Underground Adventure – Caving In West
Virginia
Bill Shuman
 On
Saturday, March 22, 2008 we decided to celebrate the arrival of
spring by
taking a hike along a beautiful stream complete with waterfalls. This
hike was a bit different since it was inside a mountain! We had ten
people, including the two trip leaders, Bill & Donna Shuman.
This was the first-time caving for five of the participants; a great
group.
We drove nearly five hours to arrive at Bowden Cave, east of Elkins,
West Virginia just before noon. The beginning of the trip was an easy
crawl into a large room with a small stream along one wall. The stream
quickly disappeared into a lower passage as we scrambled, walked, and
sometimes crawled about 1,000 feet along a large passage with lots of
breakdown (piles of rock that had previously fallen from the ceiling).
The two kids on the trip, Aaron (12) and Rebecca (9) were doing great.
Rebecca was getting her Girl Scout Caving merit badge. The last step in
the process was to be in a dark place and turn off all the lights. We
did that when we stopped for lunch. Unless you’ve been in a
cave, you have probably never experienced such complete darkness.
Soon
the stream reappeared and we walked and crawled along ledges on the
sides. In several hundred feet the stream entered from a side passage
with a beautiful waterfall. We continued on the main passage to where
it ended in a room full of breakdown. There was an interesting side
passage that led to a room about 10 feet in diameter and 45 feet high
with water falling from the ceiling. It’s aptly named the
Shower Room.
After a break we headed back the way we had come. Back at
the first big room we had entered, a couple of us explored a passage
called the Cat Crawl. It’s a 30 foot long belly crawl that
includes an eight foot long puddle of ice-cold water. Only two of us
decide to go through. The rest took a look and said “no
way!” The two of us that went through got to take a look at
the beginning of a passage named “The Agony”.
It’s an even tighter 300 foot long belly crawl with the last
100 feet in a stream! It leads to a large area of cave to explore, but
at what a price!
We were underground for a little over three hours. Everyone had a
wonderful time, but we still had another five hour drive ahead of us.
It was a long day but everyone thought it was well worth the trip.
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