by Beyond Mammoth Cave- A Tale of Obsession in the World's Longest Cave (epub)
“It’s big passage with a big river in it,” I shouted. The echo was strong, but not as intense as the last time when water had filled the passage. “I’m getting off to look around. Lynn, you come down.” The trunk passage was thirty feet wide by twenty-five to thirty feet high; the stream, fifteen feet wide and about a foot deep.
When Lynn reached the bottom, we floated bits of paper and timed them to estimate the stream flow at twenty-five cubic feet per second. We figured that was about sixteen million gallons per day. A big river!
We knew that Blu Picard would not go anywhere until he heard from us, so we set off to see what we had found. We had come down in the south side of the passage, which was rectangular in cross section with smooth walls.
The upstream passage headed to the northeast. It was like wading in a cold trout stream. About forty feet upstream from our landing spot, a side passage veered north, which we followed for two hundred feet. It kept going, but we turned back because we had overstayed our prudent turnaround time. At the main passage, we turned upstream, wading about three hundred feet mostly up to our knees, sometimes up to our waists, seeing blind crayfish and cave blindfish. We stopped where the water widened to fifty feet and extended from wall to wall, becoming much deeper. The passage continued. I guessed it would go a long way.
Downstream, to the southwest, the stream flowed fifty or sixty feet and ducked under a low arch. The stream may have siphoned; we could hear the gurgle and echo of water slapping on the ceiling. The swiftness of the current rushing downstream made it difficult to stand in the streambed. The bottom of the stream was gravel and sandy silt, but I did encounter a couple of surprising knee-deep quicksand pockets. We wanted to look some more, but Lynn reminded me we had signed out for a 2:00 A.M. return time, and it was now midnight.
We named it Hawkins River after park superintendent Amos Hawkins.
Later, Lynn said she felt happy that I was the first to ever see this beautiful river. Of course, she was wrong. Richard Zopf had seen the top of it on the previous trip. And, unknown to any of us, others had seen the same river in another location, at exactly the same time Richard had dunked his butt in it.
12
Run for the River!
River Adventures and the Brass Ring
Roger Brucker, Lynn Weller, and Blu Picard emerged into the bright morning sunshine, slow-moving but smiling, and trudged their way back to their parked car. They were four hours past their planned return time. On the drive back to Flint Ridge, an approaching driver flagged them down.
“Who the hell is that?” Roger mumbled. He looked at the distant vehicle in the rearview mirror as he slowed down to pull off onto the shoulder.
The backup lights came on and the car drew closer. Roger saw the bearded face of Richard Zopf.
Roger glanced at his wristwatch. The reason for Richard’s intercept was evident. “Boy, are we late,” Roger confessed.
Roger and Richard climbed out into the fresh air and met on the side of the road. Roger was red-eyed, his faced was caked with mud, and his slouch gave away his exhaustion. The two exchanged a few words about the important river discovery, then they returned to their cars. Before Roger could even start the engine, Richard had turned around in the grass on the side of the road and sped off back to camp.
By the time Roger had pulled his car into camp, Richard was standing in front of a crowd of expedition attendees. Cavers, plates in their hands, were still shoveling breakfast into their mouths. Richard had already announced the hot news of Roger’s trip to the expedition: the deep pool Richard had found the previous month was not just a cul-de-sac but a vast underground river.
Richard had always steadfastly maintained that he did not believe in secrets. Big discoveries were something for all to share, and the new underground river was no exception. After all, discoveries were sequentially built on the accomplishments of all cavers who had come before. To keep discoveries secret slapped the face of everyone and achieved nothing. It promoted elitism—those in the know versus everyone else.
Richard’s announcement had electrified everyone in camp, and Richard had already assembled two parties to follow up the new leads in Proctor Cave. The plan was bold—as it turned out, too bold. A total of eight people dragged wetsuit bottoms and vertical gear through the Proctor Crawl. It was a strong crew, but the large number of cavers clogged up the route as they all tried to thread their way through the succession of crawls, drops, and canyons to the newly discovered river. Hours were lost in waiting.
