by Beyond Mammoth Cave- A Tale of Obsession in the World's Longest Cave (epub)
He then pointed to the base of the rope.
“That big pool flows into a canyon. I went just a couple hundred feet down it. Blows a lot of air. We’ll survey it.”
The excitement in his voice told it all. We had found real, going cave!
Herb lowered the survey tape as a crude plumb line to measure the depth of the pit. Water from the spray made the tape shimmer in the light like a silvery ribbon rising the full height of the drop.
“Seventy-one point five!”
The loose zero-end hung freely, just touching the gravel base of the pit. “Seven-one point five feet—got it!” I recorded the number in the survey book and sketched a profile of the drop.
Herb and Rod Metcalfe joined us. Now our four carbide lamps fully revealed the impressive volume of the shaft. The circular-shaped walls funneled up to an apex seventy feet above the flat floor. The rope came through the apex and fell free all the way to the floor.
Jim made a proclamation: “We should name this pit Coalition Chasm!” Jim and I had planned the organization and structure of an enduring project. Jim had suggested the name Central Kentucky Karst Coalition, and it stuck. That’s the beauty of an organization of two: there is not much debate. Unlike the more regimented CRF, we were building a loosely affiliated group of individuals to work cooperatively towards a common goal—a true coalition. We wanted to express recognition of that fact. Coalition Chasm it was.
Roger Brucker’s well-proven cliché came to mind: “Follow the water to find big cave!” We ran our survey line into the drain canyon. Soon, we were walking between tall, clean, light-gray glistening walls. Wind blew in our faces. Water gurgled cheerfully below us.
“This is great!” Feeble words to express a heart full of elation. The passage headed due south. I knew from the topographic map and what two years of effort had etched in my brain that we were following the flank of Eudora Ridge toward a saddle that joined it with Toohey Ridge. If this kept up, we would soon be walking beneath Toohey Ridge!
“I believe we found something this time,” Jim offered.
No such luck.
As we continued our survey, the canyon not only deepened, but its sides squeezed together. We wedged our way along the top, over the unreachable stream that we could still see far below. At survey station B29, we could squeeze no farther as the walls met. The dancing water beneath us merrily continued.
Disappointment.
I retreated to where I could jam myself down into an intermediate level of the canyon, hoping that I could continue forward from there.
“I’ll check ahead,” I told the others. Gypsum coated the walls of the narrow canyon, small flakes that fell off the wall at the slightest touch. As I determinedly moved forward, rocks clattered down through the deep canyon, hitting the now quiet stream with a final kerplunk! I fought my way forward to reach a wide spot in the continuing canyon. The gentle breeze cooled my perspiring face. Ahead, the canyon walls briefly widened to six feet, an insecure purchase for me to continue safely alone. I returned to the others who were waiting at our last survey station, B29.
The next weekend, Herb Scott and Bob Cook joined me at our field station to discuss strategy.
Bob spoke: “Herb, I don’t think we should survey until we see if this cave goes.” I was frustrated by his suggestion. Only weekend spelunkers explore without surveying. We were cavers with a system.
“Yeah, I think so, too,” said Herb. “Usually, places like this just get too damn tight. I remember a canyon like this in Brushy . . .” He again told his account of his exploration of Brushy Knob Pit, a horror hole south of Mammoth Cave. I cringed at his discouraging tale. “It was exactly like this. It got taller and narrower as we went downstream. Finally, we could go no farther.” His conclusion: “This will end the same way.”
I did my best to silence him with mental projection, then pretended to ignore him.
I offered a leadership cheer. “We can make it go if we just push hard enough!” They scowled.
It took all of us an hour of hot, strenuous effort from the entrance to squeeze, climb, and rappel to the base of Coalition Chasm, a horizontal distance—our new map told us—of only one hundred feet. The entry passages to Roppel Cave were formidable and dangerous. The cave wore out the cavers.
We quickly moved through the now familiar cave, survey numbers passing in a blur: B20 . . . B22 . . . B25 . . . B29. An arrow marked the spot where we squeezed into the lower level of the canyon. Moving ahead in unsurveyed cave, flakes of rock fell from the friable walls.
