BLUE RIDGE GROTTO of the National Speleological Society

BRG Minutes for 7/18/2025

Dave & MarySue Socky’s house, 6572 Woodbrook Dr. SW Cave Spring, VA 24018

Attendance:

Susan Burr Marian McConnell Mary Sue Socky

Dave Socky Jeff Huffman John Pearson

Barry Ferguson Helene Ferguson Bob Alderson

*Katie Gray *Bob Balch *Bambi Marshall *Guest

Chair David Socky called the meeting to order at 6:30p.

Everyone was welcomed; Introductions were made.

People enjoyed looking at Katie Gray’s dad’s (Gary Gray) caving photos, etc. While going through her dad’s things, Katie found and donated the original Blue Ridge Grotto Charter back to the club. Thanks!

TRIP REPORTS

5/21: Rushing Waters Cave, VA. Participants included David Socky and Amos Mincin. While Rick Lambert was changing out data loggers in various locations, I went into Rushing Waters to set a dye trap. You couldn't tell how high the water was until you got down to the first flat spot 12 feet down. But once under the ceiling height change, you could see the water was only 5 feet from my feet. I tied the dye trap to a brick with the coated wire and then tossed it in as far as I could. I know it didn't go to the bottom. Mud Pot Cave was next.

5/21: Mud Pot Cave, VA. Participants included David Socky, Amos Mincin, and Rick Lambert. It took a little wandering, but I found Mud Pot. By the time I started rigging, Rick Lambert showed up. Once the pit was rigged, I clipped in, rigged my rack, and went in. There was a thermocline about 20 feet down and then got warmer and warmer going down. No problem finding the brick in the downstream (close) pool. I set the dye trap, took some photos, and then climbed back up the narrow canyon slope to the rope. No problem getting up, but boy, I was sweating. We derigged and headed over to the dig that we had found last week - Dogwood Cave.

5/21: Dogwood Cave, VA. Participants included David Socky, Amos Mincin, and Rick Lambert. It goes! Need more rope and a rebelay.

5/24: Short's Moonshine Cave, KY. Participants included David Socky, Laine Flom (Roberts?), Bob Alderson. Team two: Bill Koerschner, Michelle Touma, and Cory Knight. This was part of the Cave Research Foundation (CRF) Mammoth Cave Expedition. Short’s Moonshine is a cave not in the Mammoth Cave Park that Bob and Bill worked in on the last expedition. There was a 600-foot-long water crawl that ended in a 55-foot pit. We split into two teams: Bob, Laine, and I would go to the 55-foot pit while Bill, Michelle, and Cory would survey the stream crawl. Our team surveyed 328 feet of small passages above the pit while Bill’s team nearly got hypothermic surveying 300 feet in the very wet stream crawl. It was a productive 8-hour trip.

5/25: Short's Moonshine Cave, KY. Participants included David Socky, Bob Alderson, and Bill Koerschner. We started surveying in the big entrance room, making one shot where the previous survey hadn’t gotten a backsight. The ledge on the left started out pretty easy, but the last part was somewhat sketchy with the ledge steeply sloping off to 15 feet of exposure. A little tricky, but doable. We surveyed straight ahead for maybe 20 or 30 feet until the main way got too narrow, but we were able to drop down through a tight floor canyon into a wide room below. The floor of this room was perched above the main lower lever with no way to climb down. Looking back toward the entrance, there were some really nice rimstone pools on the left, with a trickle of water flowing out of a crack. Back up above the slot, we surveyed down the side lead on the right where there was a small trickle stream flowing out. The passage was a small awkward hand and knees crawl which got smaller and smaller as we continued. There were a couple of constrictions until Bob finally got to a point where he couldn’t continue. Just too tight. That was it for our short survey in Short’s Moonshine Cave.

5/28: Dogwood Cave, VA. Participants included David Socky, Mark Minton, and Yvonne Droms. Surface: Rick Lambert, Amos Mincin, Jim Schurman, and Keith Sweeney. We finished the exploration and survey of Dogwood Cave on this trip. Unfortunately, a dead bottom pit. See article in this issue.

