by Beyond Mammoth Cave- A Tale of Obsession in the World's Longest Cave (epub)
Grim Trail headed directly toward Toohey Ridge at a low enough elevation to pass easily underneath the overlying valley. Jim was eager to return, but he needed someone small as well as strong—a proven caver who would not abort the trip. Bill Walter was the candidate of choice.
In January 1978, a party of four, including Bill and Jim, returned to the end of the B Survey at B105, the tight constriction that I had squeezed through. The trip to the lead was slow and deliberate as the other two cavers, who were unfamiliar with the cave, labored through the rigors of the Entrance Series and the obstacles in Arrow Canyon. The snail’s pace, combined with mud the consistency of printer’s ink, made Bill shiver. His smaller size allowed him to move quickly through caves, but if he did not keep moving, he got chilled.
While Jim and the others worked on enlarging the slot, Bill squirmed through to see if the lead went anywhere. It was obvious that it would take hours for the rest of the crew to make it through—if they ever made it through, that is. Beyond the room on the other side of the slot, the crawl indeed continued, but it was an excruciatingly tight belly crawl over gravel. Bill slid in, grunting and groaning as he inched forward. After about a hundred feet, the ceiling rose, and he moved quickly through the four-foot-high, ten-foot-wide passage.
Meanwhile, Jim and the others managed to enlarge the canyon just enough to get their smallest caver through. They had heard Bill squeezing through the low belly crawl; it had been many minutes before his scrapes had trailed off in the distance. It was obvious that even if they all made it through, the way beyond would be no easier. The three cavers were cold and depressed, routed and ready to return to the surface. Having surveyed two stations, they sat back and waited for Bill Walter.
Forty-five minutes later, Jim and the others heard Bill’s grunts as he squeezed his way back through the belly crawl over gravel. Shortly, a warm-looking Bill was sitting with the rest of the badly chilled group, elated about his push. His shredded shirt suggested how difficult the passage ahead was.
“Looks good. Once I got through the squeeze, it opened up pretty well and the mud disappeared. I went about five hundred feet before turning around.”
“Which way was it going where you quit?” Jim was focused on its prospect for getting into Toohey Ridge.
“Not sure; I didn’t have a compass and it wound back and forth a lot. But it looked good where I stopped—nice elliptical tube thirty inches high and ten feet wide. Good airflow. We ought to survey it.”
“No . . . too cold. Let’s go out.”
Bill looked around at the party members and sighed. Jim appeared cold, but the other two looked totally vanquished, trashed by the difficulties of the cave and mud of Grim Trail. There was no sense arguing.
Before the party packed up and left, Bill drew a sketch of the passage in the survey book.
The trip out was even slower than the trip in. The pace was interminably frustrating. It took over four hours for the tired group to struggle to the base of Coalition Chasm, each of the obstacles of Arrow Canyon seemingly taking forever to cross. Bill was shivering and Jim was disgusted at the pitiful pace of the other cavers. Once up the seventy-foot climb of Coalition Chasm, Bill and Jim could stand no more and bolted for the surface, confident that the short distance remaining would prove to be little problem for the slow cavers.
As the two sat topside in an unusually balmy January evening waiting for the sounds of cavers reaching the bottom of the forty-foot entrance pit, the western sky was aglow with brilliant flashes of lightning. Wind started to roar through the leafless trees.
“Shit,” said Jim, “I think we ought to get back to the fieldhouse. Looks like we’re going to get hammered by this storm.”
Bill looked at the light show. During the bright flashes, he could see the frothing dark clouds rolling towards them. “You think they’ll be okay down there?”
Jim started gathering his pack. He was not going to wait. “Sure, it’s just a few feet. How could they get lost?”
Bill was not familiar with the mile-long hike over the hills and valleys back to the fieldhouse, especially in the dark. He shrugged. “Okay, if you’re sure.”
Two hours later—after cleaning up and eating dinner at the fieldhouse—the storm continued unabated. Still no cavers.
“Jim, don’t you think we should go back and look for them?” Bill had brought up this question before but had met with resistance each time. Now, it was apparent something was very wrong. No one could take this long to get out of the cave.