We stood at last week’s farthest penetration: the wide spot in the canyon. I paused, studying the problem before me. After going over the movements in my mind, I slowly leaned out over the fifteen-foot-deep canyon, my left hand on a projection above me, my right arm reaching toward a small handhold on the far side. My body formed a bridge, fully extended across the six-foot gap. I stretched my right foot to a small ledge along the wall. I felt the rock hold break and fall from beneath my foot. Panic! Instinctively, I thrust my left foot over to the opposite side and, in a swift motion, heaved my body across. Heart-pounding success.
Now it was Herb’s turn. I held my breath as he tried to duplicate my moves. However, I was taller than Herb; he could not reach the ledge with his right foot.
“Shit! I can’t reach it!” He was wide-eyed, his adrenaline surging.
After a few more attempts, he retreated. When he tried again, he used a layback move to gain enough friction to press his feet against the wall. His face reddened from the exertion of holding his body close to the wall with his arms as his legs pushed out. His sudden lurch was more like a controlled fall. He was over on my side.
“You sure had a funny look on your face when you made that last move!” I quipped.
Sweat poured down Herb’s face. “Jesus. A scary bitch!” He panted.
Bob Cook, still on the far side, had taken in our acrobatics of the last few minutes. He looked pale.
“I’ll just wait here. You guys look ahead.”
Arguing with Bob would be a mistake. Even I knew not to push people to climb when they do not feel comfortable; it’s a ticket to disaster. The Step-Across Pit was a formidable challenge.
Herb and I advanced down the unexplored canyon. Gypsum covered every rock surface of the passage. Its roof lowered to four feet from the floor. A hundred feet farther along, we peered down a small crack into a comparatively large room.
“This killer doesn’t let up!” I said. We forced our bodies through the widest part of the passage, a slot in the ceiling. Our feet dangled and thrashed in the space below as we moved inch by inch.
We grunted and scraped, sweltering from exertion in the floorless crawl, wedging our hips and shoulders to avoid slipping through the crack. Mercifully, after fifteen minutes and fifty feet of traversing, we were able to climb down into the small room. We collapsed on the dry sand floor, breathing heavily. It was the first place we had seen where we could rest in comfort.
Looking up, we studied the narrow snaking canyon in the ceiling we had just traversed. There had to be a better way. But the walls were smooth; the only way was the route we had come. I shook my head in wonderment: the Floorless Crawl was going to be quite an obstacle for future explorers if Roppel Cave went.
The canyon, now narrower than before, led out under the wall we were leaning against. “I don’t know if I can squeeze through any more of this shit,” Herb said. He was breathing hard.
Rested and still hopeful, I lowered myself into the continuing passage. Soon we could move no farther. The walls squeezed in again just like at Station B29. Maybe we could move down again.
“Herb! See that below us?” I gazed down at what appeared to be a large passage. My spirits rose.
He cocked his head, trying for a better view. “How the hell do you expect to get down there? The canyon’s only six inches wide here!”
We backtracked, probing wider spots that might yield a route down. I found a subtle widening in the c
anyon that I could force my body through. I took off my pack to shed excess baggage. It was tight, but I managed to wiggle through.
“I’m down at the stream. Looks like I can follow it.”
I waited for the scraping sounds of a companion following me.
Nothing.
“Are you coming?”
Herb answered, “I saw you go through there. I’ll get wedged for sure. No way I’m even going to try.”
“I’ll just see where the canyon goes,” I told him.
The passage ahead was the smallest yet. There was no sign of the large passage I had seen minutes before. Where was it? I bent my body like a contortionist to make progress along the stream, now rushing in the narrow channel one foot below me. In several places I had to lie in the stream to squeeze around the tortuous bends. I moved for a half hour, thinking that around the next corner would be a room, hoped-for relief from this tiny passage. But I had been gone longer than either Herb or I had expected. Herb might worry. I turned around, discouraged by my failure to find going cave.
