Gary Fielden buckles his hardhat and stands straight for the camera. John Wilson snaps the photo in the afternoon sun. Maggie, a small Jack Russell terrier, rests in Fielden’s arms; she’s the only one not covered in mud.

Four hours earlier, the two men, wearing 10 pounds of gear and 15-pound packs, crawled into a 15-foot hole in the ground.

Along with the hardhats and packs, they wore boots, gloves and nylon coveralls. A quick headlamp check and the two maneuver to unlock a 300-pound, three-foot square gate at the mouth of the county cave.

Cool air rolls from blackness. They slip past the gate on their backs. Crouching between cobblestone alleyways, they weave around two and four-foot high walls. Past dead-end turns and past where the shaft begins to close in. At first they duck then get on all fours and crawl.

The skin of the tunnel drips and sags. Bat bones hang on warted walls pimpled with stalactites. Parts are peeling or ribbed with fossils, but mostly the rich mud walls just hang.

The path ends at a 12-foot drop. Using a rope handhold bolted to the wall they lower themselves down five feet. Then, on a narrow shaky ladder propped between a mound of rocks they descend the last seven. 

They’re in a big room. The humming room.

“This is where,” Wilson said, his voice echoing back in a low hum, “people usually stop.”

In the distance, somewhere indefinable, water runs, mimicking the sound of people talking. It’s 54 degrees and damp.

There are etchings on the floor and walls. The writing is in script, a style popular in schools pre-1930s. There are names but mostly the letters are illegible. Carbide is splashed white across some of the walls. Before battery headlamps, cavers used carbide lamps to light the way and dumped out the used calcium carbide while still underground.

“They stick their head in there and say no way,” Wilson says, pointing to a low egg-shaped opening in the far wall. “If you can get past this you’ll be all right.”

Fielden and Wilson pull themselves, flat on their stomachs, through the 3 ½-by-1 ½-foot hole.  The close ceiling brushes their backs. For 40 feet they crawl, like alligators, on padded knees.

The air is still and moist and smells of mud. Occasionally a slow whiff of fog crosses their lamps’ beacons. 

Without the light, the air is heavier as everything closes in and gets sucked away.

Wilson crawls up a breakdown, unstable rock that has collapsed from the ceiling. Three points of contact. He says the slide is recent. By that he means within the past five to 10 years.
At the top corner of the slide is an opening.

“This has never been touched,” he said, crouching and peering into the tunnel. “There are no elephant tracks here.”

The soft mud leading into the new passage is wrinkled by moisture and the gradual pull of the earth. There are no prints or smears to tell of human existence. But there is an opening to the surface near. A granddaddy long leg spider picks its way along a wall. One move at a time Wilson and Fielden meticulously document the new section. Using mud, they stick little pieces of numbered tape to walls. Working deeper and deeper into the cave, they measure the height, width, distance and dip between each point. Wilson writes the numbers in his small yellow logbook and grumbles as he tries to sketch the passage.

The passing of time is still underground. Nothing but fatigue signals that it’s time to find a way out. And just as deliberate and cautious as on the way in, Wilson and Fielden begin the ascent. Taking occasional rests between climbs they retrace their steps. Weaving back through the labyrinth of alleyways. The orange light from their headlamps is crushed by clear daylight falling below. A warm breeze wipes their faces and white clouds wait in the waning sun.

About Perkins Cave
The opening to Perkins Cave rests just beyond Perkins cemetery on John Wilson’s 140-acre property in Hayters Gap. He bought the property on Clinch Mountain in 1977 and formed what is now called the Appalachian Cave Conservancy a year later.

About 20 active members make up the non-profit that manages Perkins Cave, works to preserve the natural environment of caves in southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee by protecting them from vandals and the misuse of land above the cave.

Perkins Cave is about 10 miles long and listed as the sixth largest cave in Virginia (according to a list compiled by Bob Gulden of the National Speleological Society).

Appalachia is rich with caves. For millions of years, caves in this region have been forming from water and carbonic acid that has seeped down from the surface and dissolved limestone.

To visit the Appalachian Cave Conservancy website, click here.