Beyond Mammoth Cave

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

  They continued their N Survey, following a three-foot-diameter tube northwest about two hundred feet.

  Abruptly, the passage broke upward. A two-foot-diameter tube went high one way; a foot-high by six-foot-wide lead went the other. Nobody larger than Pat or Diana could fit, they thought. But the strong wind promised big cave ahead. Soaked to the necks, the two shivered with cold. Time to get out!

  Beth and Cindi, left behind, had tried to keep warm in the chilly breeze by enlarging the swampy low passage between the end of the L Survey and the N Survey. They had made a crude groove in the heavy mud, but the ooze flowed back into the lowest spots.

  Cindi was feeling sick. “Think it’s intestinal flu,” she said. She felt she had to retreat, but there was no escape from the wind blasting through the passageway.

  Pat said they had to tie the gap in the surveys together or else a hanging, unconnected piece would be left. The prospect of surveying across the swamp from N7 out to L1 was grim. Pat guessed it could be done in a thirty-six-foot shot across the swamp, but it wasn’t that simple. The digging had not broken through to the swamp to allow room for a person to hold a light on the survey station.

  Pat attempted a one-person survey. She went back and forth through the center of the swamp, turned around each time, and attempted to read the compass at each turn. The wet cold was intense. Pat decided to sight to an imaginary point, crawl up to it, and improvise. A rotten way to survey, she thought, shaking with cold and fatigue. Those shots—N7 to M1 to M2 to L1—drew out the last reserves of the surveyor’s energy.

  The party was together at last, but the condition of the members seemed to be sinking toward a free fall of fatigue, discouragement, and illness. Now Beth was sick, too. Cindi took a Lomotil diarrhea pill, and Pat administered a Dramamine nausea tablet to both Cindi and Beth.

  Pat said later, “I forgot how sleepy Dramamine makes people. We had no idea of the time. My watch gave up the ghost on its initial immersion at 4:30 P.M.” Pat knew the only way to warm the party was to start moving toward the entrance, no matter how slowly. These are times when experienced party leaders recognize the endurance limit but know that encouragement and insistence on steady progress is the only salvation. The danger is real, but experience pays off. Pat reported later: “Take lots of wool clothing or shorty wet suits.”

  A month later, Denny Burns led a Snail Trail trip with Diana, another caver, and me in tow. We encountered high water at K49 and even higher water at K80. We aborted the trip, knowing the dugway would be filled with water.

  Two years later, in November 1978, Diana Daunt led the Thanksgiving expedition. Lynn Weller, a tall and long-legged electronics engineering student at Ohio State University, had joined the caving. Recruited by John Bridge, who had a keen eye for the kind of engineers it took to explore these caves, Lynn seemed a natural caver. She had taken many weekend trips to small caves, and this year she had been introduced to the map factory at Scooter Hildebolt’s house. Lynn could draw clear maps, survey, reduce the survey notes on her calculator, and write vivid trip reports. Diana had her eye on Lynn, as did Jenny Anderson, who was making progress spearheading the exploration of passages in Miller Trail that also headed across Doyle Valley toward Proctor Cave.

  Lynn Weller’s journal contains an intimate record of the details of that next trip to Snail Trail. Her account, plus the recollections of the other participants, characterizes the struggle and frustration of CRF cavers determined to find a way into Proctor Cave from Mammoth Cave.

  On 22 November 1978, Lynn asked Diana about Snail Trail. “It goes!” said Diana. She drew a map of a T-junction. “This branch dead-ends. The other way is a tight lead. You can hear water noise, but you’ll need a hammer to go beyond where we stopped.”

  Diana described the tight, going lead as two feet wide by three feet high. Lynn agreed it sounded better than anything else she’d heard.

  “I’ll go,” Lynn volunteered. Diana instantly assigned Tom Brucker to go with her.

  Tom was incredulous: “You want to go to Snail Trail?” He didn’t do anything to change the assignments.

  “Get to bed,” Diana ordered. “To go out Snail Trail, you’ll need all the sleep you can get.” Lynn was happy. To her, Diana’s tight-ship decisiveness was a sign this would be a good expedition.