6/4: Burruss Cave #2, VA. Participants included David Socky, Bob Alderson, Bill Koerschner, Rick Lambert, Keith Sweeney, Mark Minton, Vonny Droms, and Jim Schurman. All these cavers for two cavers in the pit at one time. It was a nice, pleasant day, maybe a little hot, but it was cool to cold in the pit. Lots of bugs and gnats on the surface. Lots of mud, rock, sticks, and debris in the pit. Mark and Bob went in first and did the majority of the digging throughout the day. The pit was about 20 to 25 feet deep to the top of the mud/debris pile. We had a two-to-one pulley system to pull buckets up. Around 2pm, Mark and Bob came up and I went to get my gear. But first Bob went in with the straw kit and drilled 3 holes for an obstructing ledge. With a loud boom, the straws took care of the obstruction. I went down and found the climb down on the left side of the pile was more than big enough. I spent maybe an hour digging and filling buckets. There is still a lot of stuff to pull up, but there is a space which may open up on the right wall. At a few minutes to five, it was declared we had had enough. We pulled the tools up and then Bob and I climbed out. It was a fun day.

6/14: Bob Alderson revisited Warner Noisy Blower Cave, WV. They heard of a potential dig. Had trouble finding the cave entrance in the field. Dwight, Gabby, Vonny, Bob found a sandy dig near the ceiling of one section.

6/14: Nick Schmalenberger went to Shadow Cave, VA with Zach Bruno and saw a cool salamander.

6/19: Mossy Cliff Cave, VA – not Horse Cave maybe, and Catawba Creek #4 maybe. Participants included David Socky, Matthew Centofanti, and Jacob Whitlock. Taylor Nelson & Wife (owners). Mossy Cliff Cave was one of three caves we looked at on the new landowner’s property. This short notice trip was set up by Gracie Cornish. We thought this might be Mossy Cliff Cave, but it didn’t match the map at all. It's probably one of the other Catawba Creek Caves. The Horse Cave (maybe) entrance was a small hole in the middle of the woods. No one could fit until I dislodged a large rock and rolled it inside. This was not just a little rat hole. Turned into walking passage a few side leads and/or rooms. Catawba Creek #4 maybe - Again, I’m not sure which cave this is. In any case, they all should be re-surveyed.

NSS Convention

6/21: Bouck Theater Cave, Cobleskill, NY. Participants – Dave Socky. I was told I should enter this in the NSS ACA. I tried turning the Bouch Theater into a cave by attempting to get backstage in the dark without a light. Consequently, I stepped off the edge of the stage (like walking out over the edge of a pit) and slammed my left side onto the edge of the stage and collapsed onto the floor. I ended up getting a helicopter ride to the Albany hospital where they determined I had broken four ribs and damaged my spleen and kidney. I spent the whole convention in the hospital, but I was able to attend the banquet on Friday and even presented the Arts and Letters Award to Angelo George. I am now home, recovering. I’ll be back to caving in late September.

6/ 23: Nick Schmalenberger went to Hailes Cave, NY for the convention sketching class with Jon Zetterberg, Julie Schenck-Brown, Dan Safronoff, and a bunch of other people. The cave was mostly a long walking passage with a stream. A beaver was active in the entrance area. The cave was much colder than Virginia caves, glad I brought my cave suit.

6/25: Nick Schmalenberger went to Schoharie Cave, NY with Rolland Moore. The cave is known for people visiting naked and barefoot, so we were slightly better equipped. It had a stream of knee-deep cold water through its passage as far as we went, until we ran into the convention photography workshop and decided to return from that point. I decided I didn’t really need to wear my flipflops, exiting the cave barefoot was nice.

