Lengthening the World’s Longest Sandstone Cave

Olly and I were lucky to get places on the renowned Meghalaya caving expedition this February. Meghalaya is a state in north-east India, next to Assam (famous for it’s tea). The name Meghalaya is Sanskrit for “abode of the clouds”.

Fun Meghalaya facts :

• Mawsanram (town near Krem Puri) is the wettest place on earth

• Within the state there are three main tribal groups; Jaintia, Khasi and Garo who each speak a different language

• There is a matrilineal system with property and names passed down through the female line

• Shillong (the capital) is much cooler than tropical India as a consequence of its high altitude; at ~1500m above sea level

• The scenery around Shillong reminded European settlers of Scotland hence the nick name “Scotland of the east”

Our journey to Shillong was rather long but reasonably smooth. Luckily we missed the snowstorm which shut Manchester airport and only had minor de-icing delays. We had another delay on our internal flight from Mumbai to Guwahati as we seemed to be refuelled twice, once on the runway. We also had a worrying moment where a man with a toolbox was spotted wandering around under the wing of the plane. However, we arrived safely and were quite relieved to spot our many bags trundling around the baggage carousel.

It is possible to fly to Shillong but we had been advised against this as more often than not flights are diverted or cancelled due to fog. Instead we had a three hour car journey from Guwahati to Shillong, I was intrigued to see that our driver had his blood type painted on the car near the fuel cap. This was our first experience of Indian roads, to me it looked like total danger chaos but the old hands told us that it actually used to be much worse as there are now far fewer coal lorries on the roads.

Meghalaya has been in the international news recently when a group of miners became trapped in flooded illegal coal mine workings. Although mining of coal was banned in 2014 due to the horrendous safety and pollution record, a loop hole allowing the transportation of already extracted coal piles on the surface meant many mines continued to operate. However, this month a further ban on the transportation of coal was implemented and hence fewer coal lorries are on the roads.

We eventually arrived through the slow crawling traffic of Shillong and dropped our kit bags off at Brian’s house. Brian who lives in Shillong has been caving with the expedition for over 20 years and sorts a lot of the logistics. He also has the biggest bonsai tree collection I have ever seen. We then checked into our hotel had a few beers and went to bed. I did wonder what was missing from our hotel room and in the morning I realised that it was windows. The standard rooms had no windows, but this was actually beneficial as you didn’t get the 6am bus station noise. 

After breakfast we headed to Brian’s to start the kit organising. This year there was no real doctor on the expedition so Olly and I took charge of the medical kits. We did an inventory and found Dr Cat’s shopping list from last year. We pondered over what was OK to be out of date and then set off with a rather long list drugs to purchase most of which are prescription only in the UK. Three pharmacies later we had a big bag of most of these, which was both worrying and convenient. You can buy almost anything over the counter which explains India’s antibiotic resistance problem. The only challenge was actually getting served at the counter where there appeared to be no queuing system and I seemed to have very poor “bar presence”.

The next morning our small group set off (this was the pre-expedition week with a small group of cavers).

Our task for the week was to finish the exploration and survey of a cave called Krem Puri which the expedition had been exploring for the previous two years. Krem Puri is particularly special as it is formed entirely in sandstone, the passage is a mixture of low crawling maze and deep canyons, there are some sand stalagmite type formations which are thought to be new to science. After last years expedition the total surveyed passage was just under 25km making it the longest sandstone cave in the world. This world ranking has made Krem Puri very popular with tourists, this is both a blessing and a curse, whilst the popularity of the cave brings wealth to the local area and many people are getting to see and experience the cave, the cave has suffered from graffiti.

Much of this graffiti is the result of tourists marking the walls with arrows such that they don't get lost in the complicated maze of passages but some is pointless name tagging. As most of this cave is inactive (does not carry flowing water) and is millions of years old, this graffiti will now be a permanent feature.

Over the week our task was to explore and survey a series of high level passages, descend down a couple of undescended holes and collect water samples for scientific analysis. On the first afternoon we were in the cave working out the passages we needed to explore we heard some voices further along the canyon.

