On the first of April, 2002, I  got an e-mail from fellow Mon Grotto member, Kenny Petrice. A resident of Randolph County, Kenny said that a fellow he knows had showed him the entrance to a cave in the Rich Mountain region of that county that, based on available information was unknown to the modern caving community. He said that although the property owner didn't want a lot of cavers traipsing across his land, he did give written permission for Kenny and a few of his cohorts to survey it and to dig in the cave. Kenny said that their preliminary probe of the cave had turned up two passages, one of which was a low, wet stream crawl that sumped after about 150 feet. The other was narrow passage that went for about 150 feet or so to a short belly crawl that led to a slot that had strong airflow, but was impossible to get through. 

       Because it was nameless, Kenny called the cave "Bob's Cave". He later changed the name to Caplingers at the landowner's request--and I sort of jokingly started referring to it as The Cave Formerly Known as Bob's.

        With plans to try to dig through the slot, Kenny and I rendezvoused on the morning of April 6 only to discover that the third member of our party had decided not to come. We reluctantly proceeded without him, and headed for the cave. It was a steep climb down from the crest of the hill--a 20-minute downhill hike (and a good hour to climb back up.)

There is a spring about 100' to 200' uphill from the cave entrance. Quite a bit of water comes out of it flowing down to a 15-foot waterfall and a large sink that contains the cave entrance. The water enters the cave via at least three separate passages, only one of which is passable. The cave entrance is 10' long and about 1' 6" wide at the widest point. It leads into a 28' climbdown, some of which skirts some very dangerous loose rock that must be passed carefully. At one point the rock I was standing on collapsed under me. Luckily, I had one foot on the rock behind me and my hands wedged between the walls. I would estimate that a ton of rock fell into the crevice below me. (We later set off a planned rock slide that stabilized the area somewhat.) The climb enters the top of the decently-sized, but not huge entrance room about 15' down. The rest of the climb is inside the room. There is a stair step sort of waterfall where the water comes into the room and flows down into the stream passage below. The cave follows the strike of the limestone in a generally northerly direction. There is sandstone on the eastern side of the cave and limestone on the western side. I'm no geologist, but I'm assuming it's the Bethel sandstone--although I'm not sure. Toward the end of the passage the sandstone goes over top of the passage as well. That would suggest that the cave is probably at the top of the Fredonia member of the Union Limestone.

A name written in carbide soot in the entrance room shows that people have been here before. On a whim, I checked to see if that name was in any of the local phone books. It was. I called the guy to see if he knew any of the cave's history. He didn't, but we had a nice conversation anyway. He thought he was in trouble at first, explaining that he had written that 35 years ago when he was a kid and just getting into caving, before he knew any better. I don't know if I had to authority to do so, but I granted him absolution and we talked about caving.

        After about 150 feet of narrow passage you come to a belly crawl that leads to a small room with a trench that doglegs into what was a one to two foot high vertical slot with a dirt floor. It looked to us like it opened into some fairly large passage on the other end and we could hear running water--and it certainly blew air. We got out our tools and took turns on our bellies moving earth and removing rock. After about an hour, Kenny tried to squeeze through. No go. We went back to digging and removing rock. An hour or so later, he took off his coveralls and tried again. He got a lot further than he did the first time, but he still couldn't do it. We dug some more, and it got complicated in that we reached a point where we had nowhere to put the dirt and the broken rock. About an hour or so later he tried again. He huffed and puffed and squeezed and grunted and and yowled. Somehow he inched his way through. This is the sort of long squeeze (around 15' long) where you can't use your arms and legs, but rather have to wriggle your way through inch by inch by inch.

          After Kenny popped out the other side and dropped down to the floor he yelled, "She goes!" I tried to follow, but couldn't fit through. Actually, I could have tried a little harder, but I wasn't absolutely sure he could get back out of there, and I didn't want both of us stuck. So, I stayed behind and worked on making it a little less ridiculous to get through. As I was wriggling and struggling my way back into the small room, Kenny took a brief look around to see what he had found. He walked what he estimated to be 300 to 400 feet downstream through more passage and said that it continued at least as far as his light could penetrate. In spite of a burning desire to really check things out he knew he shouldn't go alone, so he came back to the slot and started working from his end as I continued to dig from mine. As happens when one is digging on ones belly, I eventually became exhausted, and, thinking about the climb back up the hill, suggested that we call it a day. He agreed and then huffed and puffed and grunted and somehow inched his way back out to the small room. We exited the cave and slowly made our way back up the steep slope. The squeeze was so tight that Kenny's chest hurt for the rest of the night.

         The following week Kenny and I returned with Jason Thomas--a good caver in tight spots. Skinny. Going back to the squeeze, Kenny and Jason struggled their way to the other side. I attempted to struggle my way through, this time without holding  anything back, but I was still too thick. Disgusted, I gave it up and went back to digging--the passage widens out somewhat at the bottom when you remove the dirt.

        They pushed the mostly narrow stream passage a distance they estimated to be "at least" 1500 to 2000 feet and then turned around when it finally gave way to a choice between either a belly crawl through a stream or a high passage that required some fairly technical climbing. Instead of pushing things, they decided to take a closer look at what they had found already. There appears to be at least three different levels in the cave.

        Among other things, they found a bat room filled with about 60 to 100 hibernating bats. The only other fauna we found besides bats were cave crickets and a salamander. There was also a funnel spider about fifty feet from the entrance room. There were no formations to speak of, but Kenny reports that one of the higher wet passages was filled with rimstone dams. There were also what looked like three-toed claw marks in the wall at one point, as if something had been trying to get out. Probably a cretaceous hodag or some such critter. There were several leads they didn't follow.

          Just with what they've seen so far, Caplingers is one of the larger caves in the Rich Mountain region. We started to survey it, but some personal issues came up that interrupted Kenny's ability to go caving, and until he is free to cave again, the survey is in limbo. He is the only one with permission to go onto the land. 

        Lesson learned: Okay, okay, I know--survey as you go. We already knew that, of course, but figured we'd have all the time in the world to come back and do the survey after we finished digging out the slot. We were wrong. We hope to get back to work there in the not too distant future.