It'd be very hard to pick a favorite national park or a favorite experience in the parks, but the one with the most personal meaning for me is Mammoth Cave. I decided, on a random whim, to try the Wild Cave tour. I reserved a spot and drove up from Memphis, TN one August just before I had to return to grad school. The Wild Cave tour was an experience I will never forget, and so stunningly inspiring that it kicked off my fascination for exploring all manner of trails, caves, scrambles, and other adventures.
Mammoth Cave is a wonder. While not as ornately decorated as many show caves (especially once you leave the tourist trails), its sheer size is humbling and breathtaking. Over 400 miles of passages intertwine beneath the green, rolling hills of Kentucky. That's not only the longest cave in the world, but more than twice as long as the second longest. Mammoth Cave was named for its size (there is no connection to woolly mammoths), but was named before anyone knew how huge it really was! Bleak, wide avenues characterize Mammoth, but it's full of surprising little tunnels, domes, and formations as well. Mammoth Cave's first guide may have said it best when he described Mammoth's alien landscape as "grand, gloomy, and peculiar".
The Wild Cave Tour
This trip report will start with 17 August 2011, the Wild Cave Tour, the trip that started it all, and after narrating that one, I'll mention some of the neat things I got to see and do on my subsequent times through this tour.
Arriving in the park the evening before the tour, I had a lot of time to kill before going to sleep. So, I took a walk on a paved trail behind the visitor center. Though it was dark, the path had tiny lights along it - just enough to show you where to go, but not enough to really give you any true illumination. A path in the middle of the trail led into the woods to something called the Old Guide's Cemetery. Some of the lights along that path were out, but I followed it anyway, feeling for the sides of the path until arriving at the little cemetery. By the tiny light of my cell phone screen I read the sign saying that Stephen Bishop was the guide buried here. Stephen Bishop, the sign went on to explain, was a slave who was brought to Mammoth Cave in the 1830s and put to work exploring and mapping the cave. Bishop was described as a genius who had taught himself Greek and Latin, was a geology expert, and brave enough to explore unknown cave passages with just a candle. He proved to be an excellent caver and cave cartographer, so much so that his map and many of his names for areas in the cave are still in use 170 years later. (I saw, later, a photo of his map: it is credited "By Stephen Bishop, one of the Guides".) He died at age 34 or 35 just after being freed, and was buried here, in the park, under a Civil War gravestone that was meant for someone else and has the wrong date on it. (Bishop, in fact, died before the Civil War started.)
In the black night, I could just barely make out a gravestone as a vague shape several yards away in the cemetery. It was a wonderfully spooky experience, and I almost expected the ghost of Stephen Bishop to emerge from the woods at any moment.
Here I am before the tour. We'd just gotten suited up in coveralls, kneepads, helmets, and headlamps, which are all provided by the park. (In fact, they don't LET you bring your own gear due to White Nose Syndrome, a fungus that is killing bats.) I was a little nervous about my first wild cave type tour - would it be too hard? Could I handle tight squeezes? - but it turns out that I had no reason to be. The six-hour tour was a blast from beginning to end. Near the end, I had enjoyed it so much I found myself wishing I could just turn around and do the whole thing again. If you are genuinely claustrophobic, this tour ought to be difficult, but while I do tend to feel unpleasantly trapped on, say, an airplane, a cave is different. Tight passages are a different kind of scary. You crawl into and out of them under your own power, at your own pace, and can always back out. To me, tight squeezes in a non-moving cave environment sound a little unpleasant, but are nowhere near as frightening when you're there.
The Wild Tour begins at the Carmichael Entrance, an artificial, dynamite-blasted tunnel. Directly across the street, perhaps 30 yards away, is a natural entrance to the cave. One of our guides pointed out that to get from one entrance to the other outside took a few seconds... but to do so underground would take eight hours of difficult caving through the labyrinthine passages of Mammoth Cave. A very long staircase, about 15 stories straight down, led us into the cave into a colossal chamber. This spot was on a tourist trail, and the chamber was lit up, and continued back out of sight, an impressively huge tunnel. Mammoth Cave is full of these broad, subway tunnel-like avenues, but actually isn't all that decorated with formations. The result is an utterly unique landscape that Stephen Bishop described as "grand, gloomy, and peculiar".
