Beyond Mammoth Cave

by Beyond Mammoth Cave- A Tale of Obsession in the World's Longest Cave (epub)

  In ten minutes of struggling, he had progressed just six feet. Ahead, the passage was narrower than before, this time with sharp ledges jutting into the passageway. Bill pounded at ledges with the hammer. Rock chips splintered and flew in all directions, and he forced his way inches forward. The cool breeze teased him as he shattered yet another ledge.

  Bill had previously encountered similar situations in Kentucky. Canyons, such as the S Survey, often become narrower and deeper in the downstream direction. If the passages could be pushed far enough, they often intersected small pits. Pits in turn are the route to the underlying lower levels. The problem was, routes to the lower levels are almost always tiny. Sometimes they are too small for anyone.

  Bill struggled around a corner to see the canyon narrowing to an impassably small size. He was disappointed, but in the past he had managed to continue on in less likely situations. The stream had cut down and was now flowing beneath a layer of broken rock that had wedged between a ledge and the wall to form a false floor. Bill thought there might be passable cave below.

  He worked on the floor with his feet, stomping at the rocks wedged in the canyon. A cavity soon began to open, and he redoubled his efforts. A few minutes later, a hole led down to the hoped-for lower level.

  Squeezing down through this hole, Bill found an eight-foot-diameter room, two feet high. The only lead was a tight keyhole passage less than a foot high and two feet wide, with a narrow canyon in its floor. Shining his light down the improbable lead, Bill couldn’t judge if it got too small. There was only one way to find out.

  This was Bill Walter at his caving best. Alone and far out, he basked in the solitude as he pushed into the unknown, no one to slow him down. He jammed his body into the small keyhole. Sharp protrusions ground into his side as he inched his way forward. Foot after foot, he fought his way in. After a final desperate squeeze that pressed his shoulder blades painfully together, he fell into a small room where he could stand up on a flat, sandy floor.

  “At least I can turn around now,” he uttered to himself as he rested prone on the floor.

  More often than not, such small passages are pushed to their ultimate conclusion just so the caver can find a place to turn around. It is a caver’s worst nightmare to push a small lead and find that the only possibility is to back out the entire way. More than one major passage has been discovered by cavers going on in search for that larger spot.

  After a brief rest, Bill crammed his body into a vertical slot three feet high and a foot wide. Ahead, he could hear the sound of falling water. After eight feet in this slot, he was rewarded at last; he could see the inky darkness of open space. It might be nothing, but he felt sure it went on.

  But it was time to return. He pushed back through the slot, the keyhole, and the other tight spots, swinging his hammer at offensive nubbins and sharp corners. Some of the tight spots were more difficult in reverse, since he now was moving uphill. After twenty minutes, he reached Jim, who was waiting in the chilly passage.

  “Well, how did it go?” Jim asked.

  “It opens up a few hundred feet ahead into a large room.” Deadpan.

  “How tight is it?” The important question.

  “It’s real tight. You’ll need the hammer to get through. Even then, you might not make it.”

  Bill reentered the narrow canyon, giving the hammer to Jim. After a few minutes, Bill could hear the faint pecking sounds of hammer blows against rock as Jim attempted to enlarge the passage.

  “At least it will be easier for me to get through now,” Bill chuckled.

  Twenty-five minutes later, a hot, winded Jim fell out of the last squeeze. Bill was sitting on a ledge, fresh and well rested.

  “That keyhole just about did me in!” Jim said between long breaths.

  Bill wondered if Jim would be able to get himself back out.

  They climbed down into the room Bill had seen. It was a large, elongated vertical shaft with dripping water and a small pool; a large boulder covered most of the floor area. The water gurgled out a small crack in the floor. Up on the walls, several narrow canyons led off. The dark, damp walls swallowed the pale yellow light of their carbide lamps. After their hours of squeezing, the room felt as big as all outdoors, although it was little more than forty feet long and high. From S64, they had descended over seventy-five feet into this dome. An open crawlway led off to the west. Maybe they had broken into the lower levels?

