by Beyond Mammoth Cave- A Tale of Obsession in the World's Longest Cave (epub)
That is why I did not want any part of this camp despite being pressed strongly to participate. From my perspective, it was not worth it if I had to camp. I resisted the peer pressure and the prospects of being called a wimp. I would rather make long trips traveling at a high rate of speed than stay underground so long that all the extra gear had to be carried in. In my view, if cavers carried camp gear, they were doomed to require it. Light and fast trips, that was the answer. Besides, underground camping in Kentucky has resulted in very limited success. It was not much fun. After a hard day exploring, nothing could replace a shower, hot food, and a warm bunk back on the surface.
But the planning continued for the camp. The planners, of course, had my most sincere support and good wishes. I continually bolstered their enthusiasm with reminders of how productive their camp could be. I boldly predicted they would survey a mile of cave in Pete Crecelius’s new river. How could it end? I asked.
With four packs each, the die-hard cave campers entered the Roppel Entrance at three o’clock in the afternoon on Thanksgiving Day, 1979, after spending the entire morning packing and repacking. I was not at the cave, purposely insulating myself from any last-minute pressure by staying home in Maryland to attend my first family Thanksgiving in many years. Seven people—Chris Welsh, Linda Baker, Bob Anderson, Miles Drake, Bob Johnson, Randy Rumer, and Peter Keys—and twenty-eight packs made for a slow trip to Arlie Way. Packs had to be passed laboriously from caver to caver to overcome the countless obstacles; with the burdensome load, there was no way any one person could manage alone. A rope had to be used at the climbs to lower clumps of packs to the bottom. Climbing with such loads would have invited an accident.
Four hours after entering the cave, the energetic group finally stumbled into Arlie Way. With sighs of relief, they dropped their camp packs and took a long, deserved rest. The soft sand of Arlie Way would be an ideal campsite. In fact, a few members of the crew were tempted to stretch out right then and there.
Thirty minutes later, they continued their trek farther into the cave. Five of the seven party members were newcomers to Kentucky caves, having been sucked in by the continuous and unrelenting salesmanship of Chris Welsh, Miles Drake, and myself. As the last of the group walked north, they marveled at the sandy-floored tubes characteristic of passages in the Mammoth Cave area. They loved Arlie Way.
Delight soon turned to despair, however, as spacious Arlie Way yielded to the low-ceilinged, rimstone-encrusted, horribly long North Crouchway. These passages seemed to go on forever. They were miles from the entrance, hours into the trip. So much crawling! When would it end?
Finally, the cavers made a right turn into Kris Krawl, leaving the North Crouchway behind. At its beginning, the Kris Krawl is a crouching-height passage through long-abandoned water-carved potholes. The passage soon becomes broad and low. Leading the way through the crawl, Miles and Chris snickered as the others greeted the low ceiling with groans. It was a wide tube—but only twelve inches high. This was worse!
After fifteen more minutes of crawling on their hands and knees, the group came to Station D10, the end of the map and where they were to begin. They planned to divide into two survey teams and conduct a leapfrog survey. One team would begin at D10 and continue the survey toward the new river; the second would proceed to the river and start surveying there. The first party would then pass the other party and continue on into unknown cave.
As Chris uncoiled the tape, Bob Anderson, Linda Baker, and Bob Johnson followed Miles, who was still leading in cave familiar to him. The long straddles and steep climbs challenged the short-legged Linda, but with little assistance she climbed down into the river.
Anderson smoked “P1” two inches high on the wall of the large room above the climb.
“They should have no trouble finding that,” he said.
The worst things that can happen in a leapfrog survey are having the trailing party go past the beginning of the other survey, not noticing where it began; or stopping the survey before connecting to the next segment, which leaves it as an unattached survey, floating with no connection to the map. Besides annoying the hell out of the victimized party, this wastes valuable time and effort. Anderson made sure that it would not happen today.
It took some time to thread the survey down into the floor among the boulders to where they could plumb the tape into the river passage. Then the four were standing in the passage, which had been named the River Lethe. They sat silently on a ledge, ten feet above the stream. Below them the water ran across the bedrock floor in a three-foot-wide canyon. A strong breeze headed downstream.
Linda broke the silence. “It’s all so black,” she said.
Every piece of exposed rock was as dark as coal—the walls, the floor, the ceiling, even the boulders. Where the water had washed the exposed surfaces clean, the blackness glistened.
Miles shrugged and said, “I’m not sure, but I think we’re in an enormous chert layer, probably the Lost River Chert Formation.”
“What’s the Lost River Chert?” Linda muttered quietly, not wanting to sound dumb by asking.
“It’s a relatively insoluble chert layer. It prevents most passages from downcutting below it and often indicates you are as low as you can go.”
The passage was spectacular, especially after the miles of back-breaking cave they had followed to get there. Miles had, however, neglected to inform his party of the extent of the breakdown they were about to survey through. Distances between survey stations suddenly were less than ten feet.
“Hey! What’s this shit!” Bob Anderson exclaimed. “You didn’t tell us about this.”
“Don’t you remember me telling you about the breakdown?” Miles asked.
Anderson did not remember.