Soon we were off into the wild cave with a section called the Long Crawl. Our group, which consisted of fourteen people plus two guides, paused after a short bit of crawling and sat around a small chamber to introduce ourselves. We ranged from teenagers to me (30) to over 50. Most of us were on the tour for the first time, but one gentleman had been on it several dozen times! Our guide asked for a volunteer to bring up the rear of the group and, since I was there alone, I offered to do it. Our guide warned us that, should we become separated, we should just sit still. He'd retrace our steps if anyone was missing and find the person right away. Should one of us get separated and set off into the cave trying to find the group, we could wander, lost, for dozens of MILES in passages our tour guide didn't even know. We clambered into a small passage and crawled on hands and knees for quite some time. I quickly learned how important kneepads are - even with them your knees will be bruised at the end of this tour. Without, you'd be in a world of hurt. One or two spots required a belly crawl, which is not an easy way to travel! Mammoth Cave, thankfully, has a floor that is mostly covered in a deep layer of lovely fine dusty dirt. It feels like talcum powder and is very comfortable on the hands and knees.
In one of the small openings here we came upon Split Rock, the first tight squeeze. Split Rock is two flat faces of rock parallel to each other, but angled. Instead of squeezing straight ahead or up, it's maybe 15 degrees off straight up. When I slid up the narrow angled gap of Split Rock in seconds, I was much more confident that I could handle the tour.
Though this photo doesn't quite capture it, I became aware of the how spooky the cave passages truly were. This trip was the first time I'd been off tourist trails in a cave, and the third time I'd been in a cave lit only by headlamps. From the rear of the group, I would turn around and admire the perfect blackness of the passage behind me. I'd remember the guide's warning and realize that exploring in here alone could be deadly.
A bit more crawling brought us to Bare Hole, the tightest squeeze on the trip. Bare Hole (not "Bear Hole") is named because it has a tendency to strip clothes off people, and specifically to tear the back left pocket off your pants or coveralls. In fact, it grabbed exactly that pocket on me on one of my Mammoth Cave tours. Here I am emerging from Bare Hole:
Here are two neat pictures I found on my computer which are definitely from the Mammoth Cave Wild Cave tour. However, I don't recall exactly where so they go here.
Here we have an enormous flowstone formation, resembling warped, melted organ pipes. Person included for scale.
This photo is a great example of what many of Mammoth Cave's walking passages (at least on this tour) look like. Narrow, winding, craggy, toweringly tall. The sense of following an ancient streambed (which is, in fact, the case - Mammoth Cave formed from the flow of the nearby Green River) is very powerful.
At the start of the tour, I had volunteered to bring up the rear of the group. This is supposedly the most tiring place to be, though I have my doubts. Being at the back means I sit and rest while everyone in front begins a climb or enters a hole. After Bare Hole, our guide John asked me to lead the group through Hell Hole while he took a break. (You can just walk around from one side of Hell Hole to the other, which he did while we crawled.) He decided to mess with me and gave me specific directions for which turns to make inside Hell Hole. John's directions were somewhat complicated, so I crawled on in hoping I wouldn't get lost. This turned out to be a joke since Hell Hole does not branch at all. You cannot get lost in it, you just go until you come out the other end. This was the most exhausting part of this tour, a 270-foot crawl, the entire thing on our bellies, through a rough, jagged tunnel. Both the floor and ceiling are bumpy and uneven, making quick progress difficult, especially since you had to go through on your belly! Being in the front WAS a very cool, different experience: from the back, behind 14 people with headlamps, everything in front of me was always lit up, while in the front, everything was dark unless I pointed my headlamp at it. It was a very cool reminder of how dark caves are - an obvious fact which is nonetheless easy to forget. Hell Hole is well named - the place gets hot, not just from exertion but because the air does not circulate well.
This photo is from a later tour (I was in the front on this first tour and there was no one in front of me to photograph!), but gives you an idea what Hell Hole looks like inside. Notice that he's in a depression, and that's the ONLY reason he's on hands and knees. Nearly all of Hell Hole is a belly crawl.
This lady has just finished Hell Hole. Note the gentleman behind her still struggling through. Hell Hole exits onto a lit tourist trail, and we followed it to the cafeteria in the Snowball Room. (Mammoth Cave actually has a cafeteria - with drinking fountains and restrooms - in the cave.) At this point, the tour is about 1/3 through and we took a short break to eat. It's also a convenient failsafe point - if the tour is tougher than you thought and you're ready to give up, do it now!