Soon a group of four guys in flip flops with phones for torches stumbled up to us, it turns out that they were lost and they were very pleased to see us. Mark pointed them in the direction of the exit and we carried on, ten minutes later we hear another group down the canyon, it turned out to be the same guys who had managed to go around in a big loop. Mark decided to take them directly to the cave entrance we had entered to ensure their safe exit. This was not the entrance they had come in and they were quite rightly alarmed that there was significantly more crawling in small sandy tubes than they had done on the way in. However they trusted that Mark knew what he was doing and they were soon deposited safely in daylight.

Mark actually has a bit of a reputation for getting lost in the cave, to be honest its very easy to do with so many turnings and connections, everything looks the same.

To access the unexplored high level passages we could not use conventional means like climbing or bolting as the rock is super crumbly. Instead Mark and Brian had organised for the locals to leave a 6m long bamboo pole outside the cave entrance. With this we used a technique called "may-poling" where a wire ladder is first tied to he end of the pole which is then hoisted up and leaned against the rock face. You then trust your fiends to brace the pole whilst you scale the wire ladder. Our 6m bamboo pole was a little thinner than we had hoped for which actually worked in our favour, although it was unnervingly flexible whilst climbing this extra flexibility actually made navigating the pole around a lot of sharp corners, in a Chuckle Brothers fashion, much easier.

Being the lightest I was sent up the pole first, but after it bore my weight we took it in turns to explore all the high level passages, unfortunately finding all were infilled with sand and impassable in this area of the cave.

The other passage we needed to check was much further into the cave up a passage called the Grand Canyon, it turned out to be quite an ordeal getting there with perilous traversing (straddling a large drop) on very crumbly ledges with a sprinkling of large loose boulders for good measure. After two hours we had managed to get ourselves and the 6m bamboo pole to the passage of interest. Here the team split; Mark and Brian went left to explore and survey the new passage. Cookie, Olly and I climbed right up the pole into an area of known passage called the mini maze which had some unsurveyed sections. We soon found out why these were unsurveyed as they got smaller and smaller and then muddier. Whilst crawling in a body sized tube filled with gloopy mud I realised the funny patterns on the floor were actually thousands of rat footprints. I really hoped that I wasn't about to come face to face with one of the four very large healthy looking rats we had seen scampering up the canyon earlier. With no rat encounters our misery was rewarded by seeing what Cookie described as the best fossilised dinosaur vertebrae in the whole cave.

There is a third entrance to the cave which requires a 60m abseil down a cliff face to a stunning balcony in the trees. We rigged this route mainly for fun but also for easy access to some flowing water at this end of the cave which we wanted to sample to record the temperature, pH, conductivity and carbonate content. This enabled us to do a through trip which you enter and exit through different parts of the cave.

After a number of days crawling around in some of Krem Puri's more unpleasant areas we were quite happy that Mark was satisfied we had ticked off all the question marks on the survey and that we could travel back to Shillong to meet with everyone arriving for the main expedition.

Caving in the Abode of the Clouds

Once back in Shillong we met with the new crowd who had arrived for main expedition. This is the most geographically diverse expedition I have participated in, with cavers coming from Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, the UK, Serbia and India. After a further couple of packing and organising days we loaded up the Sumos (4x4 type car) and headed to the East Jaintia Hills.

The first part of the journey was on tarred roads, however it was slow going due to the large number of slow lorries. At one point we overtook a lorry, overtaking another lorry which was overtaking a third lorry, on a blind bend. The technique seems to be to beep your horn and flash lights as you are doing the dangerous overtake. Although it never seemed too dangerous as everyone expects there to be a vehicle on the wrong side of the road around every blind bend anyway.

After a quick lunch stop and the distribution of road beers we soon left the main road and travelled through small towns, the roads here were still tarred but there were numerous severe speed bumps with no markings. I’m not sure how our driver was spotting these as they were basically invisible, we only hit one at high speed. Perhaps it was the constant use of betel nut.  

Betel nut is a popular drug in Asia, by chewing the nut from the areca palm with its leaf and lime (chemical not fruit) the user gets a sense of euphoria and is kept alert. This seemed to be working for our driver. The downside of chewing betel nut is that it stains your mouth and teeth bright red leaving you with a grisly looking smile.

We finally turned off the tarred road and trundled along a very bumpy rocky dirt track, two hours later we arrived at the village. Because of the elections the kids were on school holidays for February, therefore we could use the school buildings for a gear store and office. We unloaded the gear and set up our tents. Unfortunately there was very little flat ground as the camping area was in a small V shaped valley. This bonus of having a small 2 man tent is that the roll mat is the same length as the tent and you can’t slide off it!

