Half a mile doesn't seem very long when I run it. Half a mile was a Herculean distance when I was forced to either crawl on my hands and knees or flat on my belly, and drag my pack beside me (particularly on the return trip). The Rabbit Hole never got wider than ten feet and the ceiling never rose above three feet. Luckily, the floor was either covered in clay or loose dirt an inch thick - the crawl was simply humbling instead of punishing (mental notes: next time I need to put my knee pads under my pants so they don't rub my knees raw as quickly; I need to carry a loop of rope to easily drag my pack behind me). How many amazing first experiences can you have on one trip?
The Rabbit Hole eventually let out into the Snowball Room. Gypsum is a funny mineral (calcium sulfate dihydrate), it can form flakes, straws, beards, strands, flowers, balls, and who knows what else. The Snowball room was aptly named - the ceiling was covered with glittering snow white balls of gypsum that varied in size from ping pong ball shapes to spheres as big as fists. The chamber was a fitting beginning to the Gypsum Halls.
Blue Springs used to be an underground river system, but due to geologic activity, the majority of the cavern system was now dry. I could imagine water rushing through the Halls - they had the perfect shape, roughly ovular, twenty feet wide and eight plus feet high. However the water was gone, and that made the caves the perfect environment for gypsum. The ceilings scintillated as we passed, the minerals catching the light from our headlamps, and even more delicate formations lined the walls. We admired paper thin sheets and tangles of snow white gypsum that looked like a mass of cotton candy. If the the Halls were part of our reward, the icing on the cake, for the trials we had faced, then the Mega Junction, our destination, was the cake.
Imagine a domed cavern 120 feet high and at least that long, an echoing expanse large enough that my new headlamp barely illuminated the far wall, and you can begin to picture the Mega Junction. Add in a pile of car-sized boulders, three other cavern mouths leading from the Junction, and strange organic rock formations sprouting from the walls and ceiling, and the picture is complete. Have I said it enough yet? Once more, I was humbled in the face of what nature had wrought. Tired, sore, and happy, I laid out on a boulder and tried to soak it all in.
It had taken four and a half hours to travel three miles. We had hopped, squeezed, chimneyed, crawled, and tramped, we were humbled and tired, but we had made it! It was a trip full of experiences and sights most people will only read about. Veni, vidi, vici! Wait, we had to get out, that meant going back the way we came in...
I spent just over eight hours under the earth on my first caving trip. When I do something, I go all the way!
We stopped at a small-town restaurant afterward - the meatball sandwich tasted like ambrosia.
Subscribe!