After lunch, we were off much deeper into the cave and farther from any lit trails. The earlier part of the tour, we were told, stayed fairly close to tourist trails. However, now we would be up to 300 feet underground and two hours from the nearest cave exit. Getting hurt this deep in the cave could mean many hours before paramedics could get to you and carry you out if you, say, broke an ankle. In this photo, our group is climbing down from the tourist trail into the bowels of the cave. (You can just barely see the railing in the lower left.)
Here's a neat flowstone formation. I don't remember exactly where this was, so it may not be on this part of the tour.
We did a canyon walk, topped with the Million Dollar Move - ten feet off the ground, I had to wedge my right foot in a notch in the wall where there was no room to stand while I swung my left foot around a corner. This was the one spot on the tour where I actually was a little nervous - in an enjoyable way, but a little nervous all the same. The group in front of me had switched back and was below me, the tops of their helmets a few feet below my boots precariously perched on the walls. The guides set up nicely here to help us and would grab your foot and hold it in the notch. Shortly after the canyon walk, we came upon the Lantern Room, which has a single ancient, rusty lantern on the wall - an extremely lonely artifact, a single man-made thing in the miles and miles of canyons.
The next part of the tour is the most scenic. Though Mammoth is not hugely decorated with formations, it has a series of stunning waterfall domes which they call the Cathedral Domes. These are magnificent rooms, circular in shape, with toweringly high ceilings. The largest is 150 feet high and perhaps about 40 feet in diameter. Water flows in a tiny stream through the domes and is constantly dripping and running down their sides. The stream holds tiny animals who manage to survive in this barren environment. As a side note, there are those who try to debunk evolution by pointing out that cave animals losing their eyes over many generations doesn't make sense because they seem to be evolving backwards into weaker creatures. Even I, a non-biologist, can respond to that: Eyes take a lot of energy for an animal to maintain. If you don't need eyes (i.e. if you live in a pitch-black environment all the time), they're a waste of energy that could be used for something else. A creature without eyes can live on less food if their body doesn't have to support a useless organ, and evolution favors those animals who are more efficient. Here is a picture I tried to take of the big Cathedral Dome. I thought it would be a neat shot of another person on the tour admiring its size:
...And it didn't work. The dome was too big for the flash to pick out the far side! Our guide described a study to us that a co-worker had performed. The study tried to measure how quickly the domes grow. (The water dripping and running down the walls gradually expands the dome by eroding the rock.) The study demonstrated that the walls were being eroded at a rate of about 1 millimeter per year. Standing in the middle of this huge dome, realizing that the vast space had been carved by dripping water a millimeter at a time... if that doesn't make you feel a kind of serene, non-religious reverence, you don't really understand what you are experiencing.
We took a short but beautiful belly crawl through Hooter Alley, which John (guide) introduced to us by saying "I don't know why they call it that. There are no owls in there" with feigned puzzlement. Despite the silly name, Hooter Alley is a surprisingly gorgeous spot. In a boring little room, we slithered through a tiny crack in the rock which looked like it went nowhere, and instead led to a room (all of it under such a low ceiling that we had to belly-crawl) with a whole bunch of cool formations, and an exit in a totally different room. This is the entrance:
And here is why it is called "Hooter Alley":
Shortly after, we slid down a smooth stone which I think was called the Otter Slide, which was no big deal but had a cool name. Somewhere in among all this, we had to climb down over a slippery formation called Lion's Head, which involved a mildly tricky maneuver using butt and hands as points of contact:
We reached a neat upwards climb called the Manhole, in which we had to use both walls to clamber up into the another room in the ceiling. Climbing up the Manhole was a challenge for those like me who are not flexible, though I got up fine. We had to straddle the opening, but thankfully long legs make it a little easier. One of the interesting things about caving is how many different body types can work. Usually, the ideal shape is to be, of course, fit, but also as small as possible, so you are very strong in relation to your weight and can fit through any small passage. Tiny, twisty passages are tougher for tall, lanky people like me, but then again, the climbing up and down is pretty easy for those of us with longer legs and arms. The one tough climb for me was a climb up a wall about five feet high which had one tiny, uncomfortably placed foothold. The foothold was actually behind the top of the ledge, not easy to stand on. The people in front of me climbed up with no problem because they were able to just stand on my hands. I climbed up last and needed some pulling from the people in front of me. Here it is. I don't believe this little ledge climb has a name:
On later tours, I had an easier time climbing up this ledge, and once we did this area backwards and simply hopped down, which is easier. The final challenge was the infamous No Name, a pass which begins as a crawl, then shrinks to a belly crawl. Our guide told us that the rangers have names for it, but none of them are family-friendly enough to be shared with the public! This is No Name Pass' entrance:
The ceiling comes down and down, the walls close in, and in the tightest spot, neither my helmet nor boots would fit unless I turned them sideways. At the tightest spot, my back brushed the ceiling. And this tightest spot is not just a hole but about five or six feet of the passage. The ceiling is 8-9 inches above the floor. Though I was in no danger of actually getting stuck, this is the part that would give any even remotely claustrophobic person nightmares. Here I am just past the tight spot, as the passage is opening back up:
Notice my fanny pack on the ground next to me. In No Name and in several other tight spots, you have to take it off and push it through ahead of you since it won't fit. After No Name, we rested, turned our lights off, and enjoyed darkness and silence. When we resumed, the path expanded from crawl to stoop walk to just plain walk, and the last mile and a half of the tour was walking down long canyons and climbing up rock jumbles, but all these climbs were easy, like climbing irregularly shaped stairs. Here's a neat, hazy picture of a canyon passage:
It's a long ascent out of the deep recesses of the cave. We climbed up breakdown:
...And climbed up more rocks:
The passages along this section of the tour had some stunning gypsum flowers. These are wild looking formations made of crystallized gypsum, very delicate and shimmering and beautiful:
The photo doesn't do justice to the gypsum flowers. They shimmer silver and white in the headlamps as if they're covered in snow. On the way out, we walked down a long artificial staircase which looks very out of place and visited the Star Trek Room, which contains round nodules that look like an egg from a certain episode and a formation that looks a bit like the dish part of the Enterprise. We also walked down Fox Alley, one of Mammoth's characteristic broad, comfortable avenues. Fox Alley was named for a skeleton, assumed to be that of a fox, that early explorers found. The poor animal must have fallen into the cave long, long ago and perished. An actual biologist took the Wild Cave tour at some point and immediately identified the skeleton as that of a raccoon, not a fox, but they'd been using the name for so long that they can't change it. (The skeleton is no longer on display since some doofus stepped on it.) After a plenty of walking and climbing, we reached the tourist trail leading to the Frozen Niagara entrance, an area with some impressive formations. Most of the times I've done this tour, we walk by a tour coming in, which is always fun. The tourists on the easy walking tour look at us - filthy, with kneepads and helmets on - like we're crazy. We walked out that entrance into impossibly bright sunlight.
I'm a little dirtier than when we started. I enjoyed the tour, the challenge so much that I wanted to turn back around and do it all again. I would be back.
I've now taken this tour five times, and one of the great things about it is that it is quite different every time. There are many options and way too many passages to visit them all on one tour, so each time I went I saw new things. I even began asking for parts of the tour I hadn't seen before. Here are some more photos of other areas of the tour which I didn't see on my first trip.
Bryce Crawl (I'm not certain that's how to spell it) is an option in the Long Crawl area, a tiny, awkward tunnel which forces you to crawl on one knee and drag the other leg behind:
Late in the tour, there is a passage unpromisingly named the Sewer Pipe, which I actually found to be a really pretty place. We picked our way through a lovely tunnel with clear streams and pools on the bottom.
Here's a picture that shows more clearly the running stream:
The Sewer Pipe brought us to the Shotgun, two tunnels stacked on top on one another, where you can choose to go through the upper or the lower. The upper is trickier to get into, but the lower gets you wet. I went through the top and grabbed a rock protrusion and held on so I could swing my legs down without falling out.
There isn't much life in a cave, but there is some. Here's a cave cricket. We also saw a few tiny bats.
In the long crawl. Everyone's happy!
Here we are skirting a canyon:
On every tour, our guides pointed out the Bare Hole tends to tear the left butt pocket off people's coveralls. On one tour, we came upon Bare Hole with someone's left butt pocket still hanging there:
In the before lunch part of the tour, they might take you to Birth Canal. I'll admit this picture isn't that great, but it shows the awkward headfirst entrance into the Birth Canal.
