goochland_gsp

goochland_gsp_061006

GSP is home to the Great Saltpeter Cave which was mined by torchlight in the 1800's for the war efforts. More recently, parts of a Steven Segeal movie was taped in the cave, as well as part of a Batman movie. A couple of the large boulder movie props remain. The cave also used to be a commerical cave and National Geographic even spent some time in the cave for a cave article.

When you drive into the preserve it opens up to a grassy area surrounded by woods. On your immediate left, up the stepped wooded hillside is the entrance to the Great Saltpeter Cave. The large cave (part show-cave) was mined for it's saltpeter, by torchlight, in the 1800's for the war efforts. That's a nice cave to go into while dressed in regular clothing after a day of caving. The main room is so enormous.

The good thing about GSP is that there are a number of caves in super close proximity to the "campground". It seems like normally you have to drive 1/2 hour to an hour from where you camp to get to the cave. Hopefully I'll get to a cave or two that I haven't been to before so I can take some new photos to share.

Friday people trickled into the preserve, set up tents and discussed what cave to do the next day. It seemed like Goochland Cave was a pretty popular choice.

The main entrance to Goochland Cave is a huge 100 feet wide and about 60 feet high. At the entrance you have a choice of either the left or right passage. Our group chose the left. The passage quickly turned into stooped over walking/hands and knees crawling for about 1,000 feet. Once the passage opened up we were quite happy to be upright again. The cave is quite wet. Periodically we found ourselves slogging through ankle/knee and even waist deep water. We went through breakdown rooms which seemed to have possibilities for exploring in search of additional passages. We ended up checking out a couple levels and marveled at the impressive formations that we encountered. I think we spent about 4.5 hours in the cave. Goochland would be a cave that I'd definately return to.