We had had a wonderfully productive survey trip last December in Hancock Cave, but then the rains and snow melt kept us from passing through the Funnel Tunnel for many months. On August 11, Dave Duguid and Will Summer joined me for another survey trip into Hancock Cave. This time we meant business. I knew that when Dave vigorously started widening the Funnel Tunnel to a size that allowed Will and me through (Tanya loaned us a great shovel).
I was really impressed that Dave and Will had their readings agree right from the start. There was a little bit of grumbling when I suggested they always choose passages to the right (because it was more likely to lead away from known cave), but they went along. The first right passage turned into a decorated stoopway but widened out before it joined in with a walking passage.
The end of the walking passage found us in several short domes, including the highest point beyond the Funnel Tunnel (almost 33 feet above the cave entrance). After surveying the domes, Dave discovered a survey marker we left in the 1990s. When I pulled out all of my notes, I realized that we had discovered the back way into the famed Noogah, closing a really big loop.
There were several leads in the Noogah area that we knocked off the map from there. One involved a climb up to a mouse nest with six mice surprised be Dave's visit. Another low lead was too small for me, but Dave pushed his body through and sketched the room. We looped up and down to close some other loops in that area. The remaining lead in the Noogah area involves a high step-across onto an iffy rock, and we chose to save that one for a fresher start.
Instead we went back near the beginning of our survey that day and surveyed down a long water-sculpted passage with at least one shot over forty feet long. Dave and Will liked these long shots, so I next to them to the other side of the main passage to mop up the dry stream leads. It was easy surveying for Will, but Dave was the one who had to drag tape from one station to the next. Will and I just walked around in the main passage.
Nearest the Funnel Tunnel the stream passage got extremely low. Dave couldn't even drag his body along the cobble after a certain point. Fortunately we could visually connect the stations from both sides, so I'll be able to sketch that to the final map.
It was late when we got out, so we were stuck with the Pizza Hut. One would think that the only customers in the restaurant could've been fed in less than 50 minutes, but the staff seemed to be in no hurry. Around 12:30 AM, we bedded down at Tanya's.
Dave, Will, and I managed to survey 760 feet of passage on that trip with more than fifty shots. Everyone knows that Hancock Cave is the longest surveyed cave in Smyth County, Virginia. The surveyed passage is now up to 2.33 miles in length (depth of 170.5 feet) for the survey we began in December 1996. This length means that Hancock is now longer than Patton Cave (2.040 mi), Buchanan Saltpeter Cave (2.060 mi), Clover Hollow (2.103), Cave of the Winds (2.147 mi), Cave Mountain Cave (2.200 mi), Kennamer (2.326 mi), and Sinnett-Thorn Mountain Cave (2.329 mi). It's approaching the lengths of Trout, Fletcher, Ape, and Low Moor Caves, but there are only about seven leads left to explore this fall.
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