In Fall 2024 Dr. Lyon led a field trip to eastern West Virginia for the Cave Geology class. The class of eight students, with ESCI technician Nick Wiesenberg, explored three different caves and emerged a little bit wetter and muddier each time. The class was focused on the basics of caves and karst: limestone geochemistry, groundwater, karst landforms, and underground hydrology.
To warm up, we visited the Lost World Caverns commercial cave outside Lewisburg. Paths were well-established, and speleothems were well-lit, making it easy to pose the class in front of photogenic stalagmites. From left to right: Ripley and Jada (experienced cavers, and our guides for the trip from OU), Alexa, Lauren, Hayden, Ryann, Laurel, Lilly, Lain, Li, and Lyon (lots of L names in this group!). Nick took the photo.
Later that day, we went into Boar Hole cave for several hours, led by Ohio University students Ripley Taylor and Jada Townsend. This cave featured the trickiest entrance – we all had to climb down a metal ladder into the dark, not knowing what was beneath us.
Once inside, we found lots and lots of mud. We crawled and strolled through several passages and scrambled over a few fields of breakdown (basically piles of large, broken rocks from the cave ceiling – there is some behind us in the first photo). We took a moment to break out the Wooster flag.
We also found some horn corals and other examples of ancient life embedded in the Mississippian limestone cave walls. Lauren, Laurel, Alexa, Lilly, Ryann, and Ripley (one of our guides from OU) practice their fossil ID skills.
On our last morning, we entered Buckeye Creek Cave, which we were warned was a wet cave. Understatement of the year. The cave follows the path of Buckeye Creek, which was flowing at a low-moderate discharge throughout. This made the path challenging, but navigable until we got to the sump, which is a nearly water-filled section of passage; we would have had to crawl through stinky muck to traverse this section, so we opted to turn around instead. The right photo shows Alexa shining a light on a rimstone dam.
This cave also featured the greatest variety of wildlife: mice, bats, toads, crawdads, and plenty of cave crickets kept us company. Lauren made a new friend, but made sure to let him get back to his normal business!
Lilly points out some stalagmites to Laurel and other COW students.
Once back in Wooster, students shared their experience at GeoClub and prepared their final projects, many of which focused on our trip. Included here is a link to an ArcGIS StoryMap created by Lilly Hinkley (Geology major, class of 2025) and Laurel Andrews (Earth Science minor, class of 2025): https://arcg.is/05m5T40
What a great trip! That was back in the good old days of 2024. It took courage to climb down into those muddy holes. Glad that some fossils made an appearance. (I did some paleo with the Greenbrier Limestone back in the day.) Happy to still recognize some students.