  Diana rolled them out of bed by half past seven and had breakfast over by quarter past eight. It was dark and rainy. Tom feared the water would make Snail Trail impassable. “It takes water directly every time a deer pees in the woods. It’s been a couple of years since I was there, and the M Survey was filled with water.”

  Diana assigned Tom Alfred to their trip. He and his wife, Janet, were attending their first expedition, but Diana separated them.

  They loaded their gear into Tom Brucker’s Datsun and headed for the Frozen Niagara Entrance. Everyone ducked beneath the stairway at College Heights Avenue and doubled back under the tourist trail. They climbed down the breakdown to Fox Avenue, then Logan Avenue. After mostly walking canyons and a few minor climbs, they came to a rock placed in the middle of the passage with “SNAIL TRAIL” and an arrow smoked in carbide soot. The arrow pointed to a low passage to their left, a flat-out chert belly crawl. Tom Brucker slid through the opening. Tom Alfred and Lynn followed.

  “This is a neat passage,” Tom Brucker said.

  “Why?” asked Lynn.

  “Because it’s unusual. You just know a passage like this is going to do something.”

  They alternated between walking cave and flat-out belly crawls over coarse sand. “Big cave!” Tom shouted whenever the party reached a segment high enough to permit walking. He uttered a groan of disappointment as the belly crawl inevitably resumed.

  Near the end of the K Survey or the beginning of the L Survey, one of the crawls had filled with sand. Two inches of air space remained with a gale blowing through. Tom removed his helmet to begin one of his favorite caving activities—digging. Alfred and Lynn began moving sand out of the way. They took turns; it was hard work.

  On his second turn at the face, Tom managed to wiggle through the last fifteen feet and got his head through a narrow crack into a room. He literally used his head as a plow and finally moved enough sand to get in.

  It looked like another short piece of walking cave. Alfred and Lynn took Tom’s helmet and pack and wiggled through the hole. This crawl was a packs-off, helmets-off crawl. Sand sifted into their clothes, and their backs rubbed against the rock ceiling.

  Tom was surprised to find the passage so dry. His hopes had risen considerably. They were in the nicest section of Snail Trail, the L Survey, and there ate a meal.

  This was walking cave. Fantastic! Unfortunately, it ended too soon. The beginning of the M Survey was where Tom’s party had been turned back by high water two years before.

  “Wow!” said Tom, peering down the M belly crawl. “It’s dry! I’ll bet even the pool is gone!”

  Diana had said they could keep dry until they reached the pool. Beyond it, the passage forked—the N Survey.

  Diana had asked the party to resurvey the M Survey through the pool, but Tom decided to resurvey the whole thing. Alfred took the front point, Tom took the compass, and Lynn took the survey book. They started a T Survey, named for the two Toms. It was slow going. At T2, Alfred had to borrow Tom’s putty knife to dig out the floor to get through a tight spot. It was still a chest compressor, and it took Lynn some effort to get her hips through because her coveralls stuck to the mud.

  The passage had no standing water, but it wasn’t dry, either. Lynn discovered that there was no way to move in a helmet-off belly crawl and keep her hands clean. Her hands and forearms were needed for locomotion. She couldn’t carry the survey book in her teeth because it was impossible to keep from dragging it in the mud, and she couldn’t lift her head high enough from the floor to clear the mud. She finally tucked the book under the suspension system of her helmet, put on her muddy gloves, and wormed her way to the next station, pushing her h
elmet and pack through the muck.

  Lynn was awakened from her preoccupation with these matters by the sound of a distant splash. Alfred had found the pool. Apparently, the water level was about the same as when the pool had been discovered and first surveyed.

  By the time Lynn reached the pool, Alfred and Tom had already crawled through it. Tom shouted back instructions: “Put on your pack and helmet. Push your knee-crawlers down your legs or they’ll get stuck in the mud. If you sacrifice your left arm and both legs, you can keep your trunk dry. Stay high and keep to the right. Don’t get your chest wet.”