The first few days were not too fruitful for us: we did some prospecting, found some very small caves and I even managed a chai-crawl across two villages looking for an absent village headman. However I did get to see some of the famous standing stones whilst we waited for him. We may not have found any caves that day but we did return to the camp with seven pumpkins we had purchased from the villagers.

Our luck soon changed however; Olly went to check out a cave shown to the group by a kid called Michael who had been bribed (with biscuits) to lead their group to a cave; and I went with Robin and Becks to check out “Steamy Cave” escorted by guide Klet. 

We shot off at high speed following Klet down into the valley on a small path. After walking through, rice fields, banana plantations, bamboo forest and some small river gullies we dropped into a huge dry river bed. We then clambered over large slippery boulders for a further 45 minutes before arriving at some beautiful limestone pavement. There were a couple of tricky climbs which Klet easily hopped down, I managed to follow and Klet pointed to a small hole in the river bed from which steam was rising out. Robin and Becks managed to climb down a little downstream and around the corner was a much large cave entrance with a load of huge butterflies floating in the steam billowing out from it. 

Robin climbed down a small drop in the entrance and reported that there was a 13m pitch (drop needing rope) into a huge canyon passage. We gleefully returned to the village via a more direct route straight up the hill through thick-ish jungle. The next day we returned with two teams, one to survey a small cave above the river bed and us to drop the pitch. Robin taught Becks how to bolt whilst Kit and I started the survey. Unfortunately after dropping the first pitch, which had an amazing circular rainbow as the sun hit the steam, there was very quickly a second pitch in Yorkshire pot style.

Luckily we could scavenge the small rope we had used as a handline on the river bed climbs for the next pitch. Kit, Becks and I were rather alarmed to hear a huge rumbling and crashing sound coming from the second pitch that Robin was part way down. Luckily he was just gardening (knocking down dangerous loose rocks). The spare rope wasn’t long enough and we had to head back to camp and return the next day with more rope. 

We returned to camp via yet another different route through the jungle. It took another two trips with another two lots of rope (and another four different routes through the jungle) to reach the bottom of the pitches.

The problem with navigating to the cave was the lack of a path and the numerous areas of thick spiky plants in the jungle. We tried both conventional and unconventional navigation techniques (GPS way points and our own internal compasses) with varying degrees of success. I normally have a good memory for routes but after route number 6 everything looks familiar. Marcel and I had one rather embarrassing incident where we ended up going too far right to avoid thick bamboo forest and dropped into the river bed too far downstream. No problem we thought, we could just head upstream to the cave entrance, we were wrong, five minutes later we ended up at the bottom of a dry 10m unclimbable waterfall. It then took us an extra hour to backtrack and traverse across valley before descending in the correct place.

Once at the bottom of the pitches we realised that the boulders in the river bed on the surface were actually making up the ceiling 85m above us. We weren’t sure how these were being held up so decided not to walk over them on the surface anymore (Becks had actually already put her leg through a hole in the river bed). We had descended into a vast chamber full of huge house height limestone pinnacles, it was difficult to see across the chamber due to the amount of steam. Below this chamber the cave transforms into a beautiful clean washed canyon with clear blue/green pools.

Following the canyon we found a huge 45m aven and a large chamber with a number of ways on. Meanwhile Olly had finished his cave and there were very few other options to be explored around the village. The decision was made to move the camp to Muallian; the village at the end of the road. Interestingly this is a Jaintia village whereas the previous was Khasi. This means that the village speaks a completely different language even though it is only a 40 minute walk between the two.

Our new campsite was much flatter but busier as we were occupying the village football pitch. We now had a 45min drive, an hour long very steep walk to the cave and then an hour of caving to the end of the survey (including of 80m abseiling on rope). Robin had been suggesting camping at the cave entrance and we all now agreed.

We planned a 2 night 3 day trip with 6 of us/two survey teams. Robin did a great job organising the food but we did question the 1.5kg of powdered milk he had packed. He explained that powdered milk is a lifesaver but we managed to wrestle him down to taking only 500g. After a lift up the road and a rather heavily laden walk down the hill Robin decided to stay at the new camp and set up whilst the rest of us went surveying. We returned to a meal of dhal, meat curry and rice cooked on an open fire and for those that had forgotten a plate, dinner was served on banana leaves.

