Horizons Dig - 2/23/2025
Casey Tucker Reporting:
A group of 8 made the long, arduous journey to Harrisonburg environs for some project caving on February 23, 2025. Those intrepid explores included Harriet Flynn, Alex Bartlett, Rio Notra Segal, Josh Rubinstein, Casey Tucker (reporting), Aidan Ward, Blake Jordan, and Katie Vik.
Most arrived around 10am and started to Garbage Hole, a small but nice cave, to assess one of the days projects. When this cave was recently visited, it was a dry, mud floor that had three prospects for digging and an additional dig on the surface that could be a second entrance. When entering the cave, the cavers found the cave to be flooded about 30’ from the entrance and also had bats present. The water and bats prevented any digging from proceeding, but everyone enjoyed the ice formations, the bats, and general vibe of the cave. This cave also needs to be surveyed and mapped.
Garbage Hole has 50-100’ of walking passage that ends in a drain. Clearly the drain is plugged as evidenced by the standing water. The drain is located 6-8’ down from the level of the main floor in a 10’ wide passage, so there was a lot of water backed up in the cave from recent rains and snowmelt. There are also two crawlway leads that can be dug on, one of which might connect to a surface feature for a second entrance. This large feature ends rather abruptly in the inadequate drain. Perhaps all that needs to be done is to break through the drain plug to find a continuation of nice cave. The lack of airflow on the first visit could be inhibited by the plugged drain. A caver can dream...
Josh, Rio, and Aidan decided to do some ridgewalking and explore the property by foot since objective 1 was a no-go. There is a lot of exposed karst, some sinkholes, and other interesting features on this property. While they explored, the rest of the team proceeded to the quarry site for a surface dig.
On a previous visit Casey and Mark Rainey discovered a small hole on the edge of the quarry moving an impressive amount of air on a cold day. They made note to return with digging implements. Blake, Alex, Harriet, & Casey drove close to the site, the final few hundred feet being blocked by downed trees where Katie joined shortly thereafter. They loaded up some basic digging supplies to assess their work. They quickly realized advanced digging methods would be needed.
The dig progressed steadily with folks taking turns working various implements of destruction and removing rock, mud & spoils from the void below. There was not much detectable air on a nearly air neutral day, but the previous visit called for consistent digging. Between drilling and mucking out broken rock the diggers made good progress. The electrons for the drill only lasted so long, but the hardy crew continued working with hammers, pry bars, chisels, etc. By the end of the day, slim Aidan was able to enter the void below. His report is more digging ahead, and the good news is that the passage turns away from the quarry wall. Aidan was the only human available who could actually fit through this constriction blocked by rocks too large to remove. It was so tight, in fact, that Aidan returned from the depths with pants around his ankles. The cave squeezed him to the skin, and this was after he removed a long sleeve shirt and belt! There will be return trips with fully charged batteries to enlarge Aidan’s Pantsless Pinch and continue the mining work next to the quarry in search for virgin cave.
Throughout the main dig folks broke off at intervals to join ridge walking efforts in the hopes of finding a known cave in the area and perhaps find other new, exciting features. Indeed, they did find some new things! Josh found a hole upslope and in view of the main dig. Casey entered to find solutional walls, but no real hope of continuation.
Harriet found another interesting feature nearby, Harriet’s Hole, with an entrance characterized by a slot in/under a rock that leads downslope to two digging leads. One lead actually has a voice/light connection to another sinkhole on the opposite side of the large float. Harriet’s Back Side, if you will. The other lead had some slight airflow, impressive because it was a fairly air neutral day. It is a constriction with what looks to be crawling passage 3’ further on. A day’s worth of digging would break through. Says a digger... Aidan did a preliminary survey of Harriet’s Hole to work on his sketching and cartography.
It was a successful day of project work for the Grotto! There are now 3 projects to continue working on this site. All involve digging, though there is a needed survey for Garbage Hole. There is also ridge walking to be done, as this area holds more potential. Most of the features are in the New Market limestone with an average 100’ thickness, up to 300’ in this area. It is overlain by the Lincolnshire Limestone which is seen on some cliff faces. (Thanks for the research, Josh!)
Forward ho to more cave and Grotto adventures!
**All cave names are temporary placeholders. Garbage Hole is the only recorded feature with an established name.