Once gathered in the eerie gloom of the large subway tunnel, they were calmed by the gentle murmur of the flowing river. The full weight of the discovery sank in. Jerry Davis, Gail Wagner, Bill Holland, and Walter Mayne made their way between the sandbanks in knee-deep water.
The other survey party of John Branstetter, Don Coons, Sheri Engler, and Tom Gracanin stood watching as moving headlamps revealed the full majesty of the passage. Hundreds of feet away, they could still see the lead party. Reflections of their carbide lamps sent shimmers of light glinting and dancing off the wide river back toward the waiting team at the base of the rope.
Don, Sheri, and John were desperate to know whether this river and their cloaked discovery in Morrison Cave were one and the same.
“Oh, no! The water is too deep!” Gail’s disappointment echoed down the passage.
Just past where Roger Brucker’s party had halted their exploration the previous day, Gail’s party was stopped where the sandbanks were replaced by the inky blackness of wall-to-wall deep water. There was no end in sight as the water stretched into the darkness ahead. Although mentally prepared for almost anything, neither party could risk an indefinitely long swim this far into the cave without the proper equipment. It would take full wetsuits and inner tubes to continue. With just six hundred feet of survey—ridiculously small survey output for two parties—they began their struggle out of the cave. The drops and crawls leading to the dry upper levels of Proctor Cave took several hours for the party of eight. Four hours later, they had completed the Proctor Crawl and headed back to camp.
Back at camp, Richard lamented the waste of so much effort, chiding Roger for what he thought was inadequate reconnaissance. Richard noted in his expedition report summary that, in the future, survey parties should make an effort to provide better information for the planning of follow-up trips. The zeal of discovery was no substitute for well-thought-out party management, and in a cave such as Proctor, this was doubly important.
The Proctor Crawl had always been a formidable obstacle for bringing equipment into the cave. Trips through it were difficult, but the prospect of dragging along full wetsuits and inner tubes in addition to vertical gear and other normal caving gear was daunting, to say the least. But a lot of people were ready to go. Tom Gracanin said it first: the river could lead to the back door of Roppel Cave, which was miles away!
During the week following the Memorial Day expedition, Don Coons and Sheri Engler discussed the situation. They had still not made the CRF aware of their secret river discovery. In their estimation, the two rivers were probably the same. Some questions still remained, however. The water flow they saw in what had been named Hawkins River seemed substantially greater than that in Morrison’s Logsdon River. And where they had turned around in the passage that carried Logsdon River, there was no stream. Did Logsdon River disappear and then reappear as Hawkins River? Could there be two rivers? Their minds raced with the possibilities.
The private knowledge of Morrison Cave and its river that Don, Sheri, and John had could not be kept for long. If they delayed revealing the secret, the CRF might swallow up Morrison Cave in an orgy of discovery without even realizing the threesome’s prior claim. The CRF had no certain knowledge that there were caves to the east with which Proctor might connect. It was time for the Morrison explorers to act.
The next CRF expedition was scheduled for a full week in July. This was the traditional Independence Day expedition, and many cavers would attend. Pete Lindsley, from
Dallas, Texas, the expedition leader, had already announced his intention to push hard in the new river. There was big cave to be found, and he would throw everything he had at it. Clearly, if Don and Sheri were to do anything in Morrison Cave, it had to be done in the few weeks remaining before Pete Lindsley’s invasion.
John Branstetter was off for his two-year dental stint with the U.S. Indian Health Service and, to his dismay, could not join the effort in the coming weeks. But the large passage in Morrison Cave now had to be pushed past the Sentinel westward to the presumed connection with Proctor Cave. In the minds of Don, Sheri, and John, that would establish their claim on the eastern extension of Logsdon River, toward Roppel Cave.
Morrison Cave was dangerous because of its potential for flooding and the relatively great amount of rope work. It was too risky for Don and Sheri to go alone. So, Don recruited his old friend Thom Fehrmann as the necessary third caver.
