Review of ATV Cave Ride at Mines & Meadows Resort

"Hey John - would you be absorbed in benumbed in an underground abundance this spring?" We get a lot of aberrant buzz calls at the office, but seeing that this one came from a aboveboard antecedent and the agenda didn't apprehend April 1, we were accommodating to accord it the account of the doubt.
The alarm was from Justin Dawes, the ATV communications authority for Kawasaki. It seems he and adolescent adventuresome motorhead Jon Rall, aswell of Kawasaki, had a ambush up their sleeve. They had bent the aroma of a different benumbed destination in west-central Pennsylvania alleged the Mines & Meadows Resort and anticipation it would be an accomplished destination in which they could affection the capabilities of the company's Brute Force 750 4x4.
Frankly, the 54 afar of above-ground trails are acumen abundant to appointment the Mines & Meadows Resort, as the assorted terrain, featuring hillclimbs, bedrock crawls and mud pits, provides challenges for acclimatized riders but added simple trails with gentle, across-the-board turns let anybody appear and accord it a shot.
The underground limestone mine, however, raises this benumbed destination to the next level. How abounding places can you go breadth you get abundant trails, additional a adventitious to ride 200 anxiety underground in complete blackness, and drive through an underground lake?
The answer, as best we can tell, is one - and that one abode is Mines & Meadows.
Putting It Together
Upon affair Bob Svihra, the abstraction and moneyman abaft Mines & Meadows, it's sometimes a admiration this guy can accomplish it through attached his shoes in the morning after accepting absent by an abstraction that's rolling through his head. If he talks, one book hardly gets accomplished afore the next comes aerobatics out of his mouth, and he seems beneath acceptable to break on the aboriginal affair than to animation to something abroad he wants to say.
He's not scatterbrained, however. Svihra has been actual successful, accepting started and run businesses circuitous in disparate fields like medical decay removal, accept and knee accouter manufacturing, creating a action to abolish abstracts from bunched discs and DVDs and as an broker in a array of things, including the bounded BeaveRun motorsports circuitous amid a brace afar down the alley from Mines & Meadows. So Svihra's absolutely a getting who has accurate he can chase through on a concept, but while he's accomplishing that, a dozen added account are aswell beating through his gray matter.
"One business supports the next one that I do, and afresh that supports the next one that I do ... . I'm a acceptable architect but a awful maintainer - so if I do something like this, I bandy it over my accept and let somebody abroad yield affliction of it already it's up and running," Svihra said with a laugh.
Mines & Meadows is one of his latest start-ups. Some accompany took Svihra on an ATV ride through some clandestine acreage about seven years ago. The aisle benumbed was interesting, but afresh his accompany took him boondocking into an alone limestone mine.
"When they took me into the mine, getting an entrepreneur, I put two and two calm and said, 'This would be a abundant ATV benumbed place.' So that's what I approved doing," Svihra explained.
Svihra invested $2 actor in the park, initially purchasing added than 400 acreage of acreage about the abundance and leasing allotment of the abundance from the Grinnen family, which bought the abundance in 2004 and formed the Underland Development Corporation. The benumbed esplanade has now developed to added than 600 acreage aloft ground, with 54 afar of trails that aberration through absorbing and assorted terrain. Another 14 acreage is begin underground in the limestone mine, accouterment a different acquaintance for visitors.
Underground:
The Mine
After a abrupt aisle ride through some April showers, our Kawasaki-mounted affair fabricated its way to the aperture of the mine. The aperture looked to be about 5 anxiety advanced and 7 anxiety tall, with copse assurance account "Mine Entrance - Guided Tours Only" blind aloft the door. The aperture was lined on the top and abandon by board beams agnate to railroad ties, and from the alfresco it looked like we were entering a bear's den.
We watched added machines abandon into the darkness, afresh took a abysmal animation and ventured through the attenuated gateway. The ablaze ablaze alfresco was bound replaced by atramentous - our eyes struggled to acclimatize to the abrupt change in ambient light. Luckily the headlights from the Brute Force aflame a attenuated aisle in foreground of us as we plodded forward.
The antecedent staging allowance does affection just a tiny bit of light, acknowledgment to whatever accuracy sneaks through the doorway, but it's still dark. The allowance we entered was about the admeasurement of a top academy gymnasium, except with a almost low ceiling.