Surveying was slow, painful, and maddening. It took them two hours to work their way the tortuous eighty feet to the other side of the rock pile.
“Well, is there anything else you haven’t told us?” Anderson asked.
“No, just going cave. Walking stream passage.”
As they resumed surveying in the river passage, Anderson said, “We’ll see.”
Time melted away as they continued northward in the large canyon along a boulder-littered ledge system. Overall, this was pretty decent cave passage for surveying—roomy and comfortable, easy to walk in. Somewhere around Station P30, Chris Welsh’s party moved past them to begin the third leg of the day’s line.
Miles’s party worked on into the early hours of Saturday morning.
After setting Station P50, Miles’s party still saw no sign of the beginning of the other party’s survey.
“Where in the hell is the beginning of Welsh’s line?” Miles said. “Have we passed it?” All four of them had been looking carefully for a survey station, but no one had seen one.
“Maybe we’re at the wrong level,” Linda suggested. The large passage had many levels, any of which could have been surveyed.
“I don’t think so,” Miles said. “They said they would stay at this level. Besides, it’s the most obvious.”
One of the last instructions the two survey teams had agreed upon was that they would leave an unmistakable and prominent marker at the beginning of each leg to avoid overlapping.
“I don’t think we’ve passed it, either,” Anderson said. “But we’ve come a long way since we’ve seen them.”
The group was exhausted. Compass readings had to be repeated because Miles, who was keeping book, kept falling asleep.
Anderson declared that enough was enough. They had not and would not be able to connect to the third survey. They would just have to violate the leapfrog rule that states survey segments must be connected. It was a long way back to their camp in Arlie Way, they had done a lot of work, and it was late. Their party had surveyed over fourteen hundred feet. They wondered how the other party was doing.
As Bob Johnson, Miles Drake, and Linda Baker put away the survey gear, Bob Anderson disappeared down the passage, stating he wanted
to see if he could find the beginning of the next survey. Actually, his curiosity about the destination of the passage they had been surveying was too much to resist. This passage looked promising!
A few minutes later, he returned to the rest of his party.
“It’s not time to go yet. You have to see what’s ahead.”
Anderson turned and headed back into the cave, knowing the others would follow.
Four hundred feet past P50, Anderson stopped to let the others catch up. They were met by blackness—an enormous passage twenty feet high and forty feet wide. The River Lethe flowed into the passage and joined a larger stream that continued to the north. None of them said a word.
Anderson pointed to the right. “That’s upstream. I think Chris, Randy, and Peter must have surveyed up that way.”
They tried to see through the gloom. The passage was big, although not as big as where they were standing. On the far wall, they saw “O1” labeled in large letters. This had to be the other party’s starting station.
“Let’s go see where this goes.” Anderson motioned straight ahead into a large breakdown-floored passage. They set off, away from the other party, following the large virgin stream flowing underneath enormous boulders.
They walked three hundred feet down a steep slope of breakdown back into the stream, the ceiling now over thirty feet above their heads.
“God!” Miles exclaimed.
Although tempted mightily, they resisted the urge to explore onward into this huge borehole passage. That could wait for the next survey party. After all, no one would appreciate a rape of virgin passage.
They began the long trip back to the dry passages of Arlie Way, weary from sixteen hours of continuous work.
Along the way through the River Lethe, Chris Welsh’s party caught up with them, and the combined group continued back toward camp. The thousands of feet of cave bore on endlessly, especially for the new Roppel cavers unfamiliar with the cave’s long succession of obstacles. Twenty-one hours after entering the cave, they reached the camp packs stashed in Arlie Way. They were more than ready for much-needed rest.
As they unpacked their camp, problem after problem arose from a combination of poor planning and plain bad luck. The watering hole I had suggested they use turned out to be a Niagara Falls for anyone who tried to fill water bottles. Chris’s new mini-stove refused to function, despite diligent coaxing, and most of the group’s food required hot water to prepare. Nearly everyone had underestimated how much clothing was required for sleeping. Linda had neglected to bring dry socks. The shivering group, painfully cold, struggled to sleep for six hours.
The final insult came when it was Bob Anderson’s turn to retrieve water. He walked down the trail, stopped, and stared at a murky pool of brown water. Eight hours earlier, only dry rocks had been there. A deluge of rain had apparently fallen over the last several hours, flooding into the cave.
After he returned to camp, the group discussed possibilities. A flooding cave, especially one in which the dynamics were not understood by the group, was a caver’s worst nightmare. Nearly every year, cavers are trapped and drowned in caves. Visions of being trapped in the cave or, worse, drowning in a low-level passage dominated their thoughts. Realistically, they recognized that most of the passages between them and the entrance were at levels too high to flood; nevertheless, concern hung over the group like a dark cloud.
Randy Rumer and Peter Keys finally announced that they were heading to the surface. The others watched as the pair swiftly packed and disappeared into the darkness. The remaining five discussed what to do, finally deciding to head out of the cave also. They packed their gear, leaving what might be useful for a later camping effort. Surely, the remoteness of the new trunk passage would require additional camping trips to explore it.
