if you want to go in some caves yourself, show caves are more than happy to let you in. For wild caves, however, I recommend getting in contact with a local grotto. Punch CAVE and whatever state/country you're at into a search engine, and that should give you a nearby grotto. Doing it without a grotto's help could damage both the cave and you.
| Date | Cave | Show cave? | Summary |
| 7/19/08 | Straddle Canyon Cave, NY | No | Worst thing you can find in a cave cleanup: the business end of a syringe. |
| 05/17/08 | Mt. Marion Indian Caves, Railroad Cave, Lizard Cave, Eighmyville Cave | No to all | Another NRO trip to see the little stuff. Allen Rush led the charge, as usual. |
| 02/03/08 | Refton Cave, PA | No | A PA caver lowered a ladder into the pit so we wouldn't have to do it as a pure vertical entrance. We still had a belay, though. |
| 2/02/08 | Cleversburg Sinks and Carnegie, PA | No and no | I've been meaning to go to thse caves for year snow. Thanks to Allen for putting the yearly winter PA trip together. |
| 1/10/08 | Night Safari, Singapore | Yes | Not really a cave, but it does feature a bat house where you are inches from Malayan flying foxes, some of the biggest bats in the world. |
| 1/08/08 | Batu Caves, Malaysia | Yes | Big statue, big staircase, big cave. Welcome to Malaysia. | 9/03/07 | Luray Caverns, VA | Yes | One of the best show caves in the country. If you're in the area, stop by. |
| 9/01/97 | Stillhouse and Sinks of Gandy, WV | No and no | Stillhouse is stinky and Sinks is wet. Guess what order you do them in? |
| 7/21/07 | McFail's, NY | For the love of God, no | Good trip. |
| 6/03/07 | Cave Day, NJ | Yes | Not a cave per se, but a cave event I go to every year. |
| 5/19/07 | Clarksville, NY | No, but it's open to the public | Went in with Jen. Jen didn't like it one little bit. | 2/26/07-3/3/07 | Turtle Shell Cave, Lemons Ranch Cave, Cicurina Cave, TX | Yes | I took a weeklong cave rescue course at Colorado Bend State Park. Contact the park for weekend wild tours of the park's bigger caves. |
| 1/20/07 | Howe Caverns, NY | Yes | We got to the annual Howe cleanup late this year, so it was just a free tour of Howe while other people hunted for what little remaining algae there was to scrub. The cave's pretty darn clean thanks to these yearly scrubbings. |
| 9/30/06 | Baugh Cave, NY | No | Yet another cleanup, this time before an Northeastern Cave Conservancy meeting. I got a metal bedframe out! |
| 9/17/06 | Sam's Point Ice Caves, NY | Yes | I spent most of the weekend coordinating and worrying over the Fall NRO in Cuddebackville. By the time Sunday morning came around, it was over, a big success, and I was free to hit Sam's Point Preserve for six hours of hiking and occasional caving. |
| 9/3/06 | Cass Cave, WV | Lordy, no | Unlike Sharps, we were the only people who bothered with Cass this Sunday. Probably because of the gaping 185-foot pit. That tends to scare people off. |
| 9/2/06 | Sharps Cave, WV | No | There were three cars parked along the road when we got into Sharps. When we got out five hours later, there were 16. Sharps is a popular cave come OTR time. |
| 8/24/06 | Crystalnyka, Ukraine | Yes | We didn't get to see much of this supposedly gorgeous cave, because we crawled over to Skelie, the skeleton of a guy who died in the cave about a hundred years ago. There was a cigarette between his lips, which some local caver had stuck there. We took it out, then found out that's a sign of respect in Ukraine, so we put it back. |
| 8/23/06 | Priest Grotto, Ukraine | No | With Sergey bandaged and resting, we returned to Priest Grotto to retrieve the unused sleeping bags and other gear. We spent a couple more hours checking out artifacts, pacing out the eventual pain in the ass of hauling a thousand pounds of gear up a forty foot shaft. |
| 8/22/06 | Priest Grotto, Ukraine | No | After the Nazis raided XXXXX Cave and several people disappeared, the surviving people went to this bigger cave, which they stayed nearly an entire year in. We spent the day showing. Unfortunately, an accident that night severely burned our guide, Sergey. Somehow, Sergey got himself out of the cave under his own power, down a dirt road for two kilmoeters, and into a waiting ambulance within 90 minutes. |
