Two full days and nights of cold, wet travel in the mud-slick darkness of an underground cave in Greenbrier County appealed to Stephanie Lusk’s sense of adventure. The 19-year-old nursing student spent her spring break creeping through Cave 219, as it is identified, under the protective eye of David “Bugs” Stover, currently the Wyoming County Circuit Clerk.

The trip to the cave located on U.S. 219, near Renick, was initially planned to include Stover’s son, Justin, and several of their friends, but one by one, for a variety of reasons, the others had to bow out, Stover explained.

He has been friends with Lusk’s family for years and, after his initial hesitation, decided Lusk is “tough enough” to complete the adventure.

“I’ve been caving most of my life,” Stover explained.

Stover, who has been a teacher for nearly three decades in Wyoming County, has been a park naturalist at Twin Falls Resort State Park since 1972 and is an active environmentalist. He plans to write a book about the cave and is working to obtain a master’s degree in environmental science through Marshall University, using the cave study as one of his projects.

Lusk is from Bud Mountain and graduated from Wyoming County East High School.

“Next fall, I will be a junior at West Virginia Wesleyan College. I am working on a bachelor of science in nursing,” she said.

To make the trip, Stover emphasized, one has to be “tough enough to be cold for 16 hours a day — wet for half that time, climbing up and down, around and through, literally through creek beds, muddy, cramped spaces, measuring size and distance, running minnow traps, collecting specimens, taking pictures and video, writing in journal notebooks, discussing finds, reading in bad light, using microscopes, perhaps half-a-mile from any opening, eating mostly cold food, a hot meal once a day, using the ‘bathroom’ into a plastic bag, catching fish, crayfish, spiders, crickets, salamanders, maybe a bat, and perhaps things we haven’t thought of.”

“Being a nursing student is very trying at times and it was nice just to be away from people in such isolation,” Lusk explained of her decision to make the trek. “I don’t think it gets much more isolated than this.

“In a way, it also felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity...

“The cave is very beautiful inside, so it was nice to be surrounded by natural artwork, so to speak,” Lusk explained.

Once inside the cave, the two-member crew didn’t see the sun again until the third day.

“It took us two trips to move in all of our gear,” Lusk noted. “We brought in all we could carry the first time, and came out to get the rest and it was night outside. That was it, the last time we saw daylight was on our drive to the cave that evening.”

“She crawled through a stream that runs from a small opening in a mountain, carrying a large pack of supplies so she could take part in the mapping and evaluation of a limestone cave,” Stover noted.

“With water temps at 53 degrees and an air temp that averaged 52.4, it wasn’t a day in the sun. In fact, she had to take all of her light with her for a three-day stay.”

As an environmentalist, Stover makes every effort to leave any area as he found it.

“On a trip into a cave, one tries to have no affect on the cave environment,” he explained. “So, one does everything possible to leave no problems behind. For example, going so far as to use plastic bags for personal waste and carry it out when you leave to lessen the impact.

“It is difficult not to impact any environment that one travels, and caves are perhaps the most fragile.

“Perhaps taking in light is the most damaging. This is, of course, is much worse in commercial caves; you no doubt remember seeing green growth where lights are located.

“Cave ‘growths’ can be impacted by simply touching and leaving behind oils, etceteras,” Stover explained.

“This particular cave has mice and raccoons working it way beyond any chance of having entered from the entrance and no doubt indicates another opening near where we camped.

“Since one follows a stream upstream into this cave, the things one finds in the cave have washed down — an old can with the type of ‘pop top’ that isn’t attached, meaning it is pretty old, and stuff that has washed in from a farm site speak of ‘sink holes’ perhaps used for dumping over the years.

“The stream flow is not reduced by much, even at our camp location and the exit we use is elevated well above the local stream. This water flows from somewhere and, if one follows it far enough, does it hook up with another cave (this is believed to be true by some), does it simply have a lot of small sources such as sink holes? This question is of importance for many reasons, but one of the best is simply that as humans we want to ‘know’,” Stover emphasized.

“We collected lots of data and it is being studied.

“A few bats, some spiders, lots of crickets, a mouse, raccoon tracks, and a declining population of crayfish, and a cave salamander or two rounded out the wildlife.

“The mouse and raccoon tracks hint strongly at an opening near the location of the campsite, which is hundreds of yards from the entrance,” Stover said.

“Lots of data was obtained and further trips will create a map of the cave and an inventory of it's geological and biological content through all four seasons.

“We literally followed the stream into the cave,” Stover said.

“...We took temperatures of the water and also the air, along with the humidity. We ran an experiment to see how the animals in the cave adapted to find food since there was no light.

“Initially, the crickets were afraid of the light, but the longer we were there the more of them came and the closer they got.

“We set out trays with food on them — sausage, pineapples, sugar-free powered drink mix, Kool-Aid drink mix, and coffee grounds — to see if the animals were using their sense of smell to hunt,” she noted.

“People really take for granted a lot of the luxuries we are now accustomed to in the 21st century – flip a switch and you have light, twist a handle and you have water, turn a knob and you have hot food,” she emphasized.

“It’s refreshing to be taken out of your comfort zone and to be challenged.

“Also, as West Virginians, we are very fortunate to have so many naturally beautiful things around us and its nice to enjoy such things while they are still untouched by machines. There are still places here that are very much the way they were many years ago,” Lusk said.

“The opening to the cave is very small and one might not notice it if they weren’t careful,” she said. “To get in the cave, you crawl through a small opening on your tummy, through a little stream that is about 55 degrees.

“A little ways in, the water gets about waist deep and there are a few spots that are physically challenging to maneuver yourself through, especially with gear that you are trying to keep dry. You could never tell from looking at the cave from the outside what awaits you on the inside,” she emphasized.

“The plan is to do a complete study of this cave,” Stover emphasized. “Collect just about any data that can be gleaned from it over a complete year as well as updates over many years and to ‘run’ the cave.”

Lusk enjoyed the adventure very much; she and her friends from school spent the weekend at Bowden Cave.

“Bugs helped me find a hobby,” she said.

Stover said there is interest in forming a county caving group, but the county lacks these types of limestone caves. However, there are some crevice caves in the county, Stover noted, the longest of which is located in Twin Falls Resort State Park.