  They refilled their carbide lamps from the pool, then stuck their heads into the crawlway. There was a stiff breeze. After losing the wind in the high canyons around S64, they had found it again. The crawlway was slightly lower than hands-and-knees height. With Jim leading, they bellied in. There was a small stream in a narrow canyon below the hard, damp floor. Off to one side, they looked into a small room. That could wait. They crawled on, following the cool breeze.

  After a couple hundred feet in this passage, they climbed up through a slot into a slightly larger crawlway passage. The wind was stronger now, and the passage drier.

  “Wow,” Jim exclaimed, “maybe we’re on to something here!”

  Bill continued crawling. Better not press your luck by thinking you had found something before you actually had. Bill had been fooled before, but he smiled at the promising prospect.

  The canyon in the floor snaked off to the right out of sight. The mud had yielded to dry sand. Gypsum flowers sparkled on the walls and ceiling. Solitary cave crickets leaped out of the way of these fast-moving human giants.

  After a few hundred feet, the crawlway intersected a walking-sized canyon passage.

  Jim shouted, “We must be beneath Toohey Ridge!” He pulled a compass out from inside his pack. “Due north, straight up the flank of the ridge!”

  “Let’s see where this thing goes!” Bill replied.

  They sidestepped along the tall, narrow passage, following a strong wind toward new discoveries in Toohey Ridge. This time it did feel right. This was unlike anything they had seen in Roppel before. Instead of shaft drains and tight crawlways, they were in ridge cave, passageways that the Roppel cavers had been searching for since the beginning.

  They walked briskly, almost running. Sweat dripped from their faces. They stopped at a broad intersection. A fine, twenty-foot-wide, four-foot-high elliptical tube led left and right—a major junction. They stopped long enough to feel which way the air was blowing, then loped onward in a crouching stoopway, wind in their faces.

  The sand-floored elliptical tube was almost walking height. They scooted with their backs hunched over, hands locked behind their backs for balance. They were now heading west, directly into the heart of Toohey Ridge.

  Long silent, Bill now howled, “This looks more like Unknown Cave than Roppel Cave!”

  After twenty years of absence, Bill had recaptured in a mind-numbing rush the feeling of infinity that he had felt when exploring the seemingly endless corridors of Flint Ridge caves in Mammoth Cave National Park with Bill Austin. Since leaving the caves of Kentucky, he had mostly lost touch with that special feeling. It was good to get it back.

  The two sped onward, farther into Roppel Cave than anyone had gone before. In two years of exploration, in over dozens of trips twenty or more hours long, no one had advanced more than a mile from the Roppel Entrance.

  Now, in just this one trip—and they were still going—Jim and Bill had far surpassed that mark.

  As the minutes ticked by, the pair passed through hundreds of feet of cave. They advanced as dim pools of light running along the virgin cave passage. Suddenly they encountered blackness.

  They stumbled out of the crouching elliptical tube, the distant wall barely visible. They stood waiting for their eyes to adjust. The image of a large railroad-tunnel-like cave passage materialized. They had realized their caving dream.

  The Toohey Ridge Cave System lay at their feet.

  7

  Roppel-Mania

  Roppel Cave Explodes North

  Bill Walter and Jim Currens s
tood quietly, stunned, staring in disbelief. The image was surreal. Yes, they were in Roppel Cave, but they were standing in borehole. Two years of gut-wrenching effort in small passages made it difficult for them to accept what they now saw. In two directions, the pristinely smooth sand-floored borehole disappeared into darkness. They had entered through a side passage, one that had seemed large when they had found it but now seemed small in comparison. A cold breeze rapidly chilled their sweat-covered bodies. Big cave! Instinctively, they turned to the south toward the broadening expanse of the main body of Toohey Ridge and perhaps tens of miles of cave.

  The soft, glittering sand preserved their new footprints as they quietly plodded down the enlarging passageway. Within a few hundred feet, a large, ten-foot-diameter tunnel led off to the left.

