McClungs Historic Entrance - 2/14/2026
Scott Buchanan reporting
On a beautiful Saturday after a few weeks of snow and ice four of us met up in Lewisburg, West Virginia to go to McClungs Cave(Historic Entrance). Eric, Anisha, Issac, and myself met up around 10:30 and headed towards the cave. The recent snow and ice had not all melted at the entrance which sits in the middle of a large field. Eric grabbed a flat pry bar and we slid down the icy slope down towards the entrance. We then made our way inside the cave and it immediately is impressive with the large room you step into. The temperature change from fairly cold to comfortable cave was almost instant. We got oriented and Eric then led us into the adventure we all came to have. He first led us to the Travertine Avenue then we backtracked past the entrance passage to the Scaling Pole passage. I scaled the pole and peaked at the passage and decided we’d hit that another day. Eric took us deeper into the cave towards the canyon and past the turn towards Musser’s Mess. Lots of careful steps and a little spidering and we made good progress through places where many “elephant feet” were carved into the mud for safety. We all stopped at the flat area in the canyon that has mud sculptures and had a snack and drink (Redbull). We then made our way down to the gate. Maybe once a barrier is now a tattered relic of gatekeeping history. Casually leaned to the side and rusting into oblivion, a marker now to farther passage. We made our way past the gate a little ways in the Breezeway to check it out and say we did before we turned around. We took more time as we made or way back towards the entrance so we could see and absorb more of the cave. We came back and went up into Musser’s mess, which led to an area called the waterfall room. We crawled our way up into it and wow was it worth it. Five small waterfalls coming through the ceiling into one large room. There was a ledge overlooking the entire room also which allowed for a better concept of how big the room was. We made our way back down the damp passage and back into the canyon. We quickly made our way back up towards the entrance. Eric cut us some foot holes in the ice with his bar and we all quickly made it back to our vehicles. We were underground for around 4.5-5 hours. It was Issac’s first cave and he did excellent. We headed back to the dollar general we met at and said our goodbyes before making our ways back to Virginia.
On the trip was Scott Buchanan, Eric Shuler, Anisha Jarang, Issac (Muchun Liu)