We slept out on the open limestone pavement on the edge of the dry river bed. It made a nice change to wake up to bird song rather than church bells and cockerels from 05:30 in the morning. Tim did note how mad it was to be sleeping in the Indian jungle, we had to persuade him that there were no tigers. We didn’t mention the wild cat footprints we had seen in the cave, or that a tiger had been seen in the village (although this was 10 years previous).

I didn’t sleep particularly well the first night as to save weight I had only carried in a thin foam mat rather than my Thermarest. But after a tasty breakfast of granola with milk powder and an expedition up the river bed to collect 20l of water for that night's dinner we headed back into the cave. 

We were all excited about today’s trip, we had finished surveying some smaller side passages and were about to head into the unknown stream-way which we could hear rumbling in the distance. We attempted to survey with two teams in the same area of the cave such that we could take turns being the first people walking up the new stream way. Unfortunately this over complicated things. 

After finishing a particularly unpleasant and loose small side passage in which Uros (who is very tall and broad) managed to fill, and therefore block the Bluetooth signal from the Distox (laser device we use for surveying) our group headed out to cook dinner.

Uros stayed with Robin and Tim to continue up the stream way, Uros is not a fan of water (despite being a cave diver) but somehow he managed to traverse around a lake and climb a small waterfall whilst retaining dry feet. Unfortunately the group then met a lake which was swimming depth. This was a convenient time for them to finish surveying for the day.

After dinner and some rum around the campfire we turned in for the night. I slept much better as I dosed up with drowsy anti-histamine tablets, another breakfast of oats, and milk powder and we headed back in for the final day of caving. We split into two teams; three to survey a small pitch that hadn’t been descended and the “swimming team” to cross the lake. We discussed what was the best option for crossing the lake as we didn’t have wet suits or buoyancy aids. I thought that swimming in a caving over suit would be impossible as it would drag you down. Therefore the plan was to strip down to our underwear and pack our caving suits and thermals in a dry bag which could be carried across. We actually had a extra lake to wade across (as Uros’s route the previous day had very loose boulders), then a waterfall climb before the swimming depth lake.  We arrived in the stream way, stripped off and bagged our clothes, luckily the water is quite warm in Meghalaya. I did feel slightly ridiculous in underwear, knee pads and pink wellies, and also quite exposed climbing the sharp limestone on the waterfall.

We arrived at the deep lake and started the survey, we have waterproof drums to keep the survey instruments dry, but I always try and keep these out the water when transporting other peoples kit in case the drum leaks. Holding the drum above my head I confidently stepped into the lake. I was definitely over confident and I instantly sunk above my head as I forgot how hard it is to swim in wellies. Some spluttering later I somehow managed to flail to the wall where I could cling on and drag myself to the other side. Tim who had already got across said this was quite an amusing sight, but he was impressed that despite my head being underwater my arm holding the drum of instruments remained defiantly in the air. 

On the other side we changed and continued to survey, disappointingly the huge stream passage quickly went into a low chamber which had boulder collapse in every direction likely caused by a fault line. We finished the survey off and exited the cave. Four of us headed back up the hill, but Tim and Robin decided to stay another two nights to have another poke at the boulder choke and try to find a way through. 

Unfortunately they were unsuccessful and when we returned to the cave after a rest day we tidied up a few bits of the survey and de-rigged. There was a lot of kit to come back up the hill and Tim gallantly did three trips that day whilst we carried the ropes out the cave. My rucksack was so heavy climbing back up the hill I couldn’t lift it onto my back but had to get into it, from the floor by putting the straps on and rolling onto hands and knees before getting up.

Whilst steamy cave (Krem Um Ladaw) had come to an end Olly had been spending a few days in Retdung Khur, this was originally thought to sump quite quickly but actually after a maze section it broke out into stomping beautiful stream way. Olly had proven to be very useful and was referred to as the little monkey for climbing some difficult climbs and even rescuing Pinsham’s wellies that he managed to loose in one of the swims.