  Jim, agape, stared at the beckoning passage, “Boy, this is real cave!”

  Bill disappeared down the passage, returning a few minutes later.

  “The main way fills after a few hundred feet, but a great looking canyon lead takes off at the end. It’s blowing a lot of air. What a lead!”

  On and on. They soon reached an area where the large passage they were following ran steeply downhill and became even bigger. Mud covered the floors, and mudbanks rose up to meet the dark walls. They were now obviously in a section of cave that flooded periodically. Rotting sticks and leaves were subtle reminders that this was no place to be during threatening weather.

  Cautiously, they worked their way ahead in the main passage, the mudbanks affording slick footing at best. At one spot, they forded a stream that crossed the passage between two high banks. A waterfall splashing on rocks in the distance told them of its source—a dome and perhaps a way to higher-level cave.

  Soon, they stood in a tight crouch, mud oozing up around their boots, straining to see down a low passage. The magnificent trunk passage had withered down to this—a three-foot-high, five-foot-wide mud crawl. The strong wind blowing into their faces fluttered the flames on their carbide lamps, which made seeing what lay beyond that much more difficult, but with that wind, they knew this crawl was an important lead.

  Bill, resolute on pushing leads to their end, began to step into the muddy passage with his back and legs severely contorted to avoid having to kneel in the mud.

  “No!” Jim cried. “We don’t want to get wet, not with all this big, dry cave we have to look at! This can wait.”

  Bill looked at Jim thoughtfully; he had a point. “Okay, let’s go see where the other direction leads.”

  The twosome retraced their steps back along the slippery mudbanks and back into sand-floored borehole. They covered a couple thousand feet in just fifteen minutes, then walked on past the elliptical tube from which they had first entered the borehole and moved on to more new cave.

  Here, the passage was more regular. They walked north down a large oval-shaped tunnel with dry sand on the floor. Along the wall at floor level, spectacular displays of pure white gypsum cotton provided a striking contrast to the clean, gray walls they had been seeing for the last several hours. At several points, they could see a wide, deep canyon underneath the wall ledges. They ignored the inviting passage and continued their steadfast march deeper into Roppel Cave.

  They reached a wide junction of three passages, including the one through which they had entered. The two choices they now had before them were equally inviting.

  Jim pointed to his right. “We’ll leave this for Borden,” he said with a hint of sarcasm. “He’s gonna croak when he hears about this. I can’t believe he’s missing it.”

  “Why didn’t he come?” asked Bill.

  “He’s over at Flint Ridge. Serves him right! He doesn’t even deserve for us to save this for him.”

  The passage they were saving was a five-foot-high and twenty-five-foot-wide elliptical tube. Bill walked into it a few paces. Yes, it did go—it was a wonderful lead.

  They continued straight ahead. A shallow pit cut through half the passage. They paused to peer for any openings below, then continued walking around it on a ledge to the right. Soon, a dark void loomed ahead of them. They emerged into the largest room yet on this already amazing trip. Above them the ceiling reached nearly fifty feet high. This was another junction—a tall, wide canyon led left and right. Car-sized boulders littered the floor, fallen from some unseen point far above.

  Jim and Bill turned to the right, climbing over large breakdown blocks that spanned the wide canyon passage. Soon, they were walking along the smooth floor in a passage twenty feet high and eight feet wide. The unmistakable sound of falling water ahead spurred them on.

  A pit!

  They stood on a precipice where the floor dropped away into the space of an immense vertical shaft. They heard a large waterfall off to the left, but at their vantage point it was hidden from view. They could not climb down the twenty-foot wall but could see the distant outline of a large pile of rocks that made up the far wall, suggesting that this was where the canyon might intersect a hillside along the edge of the ridge.

  Jim was beginning to feel the effects of the difficult push through the narrow passages beyond S64 and the many hours of adrenaline-surged exploration. He sat down at the last, most impressive junction, drained. Bill, who never seemed to tire, ran out the opposite, still unchecked, direction. He crawled under a pile of rocks to find large, going cave with good wind.