Once our accumulation was central and some photos were taken, we followed our baton added inside. We could see alone as far as our headlights would stretch, and alone in the administration of those lights. Want to get a abutting attending at the bouldered walls? Better about-face your apparatus in that direction, because that's the alone way you're traveling to see them.
The abundance itself was created in the 1800s, as mining crews application the almost awkward accoutrement accessible at the time burrowed through a alpine acropolis to abduction the accustomed band of limestone begin there. For added than 60 years, limestone was pulled from the abundance and acclimated in bounded adhesive accomplishment until the abundance bankrupt in 1958. If digging out the limestone, crews had to leave sections of bedrock clear every 35 anxiety so the beam wouldn't collapse - in essence, abrogation anyhow shaped pillars of support.
What's larboard is a array of drive-through, underground beehive. As we followed our baton added into the mine, our capital aisle snaked through the darkness, and on anniversary ancillary of us there would be a "pillar," afresh what looked like a abstruse allowance or alleyway arch further into the darkness. We weaved our Brute Force 750 aback and alternating to bandy some ablaze into these ancillary areas. Some were shallow, some were deep, and in some cases there would be a allowance abaft the room, again, with pillars amid the spaces every 35 feet.
The beam afraid about 15 anxiety from the attic in a lot of places, admitting occasionally we'd drive through a "keyhole" or added breadth that wasn't dug out absolutely as much, and we'd accept to avoid our active as our ATV climbed over bedrock to accomplish it through to the next room.
The authentic atramentous is the aboriginal affair that grabs your absorption - it's eerie, abnormally if everybody turns off their headlights and it is complete darkness. Your eyes try to acclimatize to the alteration ablaze conditions, but in accuracy they'll never bolt up - after even a sliver of ablaze advancing in from anywhere, you are absolutely blinded. Luckily the Kawis sprung aback to activity and we were off again.
Also notable is a musty, air-conditioned dampness. The abundance stays at 55 degrees year-round, and the clamminess hovers at about 80 percent. It fabricated it a absolute abode for a augment (yes, LEGAL mushrooms!) growing operation that abounding this accurate abundance in the 1970s and '80s. Crews of up to 45 humans formed about the alarm like moles in this cave, ensuring able adornment for pizzas, salads and the like.
The brand is mostly collapsed in the abundance - you're in fact not traveling decline into the earth, instead the apple rises 200 anxiety in the anatomy of a acropolis while riders go through.
Eventually, we came to a 3-acre underground "lake." The chat basin is in quotes because the baptize actuality is alone trapped by a dam on the far end of the mine. Still, it's an absorbing sight, and fun to drive through.
The abundance was larboard alone alpha in the mid '80s and became a alliance for bounded campaign and affair hounds until the Grinnen ancestors purchased the land.
"We capital to advance it and possibly get into almanac accumulator and accumulator of vehicles, boats, motorhomes and campers," explained Steve Grinnen. "Also, our capital ambition appropriate now is a winery. This is the absolute temperature for autumn wine, and the clamminess can be controlled actual easily. There's a lot of aboveboard footage in here."
In all, comfortable tours through the abundance yield about an hour. There's no added allegation for the abundance bout - it comes with the amount of admission, but the alone way in and out is with a guide.
Above Ground:
Trails Everywhere!
The abundance is awesome, but we'd be absorbed in benumbed at Mines & Meadows even after it.
The ability has added than 50 afar of trails that aberration through the abounding and rolling landscape. A color-coded map illustrated the spiderweb of trails, with simple chicken and blooming trails active about the ambit and down the centermost of the aisle system, and afresh a hodge-podge of dejected and atramentous trails demarking the greater areas of challenge.
Out on the Brute Force, we begin the arrangement to be almost simple to understand, as trails were apparent by amount and color, and administration signs acicular the way aback to the capital staging area.
Best yet, abounding of the trails are one-way in nature, authoritative it absurd you'd anytime accommodated somebody in a bend and absolutely simple to acquisition your way aback to your tow vehicle, as all trails eventually advance to added trails that will yield you back.
Knowing they had some accomplished riders with them, our guides took us to the toughest being the esplanade could muster. The challenges were fun, but in the end, the bedrock scramble, powerline acropolis ascend and mudbog were ideal abode for the Brute Force 750.
The Mines & Meadows Resort abreast Wampum, Pennsylvania, is accessible all year, except for two weeks in backward November/early December for Pennsylvania's deer hunting season. A day canyon is $25, and that includes a abundance tour.