New River - 6/8/2025
Harriet Flynn Reporting
On June 8 Katie, Harriet, Margo, Karl, Ben, Eric, and Kristen met up in the parking area for New River. Katie had secured the permit a week before. New River now requires a permit and all participants must sign the waiver before the permit is granted. Be sure to check out the permit system before heading to this cave.
I am not going to lie, I am writing this report several months after the trip and don’t remember the details well. But here we go.
We all hiked up the hill towards the cave entrance, encountering a deer along the way. It was a very hot hike up. We finished getting dressed and headed in the cave with one goal in mind. Get to the forest room. The forest room is not exceptionally far in to the cave but it is easy to miss if you don’t look in the right places.
We only made one wrong turn when we headed upwards too early. We quickly realized that was the wrong way and headed back down the slope we had just climbed up. Not too much further and we found the right turn off that would take us in the correct direction. After climbing some big boulder and stopping to admire the cave so far we made it to the path we needed to take.
Ok I was wrong, we did take another wrong turn, but we were only off by about 10ft and only two of us went in the pancake squeeze before we realized.
Now back on track we did some crawling, set up a few hand lines and down to the forest room we went!
The forest room is a wild place full of hundreds of stalagmites, stalactites, and columns. We sat and ate lunch while admiring the view and then spend plenty of time exploring. Once we felt satisfied in our exploration we heading back out to the exit.
After the cave Katie decided that we should do a hike that was not too far away. We were surprised to find out that it was at the location they filmed Dirty Dancing! We did the hike and then relaxed at the outdoor bar and ate pizzas before heading home.
