New cave discovered at Laurel Caverns
John F. Brothers | Herald-Standard
David Cale, owner of Laurel Caverns, points out a small passage that leads to a recently discovered cave.
John F. Brothers | Herald-Standard
Lisa Hall, director of caving programs at Laurel Caverns, shines a light through an opening to a new cave.
GEORGES TWP. — Laurel Caverns Geological Park owner David Cale spent the afternoon of Earth Day 200 feet underground guiding a tour of a cave that was discovered last month just a few feet from where he stopped exploring 16 years ago.
The cave, named Lisa Hall after Cale’s director of caving programs who discovered it, will not be open to the general public when the summer tour and spelunking season starts on Wednesday so the cave’s geological formations can remain undisturbed for scientific study.
“We want to preserve this for future generations. This is for science. It’s not open for tours,” Cale said. “There are still parts of Fayette County that haven’t been discovered yet.”
From 1962, when Cale was 17 years old, to 1997, he excavated Cale’s Canyon one bucket of sand at a time. The canyon was discovered in 1995, but he halted exploration in 1997 to focus on construction and remodeling of the visitor’s center.
“I stopped feet short of the new cave,” Cale said.
Recently, Hall and members of the Pittsburgh Grotto, a cave exploring club, resumed the dig and found evidence of a new passage way. They kept digging and discovered the cave on March 3.
“We have a cave that no one has seen yet,” Cale said. “The credit goes to Lisa Hall and the Pittsburgh Grotto.”
The location of the new cave has not been added to the caverns’ map.
New passages and caves are found by digging through sand that has accumulating between limestone rock formations for millions of years. Rain water seeps into limestone and the acid in the water breaks down calcium in the rock leaving sand behind.
“The art of finding new passages involves finding and following sand,” Cale said.
About three miles of caves and passages are open for tours and exploring, but many more would be revealed if all the sand was removed from the caverns, he said.
“This is all dug by hand. Everything in the cave has to be dug by hand,” Cale said.
Only a fraction of the new cave has been excavated, but Cale believes that many passages extend from the cave.
“The end of the cave really hasn’t been found yet,” Cale said. “We believe there are many more passages beyond that.”
He also refers to the new cave as “real Earth.”
It contains small, delicate formations that appear to have a high iron content, he said. They appear as strips a fraction of an inch thick and up to about 18 inches long, but little is known about them.
“At this point I would say how they form is a mystery. They might serve to teach us a new chemical process, involving carbonic acid, iron and silica dioxide, for cave formations,” Cale said. “What we’re interested in here is the science of the cave.”
Another mystery is connected to the new cave.
Cale said a stream that used to flow through the passage was diverted into a crevice in Cale’s Canyon to allow digging, but the water has not re-emerged in any known parts of the cave.