Horizons Dig - 3/31/2025
Harriet Flynn, Casey Tucker, Chris Meyle Reporting
Six of us met up at 5:15pm on a Monday night just 1 minute north of the Harrisonburg City limits to work on some cave projects! We had two digs and one survey to work on. Right as we arrived we could see the big rain clouds moving in fast. We got up to the site right as the rain began to fall and got a tarp up as fast as we could over the surface dig. We mostly stayed dry and kept the gear dry. The rain let up almost as fast as it arrived which was nice.
We split into two teams. Casey and Scott Buchanan worked on the B/S (Blowing/Sucking) Quarry Dig moving a lot of rock out of the way. Harriet and Michael worked on “Harriet’s Hole” (real name still pending), Chris and Josh worked on the Garbage Hole survey.
We all wrapped up right around 8:45pm.
Harriet Reporting
Harriet’s Hole before this trip was about 20ft long downwards slope. Michael was able to move a lot of dirt so that we could see better in to the next room. We could see a space large enough for several of us to get in to. We just needed to move some rock to get in there! Scott and Casey came over to help with some rock removal and then were were in! The next room is tall enough to stand in and several feet wide. It then went on to an upward tunnel tube about 20ft long to a small room big enough to turn around in. We estimate that the cave is now about 60ft but an actual survey will still need to occur.
Casey Reporting
Aidan's Pantsless Pinch is no longer pantsless. We quarried out a couple hundred pounds of rock and dirt to make the entrance pretty nice. The technical digging will now give way to a dirt/cobble floor dig, though more rock shaving may be needed at some point. It was a mellow, though warm temperature outside, but the entrance was sucking air into the cave. We could see spider webs dancing and the flame from a lighter bending towards the cave, drawing us into that dark space to whispered secrets of the unknown. Everyone spent some time at the dig, but Scott B and I were the main diggers for the evening. Good progress, good air, and more work to be done. Another interesting feature is the rock itself. It's very pretty (objective, geological term), dark limestone, but has red streaks throughout. I forgot to show Josh to get his geologic opinions. Alas, it'll be there next time.
Chris Reporting
Josh and myself headed down the hill to a small cave known as Garbage Hole. This is a known cave and our objective was to map it but not too much more was known as previous visits found the cave flooded. Tonight it was not. The cave has a nice 9'x9' entrance that gently slopes downhill over very small rocks and some older debris. Gently turning right into a larger room that offers 3 small leads, each one getting smaller and smaller. They won't take your pants off, but you'll get a good back scratchin'. We were able to map 157ft, stopping at the mouth of all leads due to time. This was nice though as we had one DISTO that we ran back and forth for foresight/backsights. We didn't scoop these leads, so the potential is unknown. The one furthest in the back was a belly crawl that will likely need to be dug out, but the floor is clay/mud so that should be easy and the optimist in both of us thinks there is some space about 15ft into the crawl. I'm hopeful we can get this cave to 250ft+ and knowing there is more to explore is exciting.
Photos below are:
1) Surface dig
2) Where Michael started digging in Harriet’s Hole
3) Progress
4) More digging progress!
5) Casey moments after his best rock removal ever
6) We made it in to the next part of Harriet’s Hole
7) Inside the next part of Harriet’s Hole
8) Chris’s first draft of Garbage Hole survey. Still slightly off scale and more crawling passage to survey.
