Whitings Neck & Indian River 2/11/2024
Harriet Flynn Reporting
At 12:30pm on Sunday, February 11, 9 of us went into Whitings Neck. On the trip we had Harriet, Casey, Kara, Murphy, Eric, Katie, Chris, Margo, and Karl.
The cave begins with a climb down a ladder and then back up another one to enter into a crawl. Once through the crawl there is a slope and then the main room with the "birthday cake" formation. There were three other people in the cave coming up from the vertical section so we explored a few of the small passages for about 15 minutes until they were up their rope. We then had a quick chat and learned that in the very back part of this cave there can be bad air but he said that today it was ok.
We headed for the vertical section and Casey and Eric set up the rope. We then headed down the rappel which was about 40 or so feet. When about half the group was at the bottom and Harriet, Casey, Margo, and Murphy were still at the top we heard a very loud splash. Turns out the Kara had slipped off of a ledge and fell a few feet into the water below. She landed in a seated position and was wet to mid chest level. Thankfully she was a-ok and we all continued with the trip. After we all were down we each explored the section below and headed down a passage towards the back of the cave where the clay room is. Pretty sure that is the room that the guy earlier had said can have bad air. Turns out that he and his friends had hot boxed the room while they were down there and with the lack of airflow the area was still pretty pungent.
There was one more room that we explored that had the best formations of the cave and then we headed back up the rope and out of the cave. We exited at about 3:50pm. Over all Whitings Neck is a small cave with a few cool crawls and features. It is very well visited and this is evident in the smoothness of all the rocks. You definitely have to watch where you put your feet and make sure that you are stable.
Kara (still soaking wet), Chris, and Katie headed back to the cars and the rest of us went into Indian River which is just a few minutes walk down towards the Potomac River. Indian River Cave is pretty small with several openings to the cave, a few decent sized rooms, lots and lots of spiders, and a few good crawls that take you into little rooms between each crawl. We were in Indian River for about 15 minutes before heading back up the hill to the cars.
