Mammoth Caves: Wild Cave Tour!
Friday, June 15th, 2007Including our recent trip, I reckon I’ve been to Mammoth Caves at least four or five times in my life. The last time I was at Mammoth Caves was during Thanksgiving 1995. Ken Waineo and I were down from Wheaton spending Thanksgiving with extended family in Kentucky. We drove down to Mammoth Caves expecting to do something like the “Wild Cave Tour” (more following), but found it wasn’t being offered that day or was already sold out (can’t recall, exactly). I think we did the “Historic Tour”, or something along those lines, instead.
I was more than a little disappointed and recalled that if I ever had the chance to return to Mammoth Caves, I would certainly make the preparations necessary for that other more rigorous tour, the Wild Cave Tour.
Here’s the description of the “Wild Cave Tour” from the Mammoth Caves website:
Duration: 6 to 6½ hours
Caving Distance: 5½ miles
Sells Out at: 14 visitors (reservations required)
Restroom Available? Yes, at Snowball Room
Emphasis on: Safe caving techniques; environmental concerns; cave exploration (past and present); team building
Landmarks Seen: Carmichael Entrance, Cleaveland Avenue, Split Rock, Snowball Room, Boone Avenue, various areas off developed tour trails, Frozen Niagara Tour route
Elevation change: 300 feet
Physical Challenges: Free-climbing cave walls; lengthy crawls through areas as tight as 9 inches high; walking in a crouched position; hand and knee crawls over jagged rocks and dirt; crawling through wet areas; twisting into and out of tight crawlway openingsBoots
Over-the-ankle boots with lug soles are *required* on the Wild Cave Tour.* Restrictions: • Visitors must have had their 16th birthday • An adult must accompany visitors under age 18 • High-top, over-the-ankle lace-up boots, with lug or deeply treaded soles, are required. No low-cut hiking or athletic shoes allowed. Failure to wear required footwear will result in visitor being removed from the tour prior to trip departure • No backpacks are allowed on the tour. Small fanny packs may be taken • Chest or hip measurement should not be more than 42 inches to avoid situations that impact tour for all participants • Work or climbing gloves and long pants are recommended - do not overdress • Helmets and lights are provided • Visitors should bring their own kneepads • Soft athletic (i.e. volleyball) kneepads are recommended (hard plastic kneepads are prohibited) • Requires a minimum of 4 participants • Visitors must pick up reserved tickets 30 minutes prior to tour departure, or tickets may be sold to others • Visitors may bring their lunch or purchase lunch at the Snowball Room.
Free-climbing cave walls? lengthy crawls through areas as tight as 9 inches high? walking in a crouched position? hand and knee crawls over jagged rocks and dirt? crawling through wet areas? twisting into and out of tight crawlway openings?
Yeah, count me in.
My wife and nearly everyone else to whom I’ve recounted this event thought I was completely nuts. Maybe so… but it was still loads of fun. Here is a brief account of some of the day’s adventure.
The tour consisted of eight guys and two Mammoth Cave Rangers/tour guides ( Ty and ? - I already forget her name ). I’m notoriously bad with names and won’t attempt to recount the names of the other seven guys. All who went on the tour were great to be around and made for a fun subterranean trip.
There was only one gentleman who was kicked off the trip for not having proper footwear. Their basic requirement was a sturdy mountaineering/hiking boot with ankle support. I didn’t find the description on the website at all ambiguous. However, this man was wearing what appeared to be a glorified pair of the old Converse high-top - the sort of shoe we all wore in Jr. High. The ‘high-top’ covered your ankles, but didn’t provide any support. Anyway, that’s the type of shoe he was wearing and I was curious as the whether they’d let him on the tour.
Long story short, they didn’t. It turned out this guy had tried the same thing the day previous and figured that he’d get a different response from a different tour guide. Why he didn’t just drive into town to the nearest Payless for a pair of cheap steel toed boots, we’ll never know.
The souvenir bandanna we all wore with many of the landmarks seen…
Once we were geared up, we traveled by bus to the Carmichael Entrance that leads down to Cleaveland Avenue. It’s difficult to recall the exact sequence of monuments, structures, and tunnels we went through. Indeed, I’ll probably forget a few ( that’s why I’m writing it down ).
In no particular order, here they are: Carmichael Entrance, Cleaveland Avenue, Fish Rock, Bare Hole, Kathleen’s Crawl ( brutal! ), Snowball Room, Boone Avenue(?), Lantern Room, Cathedral Domes, Becky’s Alley(?), The Lion’s Head, Gerta’s Grotto, Otter Slide, Hooter Alley (yep, probably what you’re thinking), Shark Fin Alley, Fox Avenue, Star Trek Room, Shotgun, and the Frozen Niagara Entrance.
By far the most challenging thing we did that day was a very tight “tunnel” called “Kathleen’s Crawl.” We turned into a smaller passageway from one of the larger avenues and Ty the Ranger sat us all down and began to tell us a little about the Crawl. The Crawl got its name from from a ranger that, back in the early 80s (or was it the 70s?) discovered the crawl while leading a tour such as the one I was attending that day.
While sitting there in this room listening to all this I began wondering how such an obvious tunnel could be overlooked for so long. It didn’t look difficult and didn’t look like a ‘Crawl’. At the end of his speech, he stood up from where he was sitting, got down on his hands and knees and proceeded to wiggle his way into a crack in the floor. Thus, Kathleen’s Crawl. The exact dimensions escape me, but “crawl” is certainly appropriate - actually “slither”, “wiggle”, or “struggle” may be better words to describe this stretch.
Here’s someone else’s description of the Crawl:
About an hour into the excursion, we’re given the choice between two crawls, one called Kathleen’s Crawl and the other called The Hellhole.
Never would I have thought I’d regret not choosing going through something called The Hellhole.
Kathleen’s Crawl was discovered in the 1970s, we’re told, by a young Mammoth Cave Park ranger named Kathleen Dickinson, an adventurous woman who wanted to explore an opening no one else in the park cared about.
Hubris has been the downfall of better writers (and cavers) than I, but fear combined with hubris provides an odd chemical cocktail in your brain. Imagine crawling 100 or so feet through a jagged hole the size of a computer screen. Endorphins released into your brain during the first 10 yards give way to fatigue in the next 10, only to give way to the inevitable deals with God during the last five.
Not being able to raise my hips is a maddening experience, but knowing that people behind me need to move as well is an omnipresent motivator. We’re not even halfway through this thing, and already I’m bleeding, tired and dirty. One of the disposable cameras I brought is so clogged with sandstone and sweat, it doesn’t work anymore. My mouth is dusty, and there’s grit in my teeth. I need water so badly that I clean whatever dirt I can off my water pouch and swallow the rest.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of the trip. My digital camera’s flash would not have done justice to anything we actually saw and experienced. (Note what is said about the disposable camera in the previous quote.) One of the guys on the trip DID bring his camera and took some pictures. He told me he’d send them my way when he could. Stay tuned.
For a flavour of what I did, here a few other blogs that describe the same trip with photos…
Another description of Kathleen’s Crawl
Another blog - including a picture of the “Shotgun” and the “Bare Hole”