  Lynn unhappily strapped on her wet pack and noticed that the bad waist strap on her pack had broken and the remaining strap was worn a quarter of the way through. Her helmet contained so much mud from pushing it through the ooze that she couldn’t get the strap over her chin. The adjusting buckles were clogged with mud, also. Tom suggested that Lynn hook the strap under her nose. He was kidding, but Lynn decided it wasn’t bad advice. In fact, it was the only thing she could do. The muddy strap barely reached her nose. Lynn’s knee-crawlers refused to move, glued to the floor. The buckles were buried under great clods of sticky mud. She started into the pool.

  There was one foot of air space, eight inches of water, and eight-plus inches of oozy mud. Lynn said she hadn’t hit bottom yet.

  She soon discovered the reason for removing the knee-crawlers, because she sank into eight inches of muck and stuck fast. She found it impossible to lift her knees clear of the stuff because of the limited headroom. And she couldn’t push against anything to drag herself through the mud. Lynn turned and thrashed, and her foot hit something solid to push against. The total length of the pool was about fifteen feet, and eventually she emerged at the far end.

  Tom laughed when he saw Lynn had followed his advice and put the helmet strap under her nose. She cleaned up the best she could in the clear trickle of water running into the pool.

  Tom checked a lead. As Lynn and Alfred sat watching Tom’s feet, Lynn noticed Alfred shivering; he was wetter than Tom and wasn’t wearing enough wool.

  Tom backed out and said, “There’s an S-turn. I can’t get through it. You want to try it?” Lynn crawled in. There was only a slight S-bend, but it was a tight passage. After some trial and error, she found a position to get by the first bend, but her knees were in the wrong position to make the second. The roar of the water was tantalizingly close, and the passage opened up ahead. She backed up and told the others of the problem.

  The party returned to the junction room to eat candy bars. Tom Brucker decided they would look the other way before continuing the survey and started off. Lynn had to change carbide, but she told Alfred, “Go on, you need to get warmed up. I’ll be along in a minute.”

  She finished changing carbide but could not get her lamp lighted with her wet hand. The flint was wet, too. Lynn waited for things to dry. By the time they did and she was able to light the lamp, she heard the sounds of the Toms returning.

  “Goes five-hundred-plus feet,” they reported without elaboration. They picked up their survey gear and started the slow process of measuring. Several times Lynn repeated back a distance or bearing but did not write it in the book. The measurements needed to be retaken because Lynn was dozing off and on.

  Tom Alfred was extremely cold, but he ignored his discomfort as long as possible. Finally, he told Tom Brucker, gritting his teeth to keep from chattering, “I don’t think I can go on. I’m frozen.”

  Tom said, “There’s no harm in being cold as long as it doesn’t affect your ability to leave the cave.” Alfred visibly forced himself to stop shivering.

  “I’m beginning to doubt my ability to leave the cave,” he said.

  If Tom was disappointed, he didn’t show it. “Very well. We’ll survey two more stations and then explore awhile. That will warm you up, and besides, we’ve got to get you some virgin cave!”

  Was it the con? Tom Alfred had never been in virgin cave before.

  Lynn put the book away after the last station and followed the two fast-moving cavers down the passage. They passed the end of their quick look, and Alfred led on into virgin cave. The passage varied from one and a half to three feet high and contained occasional shallow pools of water. Everything was muddy. The easiest way for them to move was to lie on their sides and shove forward with their feet. Lynn fell behind when she stopped to take off her pack, a move that later proved unnecessary. She delayed further to put the pack on again.

  The missing waist strap shifted the full weight of the mud-laden pack onto her shoulder, which was already aching. It was a long way out.

  Lynn moved faster to catch up. She came upon Tom and Alfred lying in the passage.

  “I don’t think I should go on,” said Alfred.

  Lynn admired Alfred for his courage in speaking up. It would be easy to tough it out and go on, but that could jeopardize the entire party. It was extremely important—lives could depend on it—for cavers to correctly assess their physical condition and let the party leader know before it was too late.

  Tom paused. “Okay. You can rest or head back. I’ll go on for ten minutes. Then I’ll catch up with you.” He took off ahead.

  Alfred said to Lynn, “Don’t you want to go on?”