On 28 June, Don, Sheri, and Thom dragged their wetsuits into Morrison Cave en route to Thrill Shaft. The timing would be close; in just two days Pete Lindsley’s CRF expedition would begin the attack on the river. This would be the only chance from the Morrison side to connect Logsdon River with Hawkins River. If they failed, they would try to be assigned to the CRF party that might make the connection through Proctor.
The three cavers quickly put on their wetsuits at the base of Thrill Shaft in Morrison Cave and began the long, crawling slog through the T Survey to Logsdon River. This was the third trip through the hog wallow for Don and Sheri. The crawl seemed longer today than it had the first time. Thom thought the crawling would never end.
The walking and wading through Logsdon River to the hole where the river disappeared with a roar invigorated them, and soon they were whooping and hollering, enjoying the echo of the brilliantly resonant passage. Just one hour after leaving the T Survey behind, they reached the Sentinel and were in virgin cave. The thirty-five-foot ceiling swallowed the yellow glow of their carbide lamps, and the immense, black passage was eerie. For the next thousand feet, they walked wide-eyed through a dazzling array of orange flowstone draperies and large rimstone dams that glowed in stark contrast to the black chert. This was caving!
Don, a few feet ahead of Sheri and Thom, ducked his head beneath one especially large flowstone drapery, expecting nothing more than continuing large passage.
“Damn!” he said.
“What’s wrong?” Sheri asked, stopped in her tracks.
“Breakdown!” Don stood at the foot of an enormous pile of black, jumbled boulders that extended up into the darkness of the ceiling. Breakdown was the only thing that could prevent a connection to Proctor Cave, and here it was.
The wind continued to blow past them at high velocity. The boulders were clean-washed with no signs of river ponding. A small stream of water was flowing through the pile. Maybe cavers could go through too.
The trio checked hole after hole in the enormous pile of boulders. The breakdown blocks were large and the rockpile was full of voids. They moved through a succession of holes farther into the cave toward Proctor Cave. But, the pile continued. They occasionally popped out into passage fragments, but they either ended abruptly or led back into the main breakdown zone.
They spent hours poking out leads, but there was no way on to the main passage that by all rights should lie below them. They finally called it quits in a large breakdown room where a small waterfall fell down an adjacent dome. High leads continued among the boulders, but the sought-for way down continued to be blocked. As they sat cooling themselves in the large room, the air drifted lazily by, hinting of continuing cave . . . somewhere. But where? The opportunity for their non-CRF connection was ebbing. As each minute passed, their exclusive playground seemed more threatened. The CRF was coming.
Defeated in their main objective and exhausted, they retreated. They would have to take their chances with the CRF expedition the coming week. If they could not make the connection themselves, at least maybe they could join the CRF connection trip. The elation from their discovery of the huge trunk passage was now overcome by their disappointment.
Around noon on Friday, 29 June, the three cavers dragged themselves out of the last pit of Morrison Cave, drove back to their cabin, and crashed into a long, deep sleep.
Saturday dawned. The Austin House at Flint Ridge bustled with activity as crowded cavers ate breakfast. It was nearly July, and it was going to be hot. Everyone would be going underground today, if only to escape the searing midday heat. A special excitement filled the air. Most of the arriving cavers knew about the recent discovery of the river below the P17 Pit in Proctor Cave.
Bleary-eyed and still tired, Don and Sheri wandered into the house. Five seconds after they walked in, a smiling Pete Lindsley marched up to Don and grabbed his right hand in a firm handshake.
“Hey, Don, welcome! I’m glad you could make it.” Pete led Don into the expedition leader’s office adjoining the main dining room in the Austin House. “I’m putting two parties into Proctor Cave today. I have you and Sheri on one trip and Zopf and Lynn Weller on the other. I’ll fill out the rest of the parties later. What do you say?”
Don looked towards Sheri with concern. Pete beamed at them for an answer. There was no way either of them could go into Proctor today; they were too exhausted from their trip into Morrison Cave, and their gear was a sodden mass. But they couldn’t admit they were shot, because that would lead to questions about what they had been doing.
