. The ledge was at least ten or fifteen feet from me over to my right-hand side. There were plenty of other cavers in the cave, but they were off somewhere else, and didn't know where we were. Here I was at the bottom of the line, and Adam I finally started penduluming the thing, got over into a fissure and climbed back up to Adam. I reckon that's about the hair-raisingest thing I ever did!-- Roy Charlton, Taped Narrative 1997.
On March 30, 1952, Eddie Barton and myself of the Wytheville Grotto took off for Blacksburg where we picked up Jack Clements, Sam King, Adam Chou, Tom McDaniel, and Bob Sayre of the VPI Grotto. Later two cavers from Pulaski joined us and we drove to Miller's Cave in Giles County, VA.
Miller's Cave has been the pride and joy of the VPI grotto ever since 1948 when Bob Barnes led the first parties to it and did the blasting which opened up the cave to extensive exploration. The cave is mostly vertical. The entrance is a small squeeze hole in the bedrock about 40 feet off an old farm road. You drop through the squeeze about 18 feet on a ladder and find yourself in a room about ten feet by thirty feet by eight feet high. When the cave was first discovered this was all you could explore. At the far end of this entrance room is now a 75 foot drop into the main cave; the top of this drop was opened up by Barnes' dynamite in 1948. The previously explored part of the cave proceeds from the bottom of this drop in a southeast direction but our objective this trip was a southwest passage which ran level for about 100 feet then dropped down 65 feet into a muddy pool and a maze of mud slopes. This passage had been explored a bit past the bottom of the 65 foot drop. Our purpose was to completely explore these numerous leads and add them to the map. About twenty feet from the bottom of the ladder down the 65-foot drop, was a second muddy pool which couldn't be bypassed, and had to be waded. This fourteen inches of gooey mud was just a gentle hint of the mess we were to encounter; as fast as we would climb up 50-degree mud slopes, we would find mud slides going down again on the other side.
We completely explored this part of the cave. In the 650 feet of cave that we sketch-mapped, about 40 feet of it was rubble rock instead of slippery mud. Coming up the mud slopes on the way out, we had to tie loops in the handline to get a grip on the muddy rope. So, as far as we are concerned, the right-hand drop in Miller's has been visited its first and last time~--by Earl Thierry, NSS NEWS, August 1952.
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