| 8/21/06 | XXXXX Cave, Ukraine | Yes | This cave housed several dozen Jews during World War II that hid from the Nazis by living in here. Part of the trip was bringing families of those people back to those same caves, so they can understand what their relatives went through. |
| 8/20/06 | Malinki Cave, Ukraine | No | My first cave in another country. We spent several hour scrawling in its long, narrow gypsum passages. All the cave sin this region are made of gypsum, so when you find a spot that's not covered in mud, it can resemble Superman's Fortress of Solitude. | 5/20/06 | Natural Stone Bridge, Crane Mountain, NY | Yes to Natural Stone Bridge | I took my friend Ike on a trip that would be more hiking than caving. It ended up being 99% hiking, since our cave was nearly flooded. |
| 4/4/06 | Sobato, PR | No | The Rio Tanama was very high our whole trip, so we had to swim across the rapids one at a time with a tether to get to Sobato. |
| 4/3/06 | Balcone, Conviento #1 and #2, Culebra, PR | No, no, no and hell no | A local guide showed up these caves during the day. The guy drank no water the whole trip, never sweated, and never got tired. He's a machine. |
| 4/2/06 | Cueva La Chuca, PR | No | Huge water passages throughout this cave. This is what I had to bring a life preserver down to Puerto Rico. |
| 4/1/06 | Rio Camuy, Ventana, PR | Yes to Rio Camuy | Checked our Puerto Rico's big tourist cave on my first whole day there. Biggest room I think I've ever been in. |
| 3/5/06 | Everett's Cave, VT | No | We had a NCC meeting at a local college, and beforehand cleaned the local college's local cave. |
| 1/21/06 | Canyon Cave #2, Wolfert's, Howe Caverns, NY | Yes to Howe | Before doing the annual Howe Caverns cleanup, we futzed around with some local caves. |
| 1/8/06 | Mummau, Stoverdale #2, PA | Double no | My thoughts on Mummau: "Wow! What a fantastic cave!" My thoughts on Stoverdale #2: "Wow! Mummau was a fantastic cave!" |
| 1/7/06 | Frustration Pit, Corker's Hill, PA | Double no | There was a plan for me to lead a Plan B trip to caves aside from Frustration and Corker, but everyone wanted to do these two, so my one puny carload joined up with them to do the two. |
| 11/06/05 | Gage's | No | Introducing ... my wet suit! |
| 11/05/05 | Clarksville, End of Gulch, Schoharie, NY | Clarksville is open to the public, so long as you're properly equipped | Introducing ... my carbide! |
| 10/01/05 | Baugh's Cave, Wolfert's, NY | No, but you wouldn't want to go even if it was | Stuff dumped in Baugh's cave so far: a bathtub, furnace, washing machine, exercise bike, back seat of a car, dozens of tires, a microwave, and enough wood to burn all of the litterers of this cave in effigy. |
| 9/18/05 | Bentley's Cave, NY | No | A tenth cave to wrap up the weekend. |
| 9/17/05 | Baker's Quarry, Justin's, Elephant's Den, Crevice, Slime Hole, Found, Coffin, Coon Hollow, Dolo, MA | No * 9 | I was a busy boy: nine caves in a day. |
| 9/3/05 | Cass Cave, WV | No | Gorgeous cave; a lot more than just a scary 180-foot vertical pit. |
| 9/2/05 | Friar's Hole, WV | No | My first time in West Virginia's largest cave. Big big fun, unlike the scary return to camp. | 7/9/05 | Tumbling Rock Cave, AL | Gray area: there's a $7 parking fee, but once you're parked the cave is free and open. No liability for cave injuries that way. | Fantastic horizontal cave. Write up to come. |
| 7/8/05 | Natural Well, Hooper's Well, AL | No and no. | Two signature TAG pits. |
| 7/7/05 | Kennamer Cave, AL | No | Big TAG borehole. |
| 7/6/05 | Crossings Cave, AL | No | Lots of formations: too bad so many are broken. The repair work has begun! |
| 7/05/05 | McBride's Cave, AL | Hell no! | This is a multi-drop wetsuit vertical cave. Stay far far away from this cave unless you like watching yourself bleed. |
| 5/21/05 | Surprise Cave & Rhodes Cave, NY | No and No | My first time in Rhodes. That's a tricky little cave. |
| 5/10/05 | Ford Dennis Cave, NJ | No | Thanks to Lou for hosting a grotto meeting at his house, with a talus cave in the friggin' backyard. |
| 4/sometime/05 | Leigh Cave, NJ | No | The Scouts had a speed record: a 15-person party through every bit of the cave in four hours. |
| 3/20/05 | Mill Run Cave, Smoke Hole Cave, WV | No and no | I caused a little avalanche in Mill Run, thanks to the lack of travel in there. No one got hurt. |