Jim looked at the foreboding weather and frowned, finally agreeing that they had better do something.
An hour later, at 2:00 A.M., they arrived at the Roppel Entrance. A small stream formed a waterfall in the normally dry entrance pit.
Jim crouched into the entrance to the top of the pit. “Hey!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
He and Bill strained to listen and were greeted by a distant, “Help!”
Jim looked at Bill. “You know, I don’t feel too good—I must have the flu or something. Would you mind going in?”
Bill had already decided that he would be the one to go in and get them. He put his vertical gear back on and rappelled into the pit through the chilling waterfall.
Bill found the two cavers lying in the crawlway just thirty feet from the base of the entrance drop. Both of the cavers had decided they were lost and would wait for someone to come. Neither had the initiative to push on to find the rope.
Bill looked at the nearly hypothermic pair and smiled, “Come on! Let’s get you out of here!”
Bill Walter’s first trip to Roppel Cave was certainly memorable. Bill had demonstrated his ability as a caver and team player. As far as Roppel Cave was concerned, the cave was certainly tough, but he was sure there was something to be found. He had left behind a good, going lead that might reach big cave. He promised himself that he would return.
Bill Walter’s return to the caves of the Mammoth Cave region was a legacy from earlier days. Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, he had begun his caving adventures while a teenager. The newly found caves of Flint Ridge near Mammoth Cave were close at hand, and the year was 1953, one year prior to the famous National Speleological Society’s C-3 Expedition in Floyd Collins’ Crystal Cave. The caves of Flint Ridge were ripe for discovery. The lure of integrating all the caves of Flint Ridge into one vast system was too much for Bill to resist.
He checked around to see who was caving and soon was following Bill Austin around the lower levels of Crystal Cave. Crystal Cave was vast, and Bill was immediately hooked. With Austin, Jack Reccius, Charlie Fort, and others, Bill Walter became involved in the clandestine explorations of the lower levels of Salts Cave and Unknown Cave.
Both Salts Cave and Unknown Cave are located within the boundary of Mammoth Cave National Park on Flint Ridge. At the time, the National Park Service did not permit cavers to explore caves within the park. As a result, all the prohibited trips into Salts Cave and Unknown Cave within the park were secret operations. Cavers would sneak in and exit the caves under cover of darkness, using furtive drop-offs and pickups. All this deceit was to avoid the vigilant eye of the unfriendly feds. The cavers loved it and so, I have heard, did the park rangers who occasionally caught them.
The lower-level passages of Salts Cave ranged far out beneath Flint Ridge. Salts Cave was Bill Walter’s true love. On trips of up to twenty-four hours and sometimes alone, he unraveled the mysteries of Salts Cave. On one memorable trip, he and Charlie Fort spent seventy or more hours in the lower levels, snoozing in sleeping bags they had dragged in for bivouac. This was the commando-type of dedication to exploration that later made Bill famous.
His relatively short career as a Flint Ridge caver came to an abrupt end when he and Richard Wheeler were surprised and apprehended by Joe Kulesza, Park Service ranger, as they emerged from Salts Cave. A stiff fine and prospects of jail discouraged Bill from returning. He still wonders if he wasn’t set up for this arrest.
Bi
ll later left the Kentucky caves behind and settled in McMinnville, Tennessee, where there are caves everywhere in the surrounding countryside. His prowess and zeal as a caver continued to the point of legend. He got deeply involved exploring nearby Cumberland Caverns, where he was one of the spearheads of exploration that eventually unraveled twenty-eight miles in Cumberland, one of the longest caves in Tennessee.
However, Bill did not limit himself to just one cave. He was a caver’s caver who spent nearly every spare moment tramping the high, wooded limestone flanks of the Cumberland Plateau. To him, there were caves everywhere, as if he possessed X-ray vision. I believe that single-handedly, Bill has found and explored more miles of cave than anyone ever will. Although a loner, he always welcomed anyone who wanted to go caving. He was endearing to all, pleasant, humble, and soft spoken.
