It is with great pleasure that I can announce the newest cave acquisition for the West Virginia Cave Conservancy. Rick Bantel has donated approximately an acre of land surrounding the Wild Cat Entrance to the Culverson Creek Cave System. Culverson Creek Cave is one of the premier caves in the country and contains around 20 miles of surveyed passage. 

 

There are two entrances side by side at the base of the cliff. One has a pipe in it and the other natural opening is the main Wild Cat Entrance that was dug open from the inside.

 

The main Wild Cat Entrance leads down into the McLaughlin-Unus section of the cave. The passage gets big very quickly and shortly you are strolling down borehole. There are two other entrances that connect into this section of the cave so a thru trip is possible. There is about 5 miles of passage in the McLaughlin section of the cave. Going down the pipe entrance leads to a completely different section of the cave. A sloping crawl at the base of the pipe leads to a small room with a body-sized hole going down 12 feet (the Blackball Climb). Downclimbing dumps you into a feeder passage that is walking sized for about 800 feet. At that point the passage intersects the Overflow Tube. If you go to the right you head back toward the main Culverson Entrance over a mile away. To the left you can go to the Hairy Place and then to the Logjam and beyond. The majority of the cave is in this direction. If you have prerigged the drops in Fullers section you can do a connection trip in about 15 to 20 hours and come out either the SSS Entrance or the main Fullers Entrance (owned by WVCC Board Member Cliff Lindsay).

 

So there it is, come see our newest cave.   If you been here before come on back, if you’ve never been here come see it, it’s a pretty neat cave. And oh by the way, even though the cave was given to us we did incur expenses to acquire it. Things like a property survey, appraisal, and deed did strain our budget. So any donations are most welcome.