| 3/19/05 | Cave Mountain Cave, WV | No | I finally got my brother on a big West Virginia trip. |
| 3/12/05 | Salamander, Pompey's, NY | No and no | Ray ended up writing a trip report for this, so my bonus for leading the trip is I don't have to do the full write up for it. Note: the Pompey's ladder entrance completely freezes over in the winter. |
| 1/8/05 | Goods, Welsh Run, Niswander, Long Quarry, PA | No to the fourth power | Who says January's not a good time for a cave trip? |
| 1/1/05 | Durham, PA | No | Who needs knee pads, or a helmet, or even a light when you're exploring Durham? |
| 10/24/04 | Paxton's, VA | No | I only spent an hour in Paxton's, but the helictites were incredible. I'm constantly afraid I'll bump into them and shatter them. |
| 10/23/04 | Scott Hollow, WV | Not yet | A second entrance had been dug out, so we got a Scott Hollow through trip while we were down there. And after the trip, fireworks and hot tubs. My shoes got a Viking funeral. |
| 8/03/04 | Atwell, Dogwood, KY | No, no | Side trips after a day of working in Mammoth. The first caves I brought my camera inside. |
| 8/02/04 - 8/07/04 | Mammoth Cave, KY | Yes | Weeklong restoration camp to get some toxic wood out of the water. Exhausting, but worth it. Plus historical. Note to self: watch that speed on the drive home. |
| 6/20/04 | Leigh, NJ | No, but scout trips can go | Due to new restrictions, anyone going in Leigh needs a million bucks in life insurance. So it's essentially closed to all but Scout trips (which have that coverage). |
| 4/25/04 | Clarksville, NY | No, but it's open to the public (for now) | My first duck-under, and my first in-cave snake encounter. |
| 3/27/04 | Hamilton, Trout, New Trout, WV | No, but they're open to the public | I led some realtively new cavers through here so a simultaneous Cave Mountain Cave trip wouldn't have 20 people in it. |
| 11/8/03 | Scott Hollow, WV | Not yet | A big group of us almost waded out to camp, but a couple of us turned back. We got to see the eclipse, though. |
| 10/12/03 | Onesquethaw, NY | No | It's cold and clammy inside, but it's a damn sight better than outside the cave. |
| 9/28/03 | Frustration Pit, Corker's, PA | No and no | Two caves in the woods with three narrow steep entrances. |
| 9/27/03 | Hershey-Coy, PA | No | Sumped. |
| 9/26/03 | Peiper's Cave, PA | Not yet | Technically we went inside at 1:30 A.M. Saturday morning, but I'm counting it as Friday since I got to the Peiper's site before midnight. |
| 8/31/03 | A big vertical cave, WV | No | Safety note: make sure your 200 foot rope is not cut in half before tossing it down the cave. Otherwise your first person down will come to the end of the rope in the middle of the pit and, if he isn't experienced like Todd was, will keep on going. |
| 8/30/03 | Windy Run, WV | No | Even with directions, it's near impossible to find this cave. Hike an hour into the woods, and turn left when you're nowhere near a landmark. Without Errol taking us to it at OTR, we'd never see the inside. |
| 8/29/03 | Simmons-Mingo, WV | No | A return to the scene of my spiritual pantsing, and also a chance to retrieve Walter's lost pack. The pack was long gone, but we made it through in half the time of my last through trip: 5 1/2 hours. |
| 8/17/03 | Hannacroix Maze, Merritt Cave, NY | No and no | I hadn't been to these caves, so I led a trip. No one else wanted to go. Probably because of the leeches. |
| 7/27/03 | Surprise Cave, NY | No | I finally manage to get my brother underground, and the key snaps off in the lock as we try to leave. Not as big a disaster as it could have been. |
| 7/19/03 | Surprise Cave, NY | No | 21 people, mostly high school students from the Bronx, went through as part of a summer program. They all did great. |
| 7/5/03 | Sites Cave, WV | No | My longest single descent so far, 185 feet. |
| 7/4/03 | Harper's Pit, WV | No | A better vertical trip than last year. |
| 4/27/03 | Kees, WV | No | A good Sunday cave we got to see about 90% of. We saw white bats! |
| 4/26/03 | Hamilton, Trout, New Trout, WV | No, but they're open to the public | Some NNJGers took some new people to big horizontal West Virginia caves. Then we played marathon Risk and Jenga games in the cabin. |
| 2/15/03 | La Jolla sea caves, CA | You can pay a tour guide to lead your kayaks through them, if the tides are right | A second failed attempt to go caving in California. |
