1998

Caving with the Boy Scouts

Looking out after entering the cave

The last weekend in March I went caving (technically spelunking) with the Boy Scouts. I was nice not being the Scout Master anymore and not having to plan the trip. The troop gathered early Saturday morning, about a dozen scouts, the Scout Master, and a couple of Scout committee members like me. It was a four-hour drive to Bowden Cave near Elkins, West Virginia where the cave was located.  

Scouts entering Bowden Cave

Arriving in West Virginia, we found the cave opening visible in a cliff face a couple hundred feet from the highway. We parked our cars along the side of the road, got out and donned on our caving gear, gloves and construction helmets with lights attached and entered the cave. The cave entrance over twenty feet across and five or so feet high with a small stream flowing down the middle. Upon entering the cave it opened up into a grand ballroom fifty across with small stalactites hanging down from the ten foot high ceiling and stalagmites scattered around on the floor, all lit by the wandering headlamps from dozen Boy Scouts. It was very cool, well temperature wise as well as the beauty of it. We followed the creek flowing in a channel along the floor of the ballroom towards the rear of the cave where the side where the ceiling became lower and the sides closer eventually narrowing such that you had to walk in the creek to go any further. I stopped her as I didn’t want to get my shoes wet but the Scouts went on later telling me that it went back quite a ways before you had to start crawling to go any further which is where they turned back. I had waited for their return in the ballroom enjoying the view and observing the bats hanging from the ceiling.

From there we went to a nearby Boy Scout campground where we set up our tents, made dinner and spent the night. The following morning we got up, fixed breakfast and then went to another nearby cave.

Scouts at entrance to cave

This cave was similar to the first one being an opening in the side of a fifty-foot-high cliff, but it was much smaller. The entrance down a sloping mound of dirt which we learned was actually a mound of trash. It seems that people used the spot to throw their garbage into from the road above. Our “good deed” as Boy Scouts was to helped clean up some of the trash before entering the cave. Like the first cave there was a “ballroom”, but this one was much smaller, about ten feet across.  Down a slope on one side of the entrance room was a hole about four feet tall which you had to get on your hands and knees to enter, it was the entrance to the cave. I had already decided I wasn’t going to go into the cave as I had volunteered to stay behind in case something happened, and they didn’t come out. Right, that and I really didn’t want to go down that hole.  I’m not claustrophobic, but I have a little fear of getting stuck and not being able to get out. I actually like caves having been in several, but only ones I can stand up in. After the last Scout disappeared down the rabbit hole I wanted to take a look and got on my hands and knees then crawled down the cave six or so feet. Yup, glad I did go down there.

Exiting the cave

It was a cold, foggy morning with a heavy mist in the air so I went back to the vehicles and sat in my Ford Explorer to wait for the boys to come out of the cave. The man from the spelunking club said it would take them about an hour to transverse the cave and had shown me the cave’s exit, a small three-foot diameter hole three or four hundred yards away in the middle of a cow pasture. I waited warmly in my Explorer, occasionally running the heater, for most of an hour then went over to the cave exit hole to wait for the boys to come out. I looked down into the hole, it looked to be eight or ten feet deep with a shaft going off the side at the bottom. “Yeah”, I thought, “I’m glad I didn’t go with them.” But then had an even scarier thought, “What if they don’t come out, do I go down there to find them?”  Of course I wouldn’t go down there, I would go get help. Boy Scout training. I didn’t have to find out for shortly I see a helmet, then a head, then a body appear and as they scrambled up the hole, I reach down an arm and help them out. The remainder of the boys made it out safely.  They all were covered in mud head to toe, but we came prepared for that, taking off their muddy clothes, putting them in plastic trash bags, then changing into clean clothes for the ride home.

It was a great adventure.

The Last Supper