I heard about the wild tour at Blanchard Springs Caverns (near Mountain View, AR and Fifty-Six, AR, which I swear is a real town) thanks to two gentlemen who happened to be on the Raccoon Mountain tour with me. Since it's only a few hours from where I lived in Memphis, I thought it would be worth a try. Blanchard Springs Caverns is part of the Ozark National Forest, and they offer several different tours, including a jaw-dropping, lengthy wild caving tour.
Now, I am very used to driving out into rural areas and visiting tiny towns. At the time, I wasn't. I had a room reserved at a motel (not a chain motel) in Mountain View, AR (population under 3000). When I arrived at 9:30 at night, the office was closed and there was no way to get into my room! I had never heard of a motel office closing before. So, I went down the street to a chain motel with a 24/7 office.
Here's our group before the tour, with me behind the camera. I'd say we're ready to go.
Blanchard Springs' wild cave tour is a wonderful experience, and quite different than others I've been on. Overwhelming rooms filled with thousands upon thousands of formations; incredible varieties of formations; even different colors of formations; and even interesting and numerous formations deep in the cave. (Usually there are more on the upper levels but few on lower levels.) This cave has many helictites, mysterious formations which are stalactites that curve in circular and coiled shapes. No one is quite sure how dripping water can build a curling formation. There is a lot of wildlife in this cave - we saw dozens of tiny bats, a salamander, a tiny millipede, and a cricket or two. Also, Blanchard Springs is a cavern with enormous open rooms and giant drop-offs. We walked or crawled by holes that would drop you 50, 70, or even 100 feet below into another room. The character of the cave was also reflected in the challenges of the tour: We had only a few crawls, and only one short belly crawl. However, we had many, many scrambles up and down steep, long slopes; many walks near ledges or holes which dropped five or more stories straight down; and several short climbs up rock walls. We began, once off the tourist path, in a colossal room called the Grand Canyon room. Far, far away, where our combined headlamps could barely pick it out, we could see the floor sloping steeply down and, in the distance, back up. We carefully slid down the slope - ten stories down! - to arrive at a sizeable underground stream. Here we are on the way down:
We then climbed back up the other side, including a tight spot where we had to slide along a narrow ledge while the guides stood a few feet below to catch us. If we slid off, we'd slide a few dozen feet into rocks, and maybe 50ish feet all the way to the floor. Our main guide was a 50-odd year old gentleman named Paul, and he was a hoot. Looking something like a mall Santa with his white beard, Paul was knowledgeable, friendly, and encouraging. He also had a barrage of terrible cave-related puns. The whole trip we were lost in a painful hurricane of cave puns. He must have a collection of them written down. A young woman named Taylor was the trail guide. Paul would position her to help us up slopes or stand where she could catch us. She was very helpful, and seemed to be very fit. However, she was so small that I have to admit that I don't think she could have caught one of us if anyone had fallen. She might have been 5 feet tall and 105 pounds - could she really have stopped me (6'2, 170ish pounds) if I fell? I - or anyone else - would have knocked her over, don't you think? Somewhere here we passed a hole near the path awkwardly called I'll Miss You Hole - a drop of something like 70 feet. Later on we'd be looking up at it from the room beneath. We walked through the Subway Tunnel, which looks like what it is called - wide, straight, and spacious, it could hold a subway car easily. We then came to a fork where Paul asked us if we wanted to belly crawl like REAL cavers, or just crawl. Of course we all want to be real cavers, so we went through the Ham Sandwich, a short belly crawl.
At the end, you're exiting the belly crawl maybe three feet above the floor. I scooted out by walking on my hands until the rest of my body was free, but the person behind me couldn't figure out how to get out. I turned around and helped her place her hands and wriggle out.
After Ham Sandwich, the path was extremely narrow, and we squeezed between the walls for a short while. Here is an example of the ever-present formations in Blanchard Springs. They're everywhere, big, and multi-colored. Why is the one big column white? I'm not sure. I should add that we were given permission to use that one formation as a handhold as long as we didn't mess up any others. That person is not touching something they're not supposed to.
We emerged onto a big flat rock where we rested. Behind us was another huge drop off, this one called, ominously, Death Ledge. (And the drop was, I think, seven stories onto jagged rocks; you would indeed be dead if you fell.) We walked along Death Ledge (but not too close) for a while, and scooted down another long slope to the bottom where we could look up at Death Ledge from below. A walk down here took us to the deepest point of the tour, the Titan Room, where a few enormous formations loom. (They resemble Titan missiles.) This is where we stopped to rest and eat whatever we brought. Turning around, we didn't take the exact same path and saw more of the cave. We climbed up a little passage called Corkscrew, a vertical rocky tunnel (the easiest way to climb it is to turn like a corkscrew as you go). Here someone is emerging from the Corkscrew:
We also traversed Meat Grinder - a ledge called Razorback was the only foothold, and we had to edge sideways along it. Razorback was not flat - it was like walking along the sharp edge of an arrowhead. Behind us were small holes (still big enough to fall in) that dropped 50 feet onto sharp rocks. That's Paul, our guide, bravely straddling the hole which would drop any of us to our deaths while we edge along the Razorback:
We ended up back at the top of Death Ledge, and we went through the crawl that we'd skipped earlier to do Ham Sandwich. The crawl was very nice, lots of formations, but there was a big, deep hole to watch out for. Back at the Grand Canyon, Paul asked us if we wanted to detour a little farther before returning, and we all did, so we saw further down the stream passage - another gigantic room - before returning. We crossed the Grand Canyon again and were back to the tourist trail. All through this tour were, as I've said before, incredible, rare, and varied formations. Also, we saw many, many bats close up, all of them tiny (smaller than hamsters) and actually pretty cute. One person on the tour tried to take a picture of every single one, but gave up once she had a few dozen pictures. Our group was another good one - no one out of shape or otherwise unprepared - and we saw more than most groups, and stayed in longer. We met at 9:30 and returned to the visitor center at 4:00. Though not all of the time was spent in the cave, we of course had to suit up, but maybe 10:30-3:30, at least five solid hours, was the duration of actually being in the cave. Should you take this tour? It's not as difficult as Mammoth or Raccoon Mountain. I'll give its difficulty about a 5/10. However, it is quite long. It is incredibly beautiful and adventuresome in a different way than those other tours - this one is unlikely to make you too claustrophobic, but features lots of frightening drop-offs. Check it out if you're in the area!