Member Photos

[The Grand Nudger]

The "American Eagle" formation looks to me like some hellish frog like leviathan rising up out of the rock. How big is that formation by the way, in comparison to yourself?

[thesummerqueen]

Holy fuck, Rhythm, I am a small plump little Jew...that thing was HUGE in comparison.

[frankiej]

Plump Little Jew... Definitely the name of my new band.

[The Grand Nudger]

mmmmmmm plump jews. Totally kosher, so you can eat as many as you want.

[thesummerqueen]

One of the figures I mentioned, "sitting" shrouded by cave darkness.



"Fairyland lake" - a bitch to photograph because of the reflection, and also the lighting. You can see in the first pic that it's not all that deep, but in the others you see that the perfectly still water and beautiful reflections make it look quite deep.




She turned on the lights shortly, but with only dim ones from behind us lighting this space, I thought of "The Raven"

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token..."



Getting to that one portion, I promise!

---

Okay, so - onto the good stuff.

So the story goes that while the rest of the cave was open and passable (beyond 14 inches of good VA clay on the floor), a portion remained buried in mud and silt. So Amos and his men began to dig, when one of the shovels got stuck. After finally wrenching it free, Amos' hat was suddenly sucked into the hole and he realized he had broken a partial vacuum seal - something that's rare in nature. After digging the rest out, they found this:



"Anthodites"



I linked the wiki page for the science-y part of it, because frankly geology and minerals are not my strong suit by a long shot, but 200 feet down, it was cool to see "flowers," especially as they had "grown" in space-like conditions and scientists think that with the vacuum being broken, they're no longer growing.

They start out as these little splotches on the wall (first) and then turn into a smear of 'icing' (second)







The "chandelier" anthodite, which was quite pretty but my phone had an epic fail trying to capture it.



But even 200 feet down, I wasn't alone... Life crept in.

[downbeatplumb]

That looks a lot like cheddar gorge.

[Ace Otana]

Huh, look at that.

[thesummerqueen]

[facepalm so epic, it can't be photographed]

[orogenicman]

Since I'm poor but like going places, I've been trying to pack sight-seeing into every trip I make to the Manassas area (as evidenced by the Battlefield pictures above). On my way back, I hit Skyline Caverns - a place I hadn't been to in 16 years. Last time was for a friend's 10th birthday party. I still have the geode slice I bought.

Anyway. I apologize for the horribly shitty camera quality. My Sony did NOT like the lighting conditions, no matter how I tried to adjust for it, then ran out of batteries just as the guide was going to take a picture of me (coincidence?) so I switched to my Palm Pre. The Pre actually did better as far as lighting went, but can't zoom or focus very well.

The caves were discovered in 1937 by a retired geologist who saw the nearby sinkhole and went mucking about to see if there were any caverns. He found a ledge that was partially submerged in Virginia clay and mud (one of the most glorious back-breaking soils) and had 13 men help him clear it out until they broke into the caverns, which were otherwise clear except for a portion I'll get to later.

Many of the passages bore evidence of the inland sea that used to cover the area - I confess I didn't have my notebook out to copy down what the guide was saying so I don't know how many millions of years ago - but the weathering was pretty.

<snip>

Very nice. I used to do a lot of caving when I was a geology student. I am not physically able to do it anymore, unfortunately. But when I could I saw a lot of very interesting caves. A close friend of mine who is now a state trooper is a member of our state's cave rescue outfit. He is still actively exploring caves all over the eastern U.S. He is also an accomplished photographer who specializes in cave photography. Here is his web site, which includes links to some of his cave photography:

http://www.darklightimagery.net/

Be sure to check out his Camps Gulf pages, and especially the rumbling falls page..

Enjoy.

[thesummerqueen]

Sweet! I'll have to ask him how he does it - there are more caverns all over the Blue Ridge that wouldn't be hard for me to get to, and I wouldn't mind going on a few explorations.