  Two hundred feet farther, a narrow rock ledge jutted from the wall leading around the edge of a pit—a beautiful vista. The round, ten-foot-diameter pit dropped twenty feet to a clean-washed floor. Below, Bill could see a walking shaft drain leading off. Across the pit, out of reach, a round hole led off. From the hole issued the sound of a large waterfall.

  Bill continued down the main passage another few hundred feet. The cave continued as before—big and walking-size—but he was out of time. Getting out would be a lot of work.

  The pair walked back down the large, sand-floored tunnel and began crouching through the low passage leading toward the surface. The cave they had run through on the way in from S64 now led on interminably. Could they have really traveled this far? They passed by bend after bend, the numerous landmarks reduced to a blur in their memory, their order and significance lost. They moved silently, preserving all the energy they could for the rigors they knew lay ahead. Jim’s coveralls with the broken zipper had long ago been reduced to tatters, catching on every projection. Ahead, they still had to squeeze through the drain series below the S64 Pit and ascend the twenty-foot climb to the main level of the S Survey canyon.

  After what seemed an eternity, they stood looking up at the rope that hung down from the S Survey canyon at S64, the last worrisome obstacle between them and the entrance. Jim had been thinking about this problem spot for the entire trip. Would he be able to get up? They did not have the vertical gear to climb directly up the rope. Instead, they could use the rope only as a safety line. They would have to climb the wall of the bell-shaped room.

  Bill was first. He was confident, since he had done the climb before, and once up he could belay Jim. Bill worked his way up the far wall to an unseen ledge where he could sink his hands deep inside a horizontal crack that led across the side of the pit to the rope. Methodically, he shuffled his feet across a series of small projections, moving his hands from hold to hold deep inside the crack. An occasional loose rock made the traverse unnerving. Bill was leaning back dangerously, the overhanging walls pressing his body outward. If he should fall, he would land on his back on the rock-covered floor fifteen feet below.

  After four or five steps, he grabbed the loop at the top of the rope and pulled himself up out of the pit.

  “That wasn’t too bad. I don’t think you’ll have any problem with it,” Bill called.

  “Yeah. Right. You looked pretty hung-out up there. I’ll take the belay if you don’t mind,” Jim said. “Better safe than sorry.”

  “No problem.”

  Bill set up the belay and wedged himself tightly in the floor of the ca
nyon. He would have no trouble catching Jim, although the fall would certainly be a jolt.

  Jim made the climb without any problems. The belay provided the security needed for him to climb with confidence. A belay is never a bad idea.

  I was attending the Labor Day CRF expedition and knew that Jim and Bill were going on this trip to Roppel. Although I had hopes for their success, I chose to cave in Flint Ridge that weekend. I needed a break from the disappointments of Roppel Cave. However, I was curious about what they had found. John Barnes, who was also caving with the CRF that weekend, and I made the twenty-five-minute drive from the Austin House on Flint Ridge over to the Toohey Ridge fieldhouse, the base for the CKKC operation, and waited for them.

  Idle conversation whiled away the hours. We sat on the front porch in rickety pastel-green chairs that creaked as we rocked back and forth. We joked about catching some exotic disease from the unidentifiable black fungus on the cushions we sat upon. Furniture nobody wanted was abandoned here. Beggars can’t be choosers.

  As the lengthening shadows gave way to darkness, we spotted two figures walking through the gap in the woods at the far end of the field, moving slowly toward us. We could see tattered shreds of clothing dangling from one of them. From this distance, the person could pass as a scarecrow. Each had a helmet dangling from one arm. Cavers.

  Soon, the two battered explorers stumbled to the front porch of the fieldhouse, sweating profusely from the mile walk from the cave. It was a warm September evening; caving clothes made for a hot walk. The smile on their faces was a tip-off.

  “Well, what did you guys find?” I asked.

  The two glanced at each other with a sly grin. “Not too much,” Bill said.

  He was lying.

  Jim asked Bill, “Do you think we should tell him?”

  More smiles.