On 27 May 1978, Bill Walter, Bonnie Butler, Chuck Thomas, and I were setting survey points in Jim Currens’s new passage off Coalition Chasm in Roppel Cave. I had romantically expected glistening, smooth-walled canyons with the babbling music of running water beneath my dangling feet, wind in my face. What we found was clothes-shredding popcorn, tacky mud, and excruciatingly difficult surveying. Even the wind had pooped out. We were sandbagged. Was this why Jim was a no-show for this trip?
We seldom stretched the survey tape farther than ten feet in the tight, winding canyonway. Reading the compass bearings was an almost unbearable struggle. As the stations passed by, the canyon grew taller, the popcorn became sharper and more dense, and the walls pressed closer together. Just moving forward was agony. After eight hours of exhausting effort, we thankfully set the last station, S64, and I smoked the number on the wall using the three-inch flame of my carbide lamp.
Ahead, things looked even grimmer. The canyon was twenty feet high but barely eighteen inches wide. Just beyond survey station S64 was a shallow pit. Bill wiggled to the top of the pit and, by spreading his feet wide enough to press on the walls, managed to chimney to the bottom. He looked around. Only a minuscule drain, just barely large enough to squeeze into, led off.
He climbed back to the top, then grunted his way ahead along the high level for 150 feet before giving up. That short distance took him nearly twenty minutes to traverse. It was painfully narrow. Below, where he had quit, more small pits led down. Physically and mentally wrecked, we left the cave. Bonnie Butler and Chuck Thomas never returned. Would Bill Walter come back?
Back home, we plotted the survey to discover that the S Survey at S64 had penetrated half the distance across Dry Valley, only a few hundred feet from Toohey Ridge. On paper, the lead looked more than promising; it screamed for a return trip. However, none of us who had been on the survey trip was eager to go back because the memory of the passage burned fresh in our minds. Jim Currens’s eyes blazed when he saw the map showing this passage. He already envisioned himself reaching the big ridge beyond the end of the new survey.
Six weeks later, Jim took one person with him to the end of the S Survey. They were armed with formidable tools: a hammer, rope, and high hopes. The pit reported at the end of the survey intrigued him—down is always good, especially when beneath valleys.
Once they arrived at S64, they found out why we had terminated the survey. And try as he might, Jim could not squeeze past the constriction at the top of the pit to get in position to descend. There would be no going down this trip, and Jim did not know of the leads beyond the pit on the high level. Discouraged, Jim left the cave with nothing accomplished. He summed it up in his CKKC trip report: “Net result of trip: one thirty-eight-foot rope delivered where it can be picked up and delivered to where it might be needed!”
By midsummer 1978, I was dreadfully discouraged. A string of aborted trips and dashed hopes had taken its toll. The previous year, I had reinvolved myself in the Cave Research Foundation and had begun a systematic resurvey of Ralphs River Trail off Pohl Avenue in Flint Ridge. This had led to the discovery of an underground river that nearly connected Flint Ridge with Great Onyx Cave. In fact, it passed beneath surveyed passages in Great Onyx Cave, but despite several trips, we found no connecting passage. The discovery recharged me. Caving with the CRF also gave me a respite from the rigors of Roppel Cave. For the latter half of the summer and into September, I attended every CRF expedition and all but ignored the caves to the east near Toohey Ridge. No, I hadn’t quit, but the thought certainly crossed my mind. The CRF had plenty of things to do, while we had slim pickings. But there was too much of myself in Roppel Cave to quit; I was forever linked with the cave.
Labor Day weekend was coming up. I had just returned from Maryland to Kentucky to attend fall classes at the University of Kentucky. I was a senior and was preoccupied with the future—what would I do after graduation?
Jim Currens asked if I were ready to go caving in Roppel again. I had just arrived at school and was thinking about attending the CRF Labor Day expedition. I didn’t feel up for punishing caving in Roppel.
