More Caving in the USA
With the rest of the expedition members dropped at Nashville airport, Paul, Anya, and I headed to Kentucky. Paul had organised, through one of his American friends, a trip into Roppel Cave – part of Mammoth Cave, the world’s longest known cave system with 400 miles of surveyed passage.
We arrived at the Lone Star Preserve, a campsite owned by a local caving club (or grotto as they’re known in the US). We met a few of the local cavers, and has a chat round the campfire. Holly, our guide for the next day, would arrive later.
In the morning, we met with the rest of the group. Ben and Raelyn would join us; their first and second caving trips respectively. We arrived at the cave and met Kevin our other guide for the trip. The route was pretty varied with a few climbs, and traversing over canyons, and lots of crawling! We exited the cave after 7 hours, which was pretty hard-going on the two new comers. They both thoroughly enjoyed it though, and were keen for more. Afterwards we headed for a Mexican meal, and couple of pitchers of margarita.
The next day we went for a tourist trip in Mammoth Cave, within the national park. The Grand Avenue tour is a 4 hour guided, through trip – entering at the Carmichael Entrance, and exiting through the Frozen Niagara section. It features some large, impressive, phreatic passages and heavy concentrations of gypsum formations. This was definitely the longest, tourist caving trip we’ve ever been on and there was a lot of walking between sections, and up & down collapses, albeit on concrete paths.
From Mammoth Cave we headed back to Tennessee, to stay a night at Anne’s cabin before heading to the Smokey Mountains. From Tennessee we headed south to Alabama and to the SERA caving conference – this year hosted by Huntsville Grotto. On the way we stopped at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. The museum showcases the work on the Gemini & Apollo programs to land a man on the moon. We were also entertained by a couple of theme-park style rides to simulate the effects of gravity in a rocket launch.
From there we made our way to SERA, and pitched our tents with some of Paul’s friends at the Huntsville Grotto. We’d signed ourselves up for a caving trip to Mrs. Millers cave for the next day, so in the morning we left with the rest of the group. We got changed by the roadside, and were instantly ravaged by a swarm of mosquitoes. We had a little difficulty locating the entrance, but when we did it opened up, with a couple of pitches down into the lower canyon series. I also managed to find the way on through an unnecessary crawl, as Paul & others just walked around the passage just to the right! At the bottom of the pitches there were a large number of vibrant cave salamanders. That evening there was the opening party, with a pirate-themed fancy dress. We’d cobbled together some costumes with cardboard and duct tape eye-patches, and $1 bandannas from Walmart.
We signed up for a trip the next day to McBride's cave. Unfortunately it rained constantly all night, and so the trip was cancelled due to the risk of flooding. We had actually already had a flooding incident in our tent as the holes, eaten into our groundsheet by Indian ants leaked and water pooled that subsequently pooled by our feet. Luckily we didn’t get very wet, and everything managed to dry before the evening. The banquet was held on this evening, along with some more partying & socialising.
On the Sunday, after a breakfast organised by the Huntsville Rescue Team as a fundraiser, everyone packed up. We said our goodbyes and left for Nashville. Emily & Phillip put us up for the night, before leaving for the airport the next day. Thanks Emily & Phillip!