Bonk! My head hit a protruding ledge as I tried to slide around a particularly annoying bend. Darkness. The impact had extinguished the flame on my carbide lamp. It takes two hands to light a carbide lamp, usually an easy task. Now, however, it was a struggle to reach it, my body jammed in this crack.
Pop! The passage flooded with light as I drew my hand across the flint striker wheel, igniting the acetylene gas. I looked up to see what my head had struck. There, beyond the projecting rock, was blackness. A room! Adrenaline rushing, I compressed my body, stuffing myself into the opening. I felt my skin tear as I pulled and scraped my way through into the space above. Then I collapsed, struggling to catch my breath.
As I rested, my eyes adjusted to the gloom. I was in a low room about ten feet around and four feet high. There were three passages leaving the room, not including the way I came. A low, wide, sand-floored tube looked promising, but I did not feel like crawling just now. Another three-foot-round opening blew a lot of air. I walked out the third and largest passage, five feet high and three feet wide. After a hundred feet I saw a narrow canyon snaking across the floor. This was caving. I mentally fit the passageways together in my head, like a computer manipulating a wire diagram of a complicated object. If I had persisted in pushing the stream, I would have made it here without all that struggle, I thought—a valuable lesson.
The light was dimming, shadows looming larger. My light was fading, my carbide nearly spent. Pleased, but now concerned about my failing lamp, I returned to the room, squeezed back down the slot, and struggled out along the stream. I should not have left my pack. The CRF party leaders mercilessly chewed out cavers who left packs behind. But I did not need a safety lecture now; I needed my pack. Finally, I saw the glow from Herb’s light above me.
“Herb, where did I go down?” The featureless canyon offered no clues. It all looked too tight.
“You went down right where you’re at.”
I looked around, trying to force my body up at the more likely spots. No way. Worry seeped through me. Where was the climb? I was sure that it was right here. Getting up through a squeeze is always a different matter than coming down. Was this the spot?
Eyes alert for clues—scrape marks, loosened pebbles—I walked along the bottom of the canyon toward the Floorless Crawl. A small vertical shaft dripped water on me. With my dying light, I evaluated the possibilities: I might be able to chimney up here to reach known cave.
I placed one foot on one wall and the other behind me. I jammed my body between the water-soaked walls, using my hands for balance. Alternately, I moved one foot, then the other to the top, sliding my back up the opposite wall with each step. I squirmed through the squeeze at its top with feet dangling.
“Having fun?” Herb’s tone dripped sarcasm. He had wedged himself between the walls of the canyon to make himself as comfortable as possible during his long wait for me. So, he was pissed off? I would show him.
“Well, we have cave.” My lamp had died.
He pointed at my pack that I had left behind, “Didn’t you think you’d need this?”
No answer was appropriate. I changed my carbide in silence, knowing that if I had taken my pack, I would have been worn out carrying it and would have never reached the larger cave passages.
We retraced our steps, bone-weary. The obstacles we had overcome on the way in seemed doubly difficult now. We passed the Floorless Crawl and came to the Step-Across Pit where we had begun our exploration. I was not able to reverse my acrobatic moves to go back but found some other small holds near the ceiling, and with feet flailing below me, I scrambled to the other side. I thought Herb was going to fall, but somehow he tenaciously clawed his way across.
“Shit!” was his final, single, red-faced judgment as he reached the safety of the far side.
At Station B29, we pulled ourselves out of the canyon floor, expecting to see Bob Cook waiting for us, but he was gone. He had given up on us coming back and was probably topside sleeping by now.
The entrance passageways—two rope drops, the ladder climb, and the Chest Compressor—finished us.
Neither Herb Scott nor Bob Cook returned to Roppel Cave.
5
Small Rewards
The Roppel Cavers Grind It Out Through Tough Cave
The cave did not give up secrets easily. Yes, it did go, but we had grunted and struggled for every foot. Our zeal overcame each obstacle as we hoped to break into the big cave. Didn’t hard work count for anything? It had to, we continued to tell ourselves. We ignored the atrocities we inflicted upon our bodies. But the pain and suffering did convince many cavers never to return after their first trip.
