Saturday I went on my first caving trip with the Huntsville Grotto, a child organization of the National Speleological Society. I joined up after doing some research into caving after my trip to the Walls of Jericho - it piqued my interest. I blame it all on Brannon really.
Once again, I woke up with an "unngggghhhh" far too early on the weekend - 5:45 - and was at the meeting location early. You can always spot the new guys, they're the ones that make it to a meeting first, but we were happy to chat and wait for the "pros." Once everyone arrived we quickly packed into a couple vehicles began our long drive towards our destination Blue Springs cave in northern Tennessee.
Two hours later we were just to the left of the middle of no where and "suiting" up for our descent into the chthonian depths. For this trip, the required gear was pretty light: good boots, long pants, long sleeved shirt, knee pads, gloves, backpack, helmet, and light. We made a strange crew, fourteen people dressed for a caving expedition in the middle of a cow pasture. Thanks to the geology of the Southeastern region, caves can be found throughout the area, and some are located in unlikely settings.
I could just say we spent eight hours tramping, climbing, and crawling around under the earth, but that doesn't satiate my inner story teller. The trip can be split into three phases: rock hopping, the rabbit hole, and the gypsum halls. Rock hopping was just that - picking our way over fields of rock that varied in size from a few feet to tens of feet. We climbed up giant piles and crossed deep chasms, our path was never level or straight. (Mental notes: I need better boots, and I should have bought full shin guards). Then in one "chamber," that looked just like the others that we'd traveled through, complete with the pile of rock that we picked across, we came to the rabbit hole. The hole (entrance) led to the Rabbit Hole (passage).
How the first cavers found the Rabbit Hole is beyond me. The entrance was nothing more than a three foot hole in the cavern floor near one of the walls, it looked less exciting than some of the other crevasses and holes in the piles of stone that'd we'd hopped across. I looked down at our destination and my first reaction was that our guides were pulling our legs. "Let's see if we can get the new guys to climb in there."
However after a little deliberating, and before you could say "you've got to be kidding me," one of the "pros" with us shimmied into the hole feet first. Yes, "it opens up after about seven feet," but until that point I was literally in a coffin of stone with just enough room to lift my head a few inches. I believe the exact phrase that escaped my lips was, "this is GREAT!" The crazy thing: I wasn't lying, I was having the time of my life!
I made it through the hole, easy, and I enjoyed a sort victory rest. I remember thinking that it couldn't get any more challenging, any more intense than that. How naive I was - our descent into the Rabbit Hole had only just begun.
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