  “No, I’d just slow him down,” said Lynn. She was feeling spent herself, but she had experienced that feeling before during her bicycling days. Always, that feeling had miraculously left after she ate. She was sure she’d be okay after a meal, and probably Alfred would feel better, too. They were long overdue for another meal.

  They rested a bit, then headed back along the passage. They had come a long way, and it seemed even longer going back. Tom caught up with them about the time they reached the abandoned measuring tape. They dragged it behind them back to the junction room and began to clean and coil it as Tom told his story.

  “I found the end.”

  Lynn didn’t believe him; how was it possible that this passage, with its large airflow, ended? Wasn’t its size increasing?

  Tom continued, “Well, for practical purposes, it’s the end. I guess it’s about fifteen or sixteen hundred feet to where the passage seems blocked by a chert dike, but you can squeeze up through a slot in the ceiling over it and come back down into the passage. There, the passage changes to room-like walking segments, except that it’s wet. The floor gradually rises to within two inches of the ceiling, and the cobblestone floor might be dug out. Not much breeze. I got stuck in the slot coming back . . .”

  There was an odd note in his voice—fear? worry?—and something strange about the way he mentioned getting stuck. But Lynn thought she must have been mistaken. Tom Brucker would not be afraid. A ridiculous thought!

  He continued, “It starts out heading southwest, but at its end it trends more south. I think we’re about to intersect a major valley drain. The passage changes radically in character. Passages always do that before a junction. At least we’ve proved there’s cave out under Doyle Valley. Probably someday some hot-shit caver will come out here and dig ten feet and get into a master drain. But we now know what happens to Snail Trail, and we won’t send another party out here.”

  Tom grew quiet. “That’s fifteen hundred feet of cave that won’t be surveyed . . . by me.”

  The party started back out through the total immersion swamp pool. The chest compressor in the five-station M Survey was no longer remarkable; they were so well lubricated that they just slid through. At the beginning of the M and L Surveys, Tom fired up his carbide lamp and wrote “LUBE TUBE” over the low entrance to the crawl.

  “It will be nice to get back to our dig and eat a meal,” Lynn said. She was weary.

  Tom frowned, “In my experience, when we’re this cold, it’s better to keep moving. If we stop now, we’ll freeze.” Lynn strongly disagreed but kept her mouth shut—Tom was the leader. But she began to doubt her ability to leave the cave without another meal.

  Progress was slow. All of them were having lamp pr
oblems: too much mud had gotten into the water chamber of each lamp and had clogged the water dropper. Also, since no part of their clothing was clean or dry, they couldn’t dry their hands—and wet flint won’t spark. They stopped to change carbide in the room before their dig.

  All three blew out their lamps at the same time. Then nobody could get a lamp going. In the dim illumination from a flashlight, Tom got out his match case, carefully tapping it until a match slid out far enough to grasp it without touching the end with his wet fingers. The other two watched anxiously. Tom scratched the match. Nothing. He struck it again. The tip crumbled. He shut the case on the damp matches.

  “I think I’ve got a cigarette lighter,” Tom Alfred said as he dug through his pack. Once found, he flicked it repeatedly. Nothing. “Oh no! My thumb was wet, and now the flint is wet. It won’t work.”

  Lynn said, “I’ve got two cases of matches. One should be dry.” She continued fiddling with her lamp.

  Tom sounded annoyed with the delay. “Could you get them out now? I’m beginning to worry. It’s a long trip out by flashlight.” Lynn dug through her pack. She had stored the match cases in a plastic bag, along with a candle and heat tab stove.

  She searched through the things she had taken out. The plastic bag wasn’t there. “I must have dropped it last time we changed carbide.”

  “Aha!” shouted Alfred; his lighter had finally caught. The group fired up their lamps and packed. When Lynn stood up, her plastic bag with the matches and heat tab stove fell to the floor.

  “Fantastic! I haven’t lost it after all.”

  The trio started through the dig. Alfred’s lamp went out in the middle of it, and a struggle ensued as Tom passed his lamp back to relight it. Various lamps went out at various times. The wind in the passage extinguished some of the feeble flames.