Finally, Sheri blurted, “Pete, I sorta have a bad cold and think I should stay on the surface today.”
Pete looked at Sheri, assessing this unexpected excuse. “Oh . . . okay, then.” He then looked expectantly at Don, who was now on the spot.
“It’s been a tough week for me too. I’d like to go caving with Sheri in a day or so. If that’s okay, I’d like to pass.”
Pete looked confused but didn’t push it. “I don’t know how you can miss this trip. Suit yourselves.”
Twenty minutes later, Pete stood in the door to the kitchen and looked over the mass of cavers. After a pause, he cleared his throat and began his expedition welcome speech.
“Welcome to the July expedition! I want to thank each of you for coming. It’s going to be a great week, and we’ll have lots of cave for you guys to find. You just have to go look for it . . .”
He covered a standard list of things to do and to avoid, chores that needed to be done around the facilities, and new operational directives. With such a crowd, the need to project brisk efficiency was critical. The disciplined organization style of the CRF gave rise to accusations of bureaucracy and arrogance by offended independent cavers, but unarguably, it got the job done. Long-time attendees usually tuned out this part of the meeting.
Don perked up when Pete’s monologue returned to the expedition’s objectives at hand.
“This week, we have something special for you. As you know, last month a large underground river was found deep in Proctor Cave.” All the cavers now tuned in. “The trips to the river will be difficult, but the discoveries will be magnificent. I think we can accommodate everyone who is able and wants to go. Trips will likely be twenty-four hours, but we have found a way to make things easier for you. We have prepared a map.” He pointed to the cork bulletin board where a new map had been posted.
Don strained to see the squiggles from across the room but couldn’t make it out.
“This is a map of what you will find.”
Laughter filled the room.
“Don’t laugh! I’m serious!”
Pete grinned and waited while the chuckling subsided. “Each party can choose ahead of time which discovery they want to make. All you have to do is just mark it on the map, and it’s yours. And be careful! We’ll be checking to make sure that you explored the correct lead! And, if you are lucky, you will be on the party that makes the connection between Proctor Cave and Mammoth Cave! Now, won’t that be something!”
Pete began to announce the trip assignmen
ts. Only one trip would go to Hawkins River today. Richard Zopf would lead Roger Brucker, Lynn Weller, and Scooter Hildebolt to continue the survey upstream into and beyond the deep water. They would carry inner tubes, wetsuits, vertical equipment, and other caving gear. They would be loaded going in but could leave the rope and inner tubes for the parties that would travel into Proctor the remainder of the week.
After the meeting broke up and the cavers scattered to get ready for their assigned trips, Don began to study the fanciful map on the wall. From the base of the P17 Pit, the river was drawn leading gracefully to the east, passing waterfalls and large side leads. One lead to the north pointed to Pete’s predicted connection with Mammoth Cave. What a dreamer!
Don shook his head at the irony of the bogus map. If Pete only knew how prophetic his joke map probably was!
The trip leaders picked up their cave gate keys, passes, and last-minute instructions from Pete Lindsley. Then they drove off, fanning out across the park. Last in camp was the Hawkins River party. With all the multiple packs and heavy gear that they had to move, they spent a long time preparing.
Roger Brucker pulled out some peculiarly bent metal wires from his pack to show off to everyone.
A jab was hurled from some caver across the parking lot. “Hey Brucker! Whatcha gonna do with those things? Cook hot dogs?”
Roger ignored the insult, explaining that the pieces of bent coat hangers would serve as excellent survey stations in the featureless river passage lined with mudbanks. “You see, you just stick these into the mud and then someone else will be able to find the stations.” Roger stuck the end of the wire into the ground beside the car to demonstrate his point. The wire looked like a little golf flag. “I call them ‘Highly Visible Flags.’”
By that time, a small crowd had gathered to hear Roger’s pseudoscientific lecture about odd little pieces of coat hanger that more closely resembled some lunatic’s weapon.
The irreverence continued to issue from the crowd. “Aren’t you afraid you’re going to stick yourself with those things?”