Olly and I had one last trip together in Retdung Khur where we went to finish off a bit of the maze surveying and so I could see some of the pretty stream way. We were changing at the cave entrance when it started raining, I was a little worried given the small cave entrance is in a river bed but Olly assured me that everything would be fine. We ended up having a short trip due to limited battery in the survey instruments. It actually didn’t stop raining all evening and by the following morning the football field was a big muddy puddle. That morning we took down the camp and waited for the cars to collect us for our journey back to Shillong.  We were not hopeful the sumos (fake 4x4s) would made along the very very slippy now liquid mud road. Luckily although the sumos didn’t get through a 4x4 pick up lorry did, and with Simon doing multiple trips up and down the 1.5 hour long "road" we made it to where the cars had dared drive to. I was super impressed with Simon’s off-road driving abilities as when we were seemingly gliding across the mud sideways towards some kind of danger he would somehow save us from it at the last moment. We didn’t even get stuck once!

With us safely in the first trip up to the waiting cars we headed back to Shillong. Within a couple of hours it started biblically raining, we hoped everyone had made it up the dirt road as it was terrible driving conditions even on the tarred one. People didn’t seem to be using their headlamps in the thunderstorm but just drove everywhere with their hazards on instead. We made it back to Shillong and headed to the final night party hoping that eventually everyone else would turn up.

By some miracle everyone made it back to Shillong before 10pm and we all had some drinks to celebrate both this, the end of the expedition and that this years findings tipped the grand total of cave discovered in Meghalaya since 1992 to 500km with 12km being discovered this year.

Tennessee Caving Expedition

We arrived in Nashville and after sampling a traditional US breakfast at a 24hr Waffle House we headed for Crossville. Luckily we had been given a free upgrade by the hire car company and Olly rode up to the hotel with a minivan rather than the Ford Fiesta we ordered. This was fortunate as I wasn’t sure how we were going to fit 5 people with luggage in a Ford Fiesta.

On reaching our Airbnb half the group headed back in the direction of Nashville for a caving trip that Paul had pre-arranged. The rest of us were left to battle through a group shop at Walmart and to deep clean the Airbnb which wasn’t in a great condition. We actually spent the following morning doing a further deep clean and taping up holes in the attic ceiling so we could sleep people upstairs.  

We then headed to Mountain Eye, the cave we would be spending the expedition pushing and surveying. Paul gave us a guided tour of the walk to the cave, the river crossing point (the river was extremely low at ankle depth) and the entrance series of the cave.  On the walk back to the car we could hear a lot of gun shots, we shrugged this off as being normal for America and weren’t too concerned that these were getting louder the closer to the car we got. We only became concerned when a ricochet hit the metal sign 20m away from us and the cars. On ducking behind the cars for cover we must have made such a commotion that whoever was firing on the other side of the riverbank realised we were there and stopped.

The following morning we returned to the cave to find that the significant rainfall we had overnight had caused the ankle depth river to rise to waist depth. Paul had been adamant that the cave didn’t flood and that the river would never rise over waist deep... After checking to see if the river was wade-able and having second thoughts we decided to walk upstream, across the bridge and back to the cave along the opposite bank to see if this route was even possible. After some slipping and sliding we made it to the crossing point on the opposite bank, although many of us didn’t recognise it has the river had risen another 6 feet in the hour detour. By this point I had major reservations about going in the cave, but we nipped in to check if the river had affected the entrance series. It had! The previously dry entrance chamber now contained a 6 foot deep lake which was rising 2 inches an hour. We made a rapid slippery steep retreat back to the cars via the steep riverbank. This was a rather exciting day and was made more exciting when Ruth noticed a snake close to where we were scrabbling up the bank, this was a bad day for Sam to have forgotten his wellies, but luckily the sandals Leo had lent him were fairly sturdy.

After the water had receded Olly, Rich, and I had a couple of trips into the other entrance to the system, Cobb Creek. Our mission was to try and find a lower entrance which would bypass the pitches at this end of the system. This section of the cave has a large chamber with relic saltpeter workings from the Civil War. We did nearly a kilometre of surveying but failed to find a new entrance or any unsurveyed “virgin” passage. At one point whilst inserting ourselves sideways in a very narrow sand filled tube we thought we must be there first people here but were disappointed to see a direction arrow scratched onto the wall, I have no idea why someone else had been in there.

One of the other aims of the expedition was to try and join another cave system named Hyperborean to Mountain Eye. There are rumours that a through trip had already been made, Rich had previously found what we thought must be the entrance which matched the sparse 1970s description.

