Have you ever done something monumentally … disheartening? I hope not, but I certainly did so late in 2019. While trying to “clean up” my hard drives, I managed to delete all of my photos. All of them. Erased. *poof*
When faced with this sort of situation, I generally have 2 viable emotional alternatives. One is to be rather pointlessly angry – and the other is to walk away until I have the energy to face the situation constructively. Based on my word choice and the long absence, guess which one I default to? Yup, I walked away. For the most part, I put my camera down and walked away from photography for just over 2 years. Of course, in that time we’ve had a global pandemic which, being global, affected everyone.
Now I’m finally ready to return to nerd adventuring!
Welcome to Skyline Caverns in Front Royal, Virginia, USA! As far as cave systems go, this is a pretty young one at only about 60 million years old – but it has some rather unique features. Plus, it was a marvelous adventure for me because my dad went with me. That alone made this a truly special adventure.
The Cavern system wasn’t actually discovered until the mid 1930s because the mouth of the cave was filled in. It was carefully excavated in the coming decades, then (to facilitate tours) things like rails and lights were added over time. The underground streams all had dramatic lighting added to them (see the featured image above) which made them truly visually stunning!
This cavern had a lot of vertical shafts which ran over the walkways, narrowing and widening dramatically at various points. The lights made this easier to see with 2 eyes, but the depth of the effect was largely lost to a single camera lens. This long vertical crevice ran through the rocks over our heads – easily 50 feet high. See the people at the bottom of the image to get a feel for the scale. The white lights set above the first shelf provide enough strong light that algae is now growing underground. To try and keep this to a minimum, the tour guides would go back to turn off the lights once everyone had passed through.
While the various twists and turns of the cavern pathways were fascinating, what I always find the most remarkable about cavern systems are the formations. Depending on the type of minerals in the water, stalactites (hanging from the ceiling) can grow anywhere from 1/4 to 1 inch per century. Century. That’s over a millennium for just 1 foot of rock extending down! This one looks like some form of calcium, but it was dramatic in its difference from all the other formations in this section of the cave.
I managed to find a couple of teeny tiny stalactites with a drop of water just sitting there right on the tip – not heavy enough to drop yet. The formation in the upper left was broken off at some point, so you can see the minerals that make up the structure. Even so, that one too has a tiny drop of water which is slowly gathering enough molecules before it’s heavy enough to drip. Bear in mind, this is directly over head – so imagine leaning backward like a strange game of limbo to see this.
Not all stalactites come straight down. Sometimes, they make this neat undulating formation called a Fan, or a Blade. The water with the minerals runs down the length of the fan edge, slowly building up layers and creating these super interesting shapes! If enough time passes the formation reaches the ground, the resulting column is usually thick and only the lumpy shapes of the fans hiding inside can be seen.
The truly coolest feature of the Skyline Caverns is a rare formation called an Anthodite. It only forms in a vacuum, which the cave excavators broke when they pushed through the sludgy wall encasing the section where these formations can be found. They grow down from the ceiling in a bright white, though the clay of the walls has stained some of them. If you thought the stalactites grew slowly at 1 inch per century, these delicate little crystals grow at the rate of 1 inch per 1000 years. That’s 1 inch per millennium. Some of the anthodites in the picture below are about 5 inches – that means these started growing around the time that Jericho in Palestine was founded.
Skyline Caverns has the largest known Anthodite in the world, measuring at 18 inches long. That’s 18,000 years of growth! I do have a picture of it, but it’s not particularly worth sharing because it’s taken through a mesh net they had to put up to protect it from tourists. To see it, follow the link to the Cavern’s website provided above.
There are a couple of other notable mentions about this cavern system. A tiny tiny eyeless beetle, no bigger than the period on this screen, was found here. Also found here was an eyeless cave snail called a Red Snail – largely colorless save for some red pigment in the visible nervous system. It too now appears to be extinct.
If you’re in the area and are looking for something interesting to do, this is worth your time. It’s only a few hours for the guided tour – though I would not recommend it for anyone in a wheelchair or a walker. The paths got narrow at times, though they did a good job of making sure the walkways were reasonably level and – given the nature of slippery cave floors – the paths were concrete in some of the wetter areas. In addition to the caves, they nice grounds surrounding the tour center which includes hiking trails. Considering it’s a stone’s throw from Skyline Drive, this is a gorgeous place to enjoy the environs.
While I have a trip planned to Peru in March, I hope to be able to get in at least one more little trip before then.
Until next time, Adventure On!