6/26: Nick Schmalenberger went to Chevy Cave, NY, Pasture Cave, NY , and Marshalls Cave, NY with Julian Benson + 7 people from Boston + Ezra from Vermont. These were all vertical caves, so smaller groups were a good move. Chevy and Pasture were walking distance apart, so 4 of us saw Chevy first which was nearer to the parking spot, Julian took the other 4 to Pasture, and then we switched. It was raining off and on all day and lots of mosquitoes lived around the entrances of these caves, being underground was definitely nicer. Chevy was 1 pitch down to where 2 long tight crawls supposedly led to a beautiful formation room, but we didn’t go this way. Instead, we lay in the crawlway in a last in first out fashion just for protection from rockfall in the pretty narrow pit, and didn’t really notice many features in the cave at all.

6/26:Pasture Cave, NY had a cable ladder leading down through a buried very large former oil tank as an entrance, to a timber retaining wall where the pit began and led through a crack to a rebelay. Then the pit became quite nice especially compared to Chevy Cave. Some formations at the bottom included a calcified 5-gallon bucket and next to it some sort of calcified magical egg. We continued on up a muddy slope to where a slippery climb down led to a stream passage, but I decided I didn’t need to continue further. After Pasture Cave we returned to the cars and drove to Marshall’s Cave.

At Marshall’s Cave, NY, we were in our 2 groups, and my group went in the lower horizontal entrance after putting our vertical gear in a pack we gave to the other group. They rappelled down apparently the biggest single pitch in New York State, 93 feet. We met them at the bottom where Julian pointed out formations, explained some cool history of his pioneering this cave project, and taking lots of beginners here. Our group took the other groups packs, climbed up the pitch, and out the top entrance in a culvert. Once we were all out Julian pointed out to us some of the other project caves very close by. One next to some cedar trees is very much wetter than Marshalls; Julian pulled the lid off the culvert and we could see water rushing just looking down there.

6/ 27: Nick Schmalenberger went to Clarksville Cave, NY with Tom Kinsky from Boston I’d met before in Mexico, Mystik Miller, Samantha Gerland of Minnesota, and a 14 year old youth from Indiana. Here we did another through trip with some fun crawling around in circles and taking yonic pictures, until Tom decided to take us out the stream passage he wasn’t sure would even work for us if the water was too high, but it was ok. There was about 6 inches of air space, but the water was deep enough to stand up in. We came into a room with a slope we could sort of slide down into the water, so we all did this more or less carefully, and made some videos. From here it was about 50 more feet to the exit, and we got back to camp just in time for the NSS banquet.

6/28: (Post NSS Camp) Bob Alderson joined cavers from the Heidelberg-Hudson Grotto for a post-convention cave trip. 15 people stayed in the recently renovated NECC cabin. Visited Emily and Mike at Speleobooks and their Octagonal house, etc.

6/28:(Sat) Bob Alderson, Aaron and Tyler Burr, etc. visited Gage Cave, NY. They did the drop, but not the water crawl. This was a led post-convention trip.

6/29: (Sun) Bob Alderson, Aaron and Tyler Burr visited Clarkesville Cave NY and Onesquathaw Cave, NY. These were post-convention led trips. Onesquawaw Cave has a nice entrance passage.

6/30: (Mon) Bob Alderson, Aaron Burr and Tyler Burr visited the NECC property Benson’s Cave, NY. Benson’s is part of the Secret Cave System. It is the ‘wild side’ of Secret Caverns. There was a 70’ entrance pit, lots of canyon passage and stream crawls.

7/1: Burroughs Cave, part of the Hot Water Pond Complex in NY. 4 marble caves owned by: ??? Bob Alderson took a 2-mile uphill hike to Rusty Stove Cave (fissure cave),

Burroughs Cave – visited the resurgence to a big breakdown room,

Little Burroughs Cave – passed it while bushwhacking up the mountainside; went to:

Hot Water Pond (created by beaver dam), that drains into Hot Water Pond Cave, NY.

They went back downhill and finally found Little Burroughs Cave, NY – they explored, checked out a breakdown room with very sketchy breakdown! Then they went to a nearby ‘dive’ for dinner – strange place with beer and chicken wings and interesting customers.