Ruth, Leo, Sam, and I went back to survey it and were actually quite excited when we found no evidence of previous survey stations. Hyperborean is a UK style cave with lots of crawling over cobbles. It also is where the Cobb Creek river sinks and parts of it look to flood to the roof. However with Sam making check trips back to the surface to check for rain we surveyed a good few 100ms. One crawl led us to a chamber with a warm waterfall, which was likely coming in from the river bed above, however it was too wet to continue through the slot in the floor. Sam spotted a matching crawl way headed in the opposite direction and we followed this for a good few hundred metres, following a strong draft.

We remained excited until Leo discovered some bang wire (wire left from explosives used to enlarge caves) and a rat’s nest containing pieces of old style surveying measuring tape, slightly defeated we headed out for the day. A few days later we returned to continue the survey as the lure of larger passage and the strong draft tempted us. We followed Leo’s lead, surveying an actually quite nice chamber before finding an in situ rope leading up with a dropped survey tape at the bottom, then following the draft through a convoluted boulder choke and we made it to the larger stuff! This was actually also crawling in a shale layer with a dodgy looking ceiling, we named this Chicken Little Passage. Finally we reached standing room and followed the sinuous passage, we were nearing the end of the PDA battery life when Leo popped in view below us. Through an unlikely low crawl he found some pretty stuff before reaching a huge bore hole passage.

We returned with two teams for “bore hole day” we were excited as this was looked like the passage into Mountain Eye. Unfortunately team South borehole soon discovered the borehole ended after 40m in 5 small ways on, most of which lead to either tiny crawling passage or unstable looking boulder choke. We then found a slot in the wall and were super excited when Sam called out that there was a fresh survey station, We made the connection! Turns out we hadn’t but that the North borehole team were inadvertently on our patch, although they were pleased to see us as we provided a quicker way out bypassing a large rat mum and baby that they had crawled past.  The end boulder choke turned out to be a tantalising 200m away from Mountain Eye once we put the surveys together.

One of the more interesting leads left was a small hole in the floor with a 6m drop below onto cobbles. We returned with a bolting kit and light weight rope. The hole was very small but Nick and I just about managed to squeeze through. We followed a muddy stream way for some way when Clinton suddenly appeared behind us. We all were a little confused about how he had got to us without descending the pitch. On the way out Clinton commented on how surprised he was that the Americans had pushed such an unpleasant cave.

Returning via Clinton’s new route Dave, Ian and I surveyed another 300m of passage which actually had some very nice formations. We also managed to keep popping up into Pete and Fleur’s survey area killing off their leads. 

Meanwhile Olly had spent quite a few trips following Paul, at speed, from the Lott Dean entrance through fun bits off passage such as the Wanker Yanker (named due to the numerous sharp bits of rock yanking your clothing) and Buff River (named as you had to wear a buff to keep the flies out of your mouth). 

We also did some tourist caving in the area including secret cave, a large well decorated chamber below a short pitch. This was my first experience abseiling on US rope, it was so thick and inflexible that our European style descenders would not work without some slightly dodgy advanced rigging techniques.

We also visited Blue Spring cave, this is a very long dry system, there is a comprehensive survey of this cave, so comprehensive in fact that the survey comes as 200+ A4 sheets in their own special survey bag. This added a puzzle / escape room like element to caving, every so often we would have to sit down and lay out the survey sheets on a large boulder to work out where we were and where we were going. 

We spotted some interesting chert formations in one area of the cave which actually looked like tree roots.

Near these I tried to take a shortcut to avoid a climb, it was very small but I had seen Ian do it and thought I must fit. Obviously I underestimated the size of my arse and became wedged, luckily the others were on hand to give me a bit of a shove. 

Aside from caving we participated in some traditional American activities such as; eating catfish, BBQs, roaming around Walmart, drinking light larger, smoking cigars, eating large volumes of ice-cream and of course, shooting guns.  One of the US divers was super kind and invited us over to his parent’s house to shoot guns. After mentioning they weren’t really gun people they produced numerous handguns, revolvers, shot guns rifles and two AR15s (automatic rifles).

The next 5 hours was spent sending a barrage of bullets into the trees. The finally was shooting a tub of explosives from a safe distance with a automatic rifle. 

After three weeks we said goodbye to everyone at Nashville airport and Paul, Olly and I headed to Kentucky for some tourist caving.