| 2/13/03 | Crystal Cave, CA | Yes | I didn't go inside because it was closed, but at least I saw big trees and didn't get hailswept off the road. |
| 10/26/02 | Leigh, NJ | No | I got my friends Laura and Tony to try caving, which they weren't enraptured with. Some people from my old college also got underground, along with a few dozen children. 44 people in Leigh that day. |
| 10/19/02 | Salamander, Pompey's, NY | No | My first time putting together a grotto trip. It was also supposed to have a gliding lesson, but weather didn't allow it. |
| 9/14/02 | Salamander, Pompey's, NY | No | My first time leading a trip. An 18-person herding. |
| 9/1/02 | Hamilton, Trout, New Trout, WV | No, but they're open to the public | Sal, Art and I looked for Sites' Cave, but we ended up just finding these. |
| 8/31/02 | Simmons-Mingo, WV | No | Little through trip: Stan's Blowing Hole to Zarathrustra, all of 30 feet away. |
| 8/11/02 | Dragon, Dreibelbis, Onyx, Frazer, Eckerd, Durham, PA | Onyx used to be | A return to my very first cave. |
| 7/28/02 | Higginsbotham, WV | No | To quote Andrew Foord, "Fresh meat!" What we heard was a couple hundred feet of passage ended up being at least a mile of the easiest stream passage you'll ever see. Wheee! |
| 7/27/02 | Carpenter-Swago, WV | No | Well, I learned a lot about vertical caving this trip. |
| 7/13/02 | Salamander, Pompey's, NY | No * 2 | Great caves close to home. Definitely going on the list for future visits. |
| 7/9/02 | Yellow Frame, Mud Pond, NJ | No and no | A great idea: cave before the meeting. |
| 5/19/02 | Mammoth Cave, KY | Yes | I was in the area. |
| 4/13/02 | Clarksville, NY | No | Thom Engel was nice enough to teach a class on cave mapping. Half the work is measuring distances and angles of inclination at selected points in your cave; the other half is trigonometry. Yep, there's practical use for trigonometry. |
| 3/24/02 | Scott Hollow, WV | Not yet | Mark Skove donated some old ladders, so our group carried them into the Junction Room. |
| 3/23/02 | Bone-Norman, WV | No | No through trip, although I did the Devil's Pinch and then came out (barely, I swear that Pinch shrank coming back). An unsuccessful hunt for the Great White Way led to a 4 hour trip that almost took me to the other end of the Pinch |
| 3/17/02 | Surprise Cave, NY | No | I took my brother Jeff with me for what would hopefully be a full survey of Surprise. But the bypass was full of loose rock, so it was too dangerous for a group. We ended up helping Rick Orben on his dig nearby. |
| 3/07/02 | Desert Cave, Wonded Knee Cave, NV | Hell no | Thanks to Doug Billings and Julia Bond for getting me underground in Vegas. |
| 2/09/02 | Clarksville Cave, NY | No | I got my friend Anne on this trip, and she's writing it up for Jane magazine. The trip was led by Kevin Downey, an expert cave photographer. |
| 1/06/02 | Baker's Caverns 1-3, Python, Persistance-Platter, Woodchuck Pit, PA | Baker's Caverns used to be | Can't complain about six new caves in a day |
| 8/19/01 | Donaldson's, Joan's Quarry, Whiting's Neck, Indian River, WV | No times 4 | All small, but Joan's Quarry has the coolest entrance. Sticking out of a steep cliff with a rusty metal gate around it. All it needs it a pirate skeleton dangling off it. |
| 8/18/01 | Silers, Dead Dog, WV | No and no | Silers was muddy and all walking and nothing but right angles. A great beginner cave. We almost couldn't get the gate off of Dead Dog, but once we did, we found the Boneyard, with dozens of dog bones. I lost my knife at Dead Dog.. |
| 7/27/01 | Great Saltpetre, KY | Yes | Link below |
| 7/26/01 | Goochland-Poplar, Pine Hill, KY | No | Link below |
| 7/25/01 | Sloans Valley, Crooked Creek Ice Cave, KY | No | Link below |
| 7/24/01 | Wells, Dyke's Bridge, KY | No | Link below |
| 7/23/01 | Highwater, Arthur Singleton, Great Saltpetre, KY | Yes to Saltpetre, no to the others | Link below |
| 7/22/01 | Sloans Valley, KY | No | Link below |
| 7/21/01 | Lloyd Mullins, KY | No | Read the whole Kentucky trip here. |
| 6/10/01 | Knox Cave, NY | Used to be | This was for a cave rescue class I took. |
| 5/13/01 | Secret Caverns, NY | Yes | Only four people on my tour, but it was the best tour I've taken since it was all cavers and we got to hear some stories most tours wouldn't. |