Jim wanted to return to the S64 Pit. Surely, I thought, his mad desire to get to Toohey Ridge had blinded him to the wretchedness and punishment of the S Survey. Moreover, I was shocked by his statement that the S Survey was the first in his countdown of leads to check before he personally abandoned the project. Such pessimistic talk! I could not bring myself to face the finality of any discussion of “abandonment.” I told him I wasn’t interested. Jim said he would find somebody. I wished him luck.
That somebody was Bill Walter. Bill continued to be intrigued by the end of Grim Trail; after all, he had pushed it farther than anyone, and the cave continued to grow. Despite the mud, Grim Trail was promising—it could be the way to Toohey Ridge. In the confusion of planning the trip, Bill thought he was agreeing to return to Grim Trail, not the S64 Pit.
Bill knew something was terribly wrong when, after arriving, Jim started talking about pits. There were no pits off of Grim Trail! His fears were confirmed when Jim unrolled a yellowed, dog-eared map of the cave and pointed to the squiggly line that led from near the entrance toward Toohey Ridge.
“Bill, did you see this?” Jim asked.
Bill approached the map on the hood of Jim’s car and carefully studied the thin line-plot of passageway at which Jim was pointing.
Jim continued, “I think if we can push the bottom of the pit, we might just get into Toohey Ridge.”
“Well,” Bill began, “do you know how tight it is?”
“Yeah, but it’s close to the entrance and the best thing we’ve got going right now.”
Bill disagreed but good-naturedly went along, now resigned to the order of the day. “Okay, but don’t forget to bring a hammer.”
“It’s already in my pack.”
Bill concluded, “Well, it’s heading in the right direction.”
The pair readied their cave gear. Bill and Jim presented dramatic contrasts in caving equipment. Jim, always fastidious, carefully cleaned and maintained his gear after each trip. His carbide lamp’s gleaming yellow brass shone, and he was dressed like a sportsman from the pages of GQ magazine. Bill wore clothing recycled from years of use on his farm. Holes were patched, but shreds of clothing hung off him like a scarecrow. Some of his equipment was older than I was! For Bill, equipment was a personal extension of his own soul, tenderly treasured, lovingly repaired, and never discarded. For Jim, equipment was a precision tool, to be honed, maintained, and organized. In either case, their equipment always functioned, each in its own way.
Two hours later, they were grunting through the S Survey. Sweat rolled off their faces as they forced their way past the popcorn that stuck onto and pulled at their clothes like Velcro. Jim’s zipper on the front of his coveralls had long since come apart, leaving a wide gap that exposed his middle. Moving was hot work.
At S64, they stopped to cool off. It had taken them only forty-five minutes to get to this point. As they sat resting, the sounds of their heavy breathing and dull, rapid heartbeats were amplified by the close walls.
Bill reflected, “We
ll, we’re here, so we might as well get started.”
Over the years, Bill had found miles of cave, and he had a firm rule that he often said aided in his success: No lead can be said to end unless investigated and declared hopeless no less than two separate times. Often, cave that “ended” did so only because of lack of will, exhaustion, or overlooked possibilities. It took a fresh eye, another look, before one could write off a lead once and for all. He had found cave many times where others had given up; often, he would find cave where he himself had previously turned back. At S64, he put his own rule in action: he would check the pit once again.
Jim rigged the rope he had left after the previous trip, tying it to a natural bridge that spanned the narrow passage just before the pit. Bill wrapped the rope once around each outstretched arm and across his back, then slid down the rope into the pit. This arm rappel is a hasty but hazardous way to descend since one uses only rope friction to arrest the descent. Jim struggled over the top of the pit, having discovered that the best way for his larger frame was to climb above the squeeze before getting on the rope to rappel the usual way.
Jim urged Bill to lead on. Bill was smaller; it made sense for him to go first. After just a few feet, it was apparent that the drain was extremely tight. Jim retreated back to the S64 Pit to repair his malfunctioning zipper. Bill continued alone.
Bill pushed ahead and immediately confronted a sharp turn to the left. This turn could be negotiated only if he squeezed along on his side while using his arms to keep his body from slipping into a small crack. After a few more feet, he stood up in a small room to regain his breath.