(7/2?) Bob Alderson visited Natural Stone Bridge & Caves, NY, a show cave that has been owned by one family since 1776. Emily Davis made special arrangements for the cavers to visit the property. Cedar, Big Marble (50’x60’ entrance) and other marble cave features along the trail.

(July) Bob Alderson went hiking in the ‘Daks. He saw lots of waterfalls. Can one get burned out on too many waterfalls? He also spent a week in Acadia NP (Maine) with family.

7/12: WVACS Classic. Dave and Mary Sue Socky attended the above ground festivities, lots of which involved sitting under a juniper tree and enjoying friend’s company. Nice taco banquet, nice drive home.

7/12: Bambi Marshall attended the WVACS Classic and got on a trip to wet Norman Cave, WV. Still very limited parking. Cave was fun; leader did an early exit with one out of shape participant, allowed the rest to explore as long as they were out by a specified time limit. They did fine, made mud sculptures in the back room, saw the start of the crawl to Bone Cave, and made it ‘home’ to WVACS in time for dinner!

7/12: Bob Balch went hiking in search of Gnome Rock, near Bassett, VA. He found a few shelter caves, and an etching?/ petroglyph? of a gnome.

7/16: Various Caves Warm Springs Project (WSP), VA. Participants included David Socky, Rick Lambert, and Jason Glancy. We went to change out data loggers at these caves: Triplett, North and South Twin Sisters (no data loggers in Sisters caves), Kellison Cave, Betty Poyser Cave, Good Reception, Das Boot, and Hoover Pit. My first drive by myself since my broken rib accident. I did ok, but I did get a little sleepy on the drive back. It only took 2 hours, so I was heading back home by noon.

6/23-6/27: John and Lyn Pearson’s journeys in NY. They went on the NSS Geology Field Trip, saw stromatolites, visited Natural Stone Bridge & Caves, marble caves, Peter Pan’s Peephole, the NSS Howdy Party, visited Secret Caverns, cheered Dave Socky at the Friday NSS Banquet, saw a bunch of neat old Star Trek stuff, AND Lyn won a Milwaukee rotary hammer drill from the NSF raffle! Read more about their exploits in the upcoming August 2025 DUMP.

UPCOMING TRIPS

This Month’s trip – to Patton Cave, WV. Full trip.

August grotto trip – to be decided.

BUSINESS MEETING

July 18, 2025 – BRG Treasury Report

Respectfully submitted by Marian McConnell.

Fund Amounts

$ 117.96 Cave Bucks

$ 2.00 Conservation Fund

$ 144.12 Equipment Fund

$ 5,779.63 General Fund

$ 6,043.71 Total Funds

Committees:  

Newsletter –No July DUMP. We are accumulating articles, etc. for the August newsletter

Membership –we have 53 members & 3 subscribers. In addition, 35+ folks who have been on our PBRG list, but have never come to a meeting or gone on a BRG cave trip – they have been dropped. The remainder of interested folks who HAVE come to grotto functions, trips, etc. – they have been put on a new list.

ROCKS – the Warm Springs Valley project meets every Wednesday, and some Saturdays. Contact Dave Socky if you want to participate.

Safety & Techniques – No report

Membership Proposals:  None.

Old Business 

· Idea of putting some BRG funds into an interest-bearing CD – Still Tabled.

· BRG Meeting Space in 2025. Back to Basics. There are not that many places anymore that have a small room & TV and will accommodate a small group.

o Wil consider moving meetings to Thursday nights if necessary.

o Churches? Do any of us have religion? JEP offered to look into the Universalist Church, he will join them if it means we get a free meeting place! (Oh lord, that church is gonna be struck by lightning! )

o Dave and MarySue have offered their house as a meeting place until a better site can be found.

· VAR Updates – See new business.