The Great Smoky Mountains

With Anne looking after Paul we took a couple of days out from caving to visit the Great Smoky Mountains which are part of a national park on the Tennessee - North Carolina border.

Fun Smoky Mountain Facts: 

• The park is the most visited in the United States with 11 million visits per year.

• The hardwood forest in the lower elevation areas is the most diverse ecosystem in North America.

• The name ‘smoky’ comes from the natural fog which often hangs over the mountain range.

• 99 different species of native tree grow in the park, which is more than anywhere else in North America or in all of Northern Europe.

• There are 31 different species of Salamander in the park, hence it is known as the Salamander capital of the world.

Before we got to the Smoky Mountains we drove past our hotel in Pigeon Forge. This was a surreal experience as the 6 lanes of traffic crawl at a snail’s pace speed limit of 35mph. Alongside are huge hotel buildings which look like an amusement arcade became a town. There was a huge haunted house, themed hotel and one which looked like it had been built upside down. We also drove past the wax works museum which had a huge model of King Kong climbing its spire and a Mount Rushmore sculpture which had the faces of the presidents replaced with films stars.

This continued as we passed by Dollywood in Gatlinberg, Dolly Parton's home town. This was styled as a tacky Alpine ski resort. I was beginning to think, what have I got ourselves into, when suddenly we left the town and were surrounded by thick forest. 

The national park was very well organised, with a visitor centre where you can buy very cheap guide pamphlets and ask for hiking/trail advice. On our first day we decided to have a chilled out trip to the highest peak in Tennessee which is Clingmans Dome. The walk is actually very short as you can drive almost to the top.

There were some cool, sweeping, views from the very 1960s style viewing platform, you actually only have to gain 91m over a distance of 800m to get from the car park to the summit peak at 2025m. The Appalachian trail runs over Clingman’s Dome and the summit is actually the highest point on the whole trail.

We decided to take a different route back to the car park and walked 0.5 miles of the Appalachian trail which has a total length of 2,200 miles (therefore we have walked 0.02% of the trail). Meeting and chatting to a thru-hiker reminded us of the South West Coast Path. Perhaps we should put this trail on the bucket list?

The following day we opted for a more serious hike, following the Alum Cave Bluff Trail to Mount Le Conte. This is the third highest peak in the park at 2010m tall. This time we had a 10 mile hike with 800m of ascent and decent. We had purchased a trail guide but found this was actually a nature guide. Olly therefore narrated all the interesting nature facts as we passed along the trail. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we didn’t see any black bears, which is almost surprising as on average there should be 2 bears in every square mile.

The hike was pleasantly shaded and started by following a pretty creek before gaining altitude. I carried the bag for the first section and Olly got to experience some of the sexist comments that I had, whilst hiking the coast path.  It also seems to be a common thing for Americans to say “don’t worry you are nearly there” or “you are doing really well”. This positive encouragement is a stark contrast to the British stiff upper lip. I’m not a big fan as when someone tells me I'm nearly there I expect the summit to be around the corner not 2 miles away. Brutal honesty I think is always the best policy when knowing how much walking is left to do.

After reaching Mount Le Conte lodge we struggled to find signs for the actual summit. It turns out the summit is in the trees so actually has no view and everyone instead heads to one of the panoramic look out points. We were headed for the summit to be completionists but someone on the route mentioned that today was lama resupply day and the lamas would be arriving in the next 20 minutes. 

My urge to see pack lamas overrode my need to reach the summit which is actually only 70m higher than the lodge. However we did walk as far the bothy complete with its food hanging rack to deter bears. 

We made it to the lodge in time to see the pack lamas being fed and watered. This group of lamas climbs three times a week to restock the lodge, each lama carrying between 20-30 kg. A little different to the Alpine huts which are restocked by helicopter. The lodge is super popular often being fully booked up to a year in advance.

After admiring the lamas we went to the cliff top look out which did have good panoramic views. After some picnic lunch including trail mix (which seems to be a popular US thing probably as it contains M&Ms) we headed down to the car. 

The Smoky Mountains were a pretty cool place and I would have liked to have spent more time doing the hiking trails and hunting for salamanders. We hit the road and headed back to Anne’s cabin to rendezvous with Paul before heading to Alabama for a caving conference. 

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!