With their load lightened, their travel through the S Survey was easier than it had been on the way in. However, as they passed the Boundary Dome into the smallest-sized section of the route between them and the surface, they realized that the advantage of their reduced load was offset by the difficulty of traveling uphill in this passage. All the sharp flutes on the wall surfaces pointed downstream, making their travel against the grain. Squeezes that they had easily slid through on the way in were now friction-ridden struggles. All their packs had to be lifted up rather than dropped down.
Four miserable hours later, they stood in Coalition Chasm. The small waterfall beside the rope now thundered as a frothing torrent. Everything was soaked, including the vertical gear they had stashed on ledges hours before. To their relief, Randy and Peter’s gear was gone, so they must have made it out safely. Now very cold, they struggled into their vertical gear, and one at a time they made the seventy-foot climb to the top. They passed through the squeezes and finally stood below the forty-foot entrance pit. Sunlight streamed in from above.
Forty-two hours after entering the cave, the last of the group of seven reached the surface, eyes squinting in the bright morning sunshine.
The underground camp was a noble try but a failure. Significant time and effort had been invested for accomplishments that could have been made on a far shorter trip without camping.
This was the last camp trip for many years in Roppel Cave, and the cache of camp gear left by this party on a ledge in Arlie Way still waits for someone to use it.
The new discovery was incredible. It exceeded my most optimistic expectations—an enormous borehole heading north away from the main cave. This was what we had been dreaming about and looking for. Although the campers said they had learned much and were convinced that the next time the kinks would be ironed out, I remained skeptical. I was smugly confident that I could do more without camping on a trip of what I considered to be a reasonable duration: anything less than twenty-four hours.
The following month, I led a strong party of Don Coons, Sheri Engler, and Tom Gracanin into the cave to continue the efforts in this new north section. Wanting to see where the new river drained, we wrestled a five-pound bucket of fluorescein dye through the cave to trace the water. Jim Quinlan, the park geologist, would monitor the many springs in the area with dye traps—bags of activated charcoal that would pick up even the most diluted fluorescein dye trace. Our travel was also slowed by having to resurvey some of the route through the difficult canyon beyond the Kris Krawl, called Death Canyon because of the terrifying leaps required to traverse it. We dropped the dye and began to survey beyond P50 toward the new trunk passage now called Elysian Way. It took us over six hours to travel from the entrance to P50. By the time we had begun the survey, we were already fatigued.
In just a few hours of fast surveying, we placed Station P65 at the junction of the stream passage with Elysian Way, then swung the tape to tie into O1 of the hanging survey. Moving onward, we continued the survey north. We passed the end of Bob Anderson’s exploration and headed into virgin cave, leaving the first scrape marks on the black rocks littering the floor.
The passage cross section was enormous! We surveyed up and over many large piles of breakdown, the passage growing larger after each pile. Finally, a pile of rock extended from floor to ceiling. Sheri and Tom Gracanin sat down, by this time almost spent, the long trip back to the surface looming in their minds. Don and I were still excited about this fabulous passage and immediately started investigating the pile.
We saw what was ahead: lots of rocks and several black holes.
“Do you want to check above or below the pile?” Don asked.
I looked up. At the top of the pile, a black hole led into the ceiling. Down below, the pile was just more rocks with doubtful looking holes.
“I’ll go up,” I said.
Without moving an inch, we carefully studied each other’s faces. Suddenly, we both sprinted recklessly up the pile of rocks towards the most inviting black hole. Pride was at stake here; I was not going to let him beat me to that hole! Don cleverly headed me off at a tricky spot, reaching the top of the pile first. Laughing, we climbed up through th
e hole, finding ourselves in a large walking canyon that cut across the ceiling of the passage we had been surveying below. Big leads. The best way on seemed to be down, back into the blackness of enormous cave. Together—for we declared a truce—we picked our way down the far slope back into large passage.
Looking forward into the vastness, we unwittingly stepped on a particularly precarious slab, which began to move. Struggling to retain our balance, we fell backwards onto our asses on the rock as it began to slide, gain speed, and toboggan down the long slope.
“Oh, shit!” I yelled.
It was a wild ride. We clung to the rock as it ricocheted down the steep slope. I may have been screaming; Don was holding on for dear life. It was right out of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons.
After an eternity—probably three seconds—the rock ground to a stop with our bodies, if not our poise, intact.
“Whooee! Holy shit, what a ride!” Don exclaimed.
We stood on the now stable rock, gathering our wits.
“Guess we should be more careful,” I said.
In the distance, the sound of a large waterfall drew us ahead to the largest room yet. A pulsating stream of water fell from the eighty-foot ceiling, crashing onto car-sized rocks on the floor. What a place! Past the waterfall, we could see that the passage continued as before.
We retraced our steps back to where Sheri and Gracanin were snoozing. We coaxed and intimidated them to survey on for just a few more stations. They had to see the grand waterfall we had found.
An hour later, having reached that goal, they summarily quit after we set P88 on a large boulder. They yawned when they saw the waterfall, annoyed by the spray in their faces. Being transported directly to the surface would have been the only thing to impress those two. No matter. Don and I could not resist pressing forward. We fired up the flames on our carbide lamps and struck out to the north into virgin cave.