· NSS Brochures: Mary Socky was going to pick up a bunch of NSS pamphlets at NSS Convention, but she missed the Friday 6/27 shut down. Is anyone travelling to Huntsville, AL? Perhaps we can arrange something where the traveler can bring back a box of cave brochures which we share with cavers, presenters, and cave owners.

New Business

· 2025 FALL VAR will be at RASS, Oct. 3-5, 2025. Hosted by the VAR Officers. Contact Meredith Weberg to volunteer or for more info.

· Looking for someone to host the 2026 Spring VAR! Contact Meredith Weberg.

· GO Fest is a GO! Oct. 18-19, 2025. CaveSim will be in its usual spot in Downtown Roanoke, on Jefferson street. Please volunteer to help with CaveSim and GO Fest.

· Cave Trip guidelines have been posted in the May 2025DUMP. Everyone has responsibilities for a safe cave trip.

Announcements:

· Healthy Caving – let’s be healthy going underground.  Rules were posted in the DUMP.

· T-Shirts –There are 17 remaining T-shirts! $12.00 each. Med. to XL, various colors: red, gold, grey, green, light blue, etc. Contact Susan Burr pondlady97@gmail.com for more information.

· Carl Cornett is doing well and says “Hi.”

· Congratulations to Lauren Appel! Her photo of Mystic River flowstone, Scott Hollow Cave, WV, on the DUMP cover (2024v60#4) won an Honorable Mention in the NSS Cover Art Salon! See all the winners https://caves.org/salon/2025-graphic-art-salon/

· Congratulations to Marian McConnell, whose ‘Halloween’ artwork on the back cover of Illuminations (Dec.2024, #19 won an Honorable Mention in the NSS Cover Art Salon! In addition, Marian won an Honorable Mention in Fine Art Salon for colored pencil art of Wood Frog in Helectite Cave (which she donated to the Auction)(JEP bought it at the auction!), and an Honorable Mention in Cave Ballad Salon for song "Life in the Middle Ages.”

· Catawba Murder Hole Cave, VA is CLOSED

· New River Cave Preserve, VA (NSS) is using a permit system. One group per day is allowed in the cave. https://permits.saveyourcaves.org/ to submit a permit request for visitation. Contact newriverpreserve@caves.org for more info.

· Dave Socky and Nikki Fox are helping Brad Blase post verified cave access info updates to the “Closed Cave List.” Send updates: https://var.caves.org/index.php/conservation/closed-caves/closed-cave-list

· Summer Bat Closure for some caves. These closures protect maternity colonies of bat moms and pups.

o WV: closed May 15 - Sept 1.

o VA: closed Apr. 15 – Oct. 15.

· Marian McConnell is collecting photos of orange cave salamanders to use to design a 2025 BRG Christmas card, "Santamander" ... since the Santa bats have been so popular. Please share your really good, detailed salamander photos with her between now and October.

· We are thrilled to announce that — after years of member-informed discussion, planning, and preparation —  the National Speleological Society has officially hired its first Executive Director: Dr. Annette Engel (NSS #31319). This marks a transformative moment in the evolution of the NSS. Annette is a lifelong caver, a renowned scientist, and a deeply respected member of the Society who brings both a compelling vision and decades of experience to this pivotal role.

CAVER CALENDAR:

July 11-19: NCRC Weeklong classes, Mountain Gateway Community College, Clifton Forge, VA.

July 18 – BRG meeting, site TBA.

Aug 15 – BRG meeting, site TBA.

Aug 28-Sept 1 – OTR, Dailey, WV.

Sept 19 – BRG meeting, site TBA

Oct. 3-5 – Fall VAR at RASS! Hosted by the VAR Officers.

Oct 17 - – BRG meeting, site TBA. Nominations.

Oct 18-19 – Roanoke GO FEST (save the date for Cave Sim)

Nov 21 – BRG meeting, site TBA. Elections.

Cold Beer! 7:37p

Program: “2025 NSS Photo Salon”

Minutes submitted by Mary Sue Socky, Secretary