| 5/12/01 | Caboose, Schoharie, NY | No and no | Caboose was with three other cavers all in my age group, so it was a welcome change of pace. Schoharie's water level was down a crucial couple inches. |
| 4/01/01 | Cave Rat Cave, WV | No | Barely anyone's been in Cave Rat, so there's still lots of mud and rocks that would have been cleared by travelers. A lot of good formations, plus an actual rat which I never saw but others did. A good little trip right before a long car trip back to New Jersey. |
| 3/31/01 | Sinnett-Thorn, WV | No | No way in hell am I able to make it through the Sinnett-Thorn pinch. Gunbarrel yes, Bone-Norman yes, this one no. |
| 3/30/01 | McCoy Mills, WV | No | Just a few twists of passage a two minute walk from where I was camping one weekend. We did it in street clothes; took five minutes. |
| 11/5/00 | Island Ford, VA | No | A big hole in the rock the Suburban visited coming back from Scott Hollow. No coveralls, just walked until the daylight gave out. Rocks had to be placed so cars wouldn't drive in. |
| 11/4/00 | Scott Hollow, WV | Not yet | A big beginning group went to the pool and then the waterfall. Went back by myself to meet up with Scott and Francois, and got lost, but ran into Scott and Francois who also got lost the exact same way. |
| 9/4/00 | Shenandoah Caverns, VA | Yes | I heard Luray was a better show cave, but its tour is two hours and I had a ton of driving ahead of me to hit NJ. |
| 9/3/00 | Sinks of Gandy's, WV | No | 10 people going through an underground stream that gets so deep you have to swim out. Used a Kroger water container for floatation. Not as scary as I thought. Actually fun. This thing shows up on atlases, for some reason. |
| 9/2/00 | Bowden's, WV | No | Another big trip: 14 people. A lot of crawling, which I didn't hear about Bowden's. Rained and thundered as we came out, so we changed in the cave and made a mad dash for the van. Other trips planned but canelled with the rain. |
| 9/1/00 | Simmons-Mingo, WV | No | 13 people went up in the Attic, where I hadn't been before. Art's car lost the muffler coming up. |
| 7/15/00 | Surprise, NY | No | Technically, I was in it. |
| 6/4/00 | Surprise, NY | No | Sherrye and I were going to meet Wayne Russell, but we parked in the wrong lot. Didn't know there were two lots. We met some SCAG cavers who took us in. Crawl out of Hell a lot easier the second time around. |
| 5/14/00 | Gage's, NY | No | Barclay, Jeralin, Francois and I pop in for an hour and a half. Lost two batteries through a hole in my crummy bag. Chucked the bag soon after that. |
| 5/13/00 | Knox, Schoharie, NY | No/no | Schoharie was normal, but my first time there. Click for Knox. |
| 4/16/00 | Organ, WV | Yes | Everyone twiddled their thumbs for several hours, so there was only time for a commercial tour before going back to Jersey. Used as a saltpeter mine in the Civil War. We'd be coming out of Organ if we were doing the real trip, so this was surface relations, make it nice for if and when we do come out that way. |
| 4/15/00 | Bone-Norman, WV | No | I technicaly led the trip, although it was mostly a straight line and managed to go the wrong way several times. |
| 2/27/00 | Leigh, NJ | No | A very nice little cave. Bunch of good people doing it, with Dave from CNJ leading. The ledge on the Dome Room was the one bit of challenge. |
| 2/20/00 | J4, PA | No | Snowy and icy and good n' dangerous. |
| 1/16/00 | Just/Just Rite/Heigh Hopes/My, WV | No on all counts | Crap on a stick. No one in the dozen people who showed up had been there before. So we went to Just with no rope, went to Heigh Hopes thinking it was My, and eventually made it to My, where we couldn't find our way out of the main room. Air hanky of a cave trip. |
| 1/15/00 | Sharps, WV | No | Jonny's first time there, leading the trip no less. Saw the waterfall, and a tight crawl coming out of it. |
| 9/5/99 | Sharps, WV | No | Fun muddy cave. Found a shelf with obscene clay scupltures, and added to them. |
| 9/3/99 | Simmons-Mingo, WV | No | 11 hour hell trip with no water. |
| 7/26/99 | Howe Caverns, NY | Yes | Apres Woodstock 99. Cool air felt good on sunburns. |
| 5/99 | Surprise, NY | No | My first cave trip since fifth grade. |
| 1986? | Dragon, Shauffers, PA | No | Weblos trip to caves I didn't know the name of for 16 years. |
