Piercys Mill/Piercys Cave - 4/28/2024
Chris Meyle Reporting
We made a last minute change to our original Marshalls Cave trip and voted to check out Piercy's Mill instead. Harriet, Margo, Karl, Myself, and our newest member Robert all met in Lewisburg, WV around 1130 to head to the Piercy property. When you park, you're met immediately with a massive (in some ways intimidating) entrance to the cave which also is the exit for a ton of water. The weather was awesome which made the colder water feel a bit more refreshing.
We entered Piercy's Mill around 1215 and headed for the pretty side. You could tell there was much higher water in there recently as the mud was SUPER slippery. We all fell. A lot. We made our way to the back of the cave, crawling through more water under breakdown, until we reached a short climb to the first Rimstone Room.
Every pool overflowed with water, the sound as it trickled from pool to pool filled the room. We took pictures and soaked it in before moving to the second, bigger room. More rimstone pools, but deeper! ...with a bigger slope up, leading to the water source. Both rooms offer a ceiling height of around 40ft so there's alot to see. We explored this room for a little longer, taking pictures and snacking until we were ready to head back. On the way out, we also checked out some old signatures with one of them dating back to 1909! We followed these to a passageway that slowly tapered off.
We made our way back to the exit, climbing down the muddy breakdown this time so we could avoid the water as much as possible. Made it to the exit in about 15 minutes where it got hot outside but felt good.
Down the property about a quarter mile is the entrance to Piercy's cave. None of us had been there and I had a map so we decided to check that out too. Plus the walk allowed us to dry off pretty fast. Another awesome entrance as well! While they are very close geographically, Piercy's didn't have the formations that Piercy's Mill had, but it gave us a super long stretch of big, wide open passageway with tons of water.
It's a pretty linear cave and we believe we got to the end. Very wide passageway that has Piercy's Spring running through it. The whole trip was alternating between walking in water or the mud banks but the water was insanely clear...even Harriet couldn't resist swimming in it! Once we got to the end, there were a few smaller formations to see and 3 different turns to make. We checked them all out and they all ended in breakdown.
However, there was a rope rigged to a higher lead in the middle of the cave. None of us had any vertical gear but we all got curious about how they got up there to rig it, but also, what's up there!? It's a reason to go back.
We got back to our cars around 1730 and headed back to Virginia. We had a blast exploring these caves and I think we got Robert hooked on caving!
An addendum per Harriet, Margo and Karl:
1. Karl caught a fish with his hands!!! Also a crayfish. Not at the same time.
2. We had a harrowing time finding the second cave where we thought Margo broke her wrist (later her ankle) and Harriet slipped in cow poop and into a thorn bush
3. Robert caught a frog and saw at least one more!
