Norman Bone Cave System

& Lower New River Rafting

Adventure Trip April 2001

Harry Sowers, Kingsley Harmer, Chad Grim, Lesley Rexroth and I departed for southern West Virginia on Thursday morning. About 7.5 hours later (we stopped at Ponderosa for lunch), we checked in at the outfitter only to find out that the previous occupants of the cabin had damaged the place and it wasn’t ready for us. We were given another cabin instead. It had a different floor plan and seemed to be only slightly smaller than what we had expected.

After a visit to Walmart where we acquired our groceries and beverages for the rest of the weekend, we returned to the cabin and enjoyed some really juicy burgers on the grill. The hot tub wasn’t quite hot and so we just retired for the evening in anticipation of the next day’s white water rafting which we had to get up early for.

The buzzer woke us up around 7:00 AM, which gave us time to open our eyes, get dressed and make a decent breakfast. By 8:15 we were on our way to the rafting company where we discovered that we were the only group being taken down the Lower New River by them that day. This was unexpected but due to a few smaller groups postponing their trip until the next day, we got the company’s full attention, just how we like it!

I was the only one not wearing a wetsuit and since my jacket seemed to have lost all of it’s water repellency, the cold river water easily made it’s way to my skin. Being in the front seat, a lot of water hits you as you plow through the waves and especially after we flipped the raft, I was thoroughly chilled. We had a really good ride, as the water level was around 2 feet; what they called ‘ideal’. We played in several holes, trying our luck at surfing and hit all of the rapids head on. This playing in the eddies and surfing holes is what got us into trouble. If we hadn’t gone back to surf the Lower Railroad Rapid, we wouldn’t have had but two people out of the raft.

After returning to the cabin, we tried the hot tub once again only to discover that the tub was powerless and was only mildly warm at this point. The breaker was tripped and would not go back on. A short trip to the rental office got us a key to the cabin we had intended to get in the first place. We moved our gear and food to the ‘Jackson’, enjoyed a hearty chicken dinner and a lengthy oasis in the hot tub. All was good, including the satellite TV that also had not worked in the other cabin.

Saturday morning started around 8:30 AM. After getting gear ready and breakfast eaten, we finally got the vehicle moving by 10:40 AM. Lesley decided to stay at the cabin for the day since we talked about an 800’ crawl in a dusty passage. Her allergies were giving her enough trouble already and that would only make things worse. We got to the cave by noon and after a good half hour, finally had our clothes changed and gear ready to go. We were taking our time and since it was raining, most of us did our best to get dressed inside the Isuzu Trooper. There was another vehicle parked there but we never did see anyone inside the cave.

With Harry’s navigational strengths from past visits to the cave, we made good time through and stopped only a few times along the way to get a mouthful of water or nourishment. There were various formations to view at different points and survey marks found that made no sense to us. The Great White Way was located and saved for our way back through since we wanted to push as far as possible on this trip and get to some other spectacular formations said to be deeper in the cave. Harry’s boots started coming apart at the soles but Chad’s duct tape seemed to wrap up that situation, at least temporarily. We got quite far in the cave. After 4 hours and some more fussing with the boots, Harry and Kingsley stopped in a big room to turn around and head back after Chad and I explored just a bit further. The boots were really deteriorated by this point and the tape was not sticking to the wet surface.

Chad and I found another large room, this one with a pool about 40 feet by 100 feet. A survey marker of ‘L23’ adorned the nearby passage but there still no signs of exactly where we were. The arrows designating the way out starting out pointing with an ‘N’ for Norman and after a while we saw the addition of a ‘B’ with an arrow the opposite direction indicating that Bone Cave’s entrance was the other direction but now we were seeing only the ‘B’ with the arrow.

We must be pretty close to Bone now. We didn’t have a map with us nor is one available other than a 6 inch stick map which has no detail. It would have been nice to have even that map with us though as we may have been able to place our general location and see how close we really were to the Bone entrance.

On our way back, Chad and I explored the Great White Way to discover millions of shimmering crystals on the walls, ceiling and floor. It was magnificent and worth the trip to see. We took several pictures but the photos don’t show the spectacle available in person. We were both glad to have seen it.

Harry’s boot continued to fall apart and before we got out of the Norman entrance, the sole of his boot has completely detached and only the duct tape was keeping it partially in place. Flopping along, we got to the truck and changed to other clothes and shoes, well, except for one of us who forgot spare shoes.  I won't mention who that was but it wasn't me.

The return back to the cabin ended up pretty late and few of us ate anything due to how late it was and how tired everyone had become. The lights were out around 1:30 AM without the hot tub even being used.

Sunday morning included gathering all of our gear together and a checkout by 11:00 AM. The cleaning people must have been anxious to see us go since they had parked outside around 10:30, just hanging out like vultures waiting for the lions to finish their meal.

The ride home was uneventful and food was divvied up once we got back. After inspection of the map and by the drawing made for me by another grotto member, it appears as though we saw about 2.5 miles of the cave. There’s a lot more to see and I’m really excited about the prospect of going back again. Next time I hope to have a good camera and better boots - since mine started to come apart as well.  (I have since screwed them back together to hold the sole on as long as I can.)

That's Chad's head peering through the hole.

Throughout the tunnels of the cave, large rooms can be found including this one which is about 100 feet across and 240 feet long.  The Great White Way is attached to one of these rooms.

Chad shows us the typical height to the Great White Way and some of the millions of crystals that adorn this area.  The largest crystals could be found on the ground, some reaching 4 inches long but all were the regular cave brown cloud color.

We even talked Kingsley into wearing a helmet on this trip.  Even though his supply of batteries ran out, he still got out of the cave with the rest of us.

Here's Chad looking at the chert that's been exposed by the eroded limestone.  Harry taught us about several things and the name of this insoluble rock is one of them.  Thanks Harry.

There are also plenty of formations throughout the cave.

Most of the cave provided rooms and tunnels that could be walked through but there were several spots where we chose to stay out of the water which meant crawling through an area of low ceiling.  This particular spot had been dug out by someone well before we got there.

There is plenty of variation to the formations you can see in this cave including stalactites that grew in irregular ways and helectities (spelling?) as seen in the picture above.

The picture above shows us stepping down into the stream.  Chad is in up to the the point where it really gets cold and Kingsley is right behind him.  We had to stay close to the side wall in many spots because you can't always tell how deep the water is.

 Why are the pictures so dark?  Well, it was totally overcast when we rafted.  There was a break in the clouds for about 4 minutes but otherwise it was dreary.

And best pictures of all are taken by the professionals:

Click here for more pictures of Norman/Bone Cave.

Click here for more pictures of the Lower New River.