By fall 1977, the large-scale map of the cave had grown, but it was still just a small blob when plotted on the small-scale topographic maps. I saw that minute squiggle on the topographic map as part of an immense cave, two miles of it tucked into the southeast corner of Eudora Ridge. Most people saw a cave that really didn’t go anywhere.
We continually looked for fresh opportunities to replenish our caver ranks. Those from far away, relatively caveless places such as Michigan were easy cannon fodder for trips into Roppel Cave, but we were not surprised when these new cavers rarely returned. But then Ron Gariepy, already a veteran of several trips, and I recruited John Barnes, a Michigan caver who now lived in Lexington. With several phone calls and a face-to-face meeting, I had fed his cave hunger with descriptions of elusive wind in tall, complex canyons that headed into the blankness of Eudora Ridge. They beckoned the intrepid explorer to push around the next corner for the big discovery. It was not a lie. I extended morsels of fact and hope. His imagination formed them into a feast of images he wanted to taste for himself. A classic suck-in.
Fifteen minutes after John Barnes entered the cave, he became one of us. He squeezed and grunted, cursing the closeness of the walls of the “world-famous” Roppel Cave. It was 2 December, and the cold, howling wind through the entrance had convinced him: miles of cave must exist to cause such a gale!
John, Ron, and I pushed for two hours along the now familiar route through Arrow Canyon, across the Step-Across Pit and the Floorless Crawl, and on to the low, wide room I had found on my solo push, the B57 Junction. Ron and I sat quietly on the cool sand floor of the room, steam rising from our bodies. Soon, a sweating John dragged himself up through the hole in the floor leading from the confined canyon below. He collapsed into an exhausted heap.
“A killer!” he gasped between short breaths. “And it’s so hot!”
Although the caves in this part of Kentucky have a temperature of fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit, high humidity and overexertion make the overdressed caver hot.
I could see his denim shirt and wool underwear poking out from beneath his coveralls. He had dressed for the cooler Michigan caves he was used to.
“Peel off a layer or two of clothes before we go on,” I insisted. I pointed to the low, wide elliptical tube. “It gets worse.
”
John took the advice, struggling with his clothing as Ron and I climbed into the C Crawl, the second passage explored off the B57 Junction. The first lead we had followed nineteen months earlier appeared to be the main passage. We had surveyed west in walking canyon. The fact that it headed west toward Toohey Ridge had caused us to brim with optimism about its prospects, but it soon degenerated to a seemingly endless, low and muddy belly-squirm. We named it Grim Trail.
Later, Bill Eidson and Ron Gariepy explored the C Crawl, lured by its dryness, pleasant oval symmetry, and gentle breeze. The C Crawl headed due south along the flank of the ridge. After crawling six hundred feet through passage often less than a foot high, the two cavers emerged at the base of an enormous vertical shaft two hundred feet long and at least one hundred feet high. At one end, a tall breakdown mountain led teasingly up into blackness; at the other, a narrow ribbon of water fell from the distant, unseen ceiling. This immense void was named Tinkle Shaft.
The shaft’s blackness hid a junction of upper-level passages that were subsequently explored over several trips. To the east, toward the heart of Eudora Ridge, we dug through sand and rock to follow the breeze through a crumbling maze of canyons. At three different points the passage closed down, the way ahead buried under broken rock. The way on was never clear, but each time, we managed to find a path and scraped our way through. The passages were hot and dry and the sand sucked away our moisture as we struggled to dig onward. This was the K Complex.
Today we were going to follow the path blazed on the previous trip, during which we had spent four hours lying on our bellies pulling rock, piece by piece, out of a low stretch of crawlway, a cool breeze wafting over us. Eventually, we had struggled through to follow another few hundred feet of the canyon maze. There were openings at every turn, but we found only one route ahead. Grudgingly, the cave was yielding its secrets to our persistent efforts.