Inside Birth Canal, a neat belly crawl:
Sometimes, I have done Kathleen's Crawl instead of Hell Hole. It's a similar long difficult belly crawl. Kathleen's Crawl seems to be tighter but not quite as uneven. This is Kathleen's entrance:
...And here is the inside of Kathleen's Crawl, and its neat ceiling:
I wonder if this is what it's like to be swallowed by a whale? (Can a whale actually swallow a person?) Kathleen's Crawl was named for its discoverer, who is now a lawyer in Georgia. I went to her website, and in her short, one-paragraph bio, it mentions a fact that has nothing to do with lawyering: that she discovered this passage!
On my second tour, I was again taking up the rear, and John the guide remembered me. He asked if I had led Hell Hole the previous time - I had - and he said he wanted to give someone else the chance. No problem, of course, and I reminded him he'd tried to confuse me with weird directions. He asked me not to give the joke away. When he tried to give the confusing directions to the person who would lead us through, he asked me how I'd done it last time, and I repeated his confusing directions, managing to keep a straight face.
A few other highlights that you may see on this tour (for which I lack pictures): The Mole Hole (before lunch), a squeeze similar to Bare Hole but supposedly even a little smaller. The Cheese Grater is a small tunnel you may do after lunch which has some sharp walls - be careful or it will grate your skin! There is the Poop Chute, an area where an early explorer's poo adorned the passage for years until someone cleaned it up. To get to this area, you have to clamber up the walls, stretch out across the canyon ~9 feet above the floor, and push your way into an uphill tunnel. Dave's Lost Sea is an alternative to No Name, and is a long, tiring passage which you have to go through with a stoop walk or a crab walk. Unless you want to get soaked, you need to carefully skirt big puddles through the passage. I think Dave is the person who found the passage, but there is also a roundish rock near the entrance of Dave's Lost Sea that looks like a fat, jowly face. They call it Dave, and you are supposed to pat his face for good luck on the way in. The ascent at the end of the tour is usually long but gradual, but they may take you up the Compass Needle which, as its name vaguely implies, goes straight up all at once.
The toughest part of the tour, and a section that they rarely take, is called Sharon's Lost River (AKA Sharon's Lost Sea). By the third time I took the tour, I was asking the guide for it, but they won't do it unless the group is super strong. A guide showed me the entrance (right off a tourist trail near the Snowball room) one time, and on subsequent tours I would look in as we passed. However, the fifth time I took the tour, there were only six of us on the tour instead of the usual sold-out 14, and we were all moving quickly and strong. The guides, this time, allowed my request. Before lunch, we skipped both Hell Hole and Kathleen's Crawl, I suppose to conserve our energy. After lunch, we headed into Sharon's Lost River, a terrifying, exhausting belly crawl which lasts 1000 feet! (At least one person in the group sarcastically asked "Who requested this again?" partway through.) Sharon's has two parts. The first 400 feet is the toughest - the passage meanders through pools up to six inches deep, and there is no possible way to avoid them. You will get wet. In the pools, you can usually go on hands and knees, but rock ledges pop up every few feet and you have to clumsily scoot over them on your belly. You use your elbows, knees, and wrists constantly and you will get sore in weird places (even more so than usual). After this section, there's a tiny room, just big enough to stand partway up. Then you're back on your belly for another 600 feet, but there is no water in this part. There are even a few places where you might be able to get up on hands and knees. At last, after 1000 grueling feet, you emerge and can stand back up. Though you may not get your wish, if you want a challenge, ask for this! (If you aren't sure you want a terrifying challenge, DON'T ask for this.)
One more picture before I finish the Mammoth Cave trip report. While I bring a digital camera on hikes, I usually bring a cheap disposable camera into caves since I figure there's a good chance it will get beaten up. On one tour, my cheap camera broke partway through, giving me this picture:
If you want to recreate this picture, take the tour while under the influence of powerful hallucinogenic drugs. (Note: DO NOT ACTUALLY DO THIS.)
This tour is one of my favorite things! If you are considering it, I hope my review helps. If you aren't sure, you might consider the Intro to Caving tour, which is kind of Wild Cave light. I took it once as well, albeit after I'd already been of the Wild Cave tour several times, just to see more things. I would generally recommend Wild Cave because Intro to Caving is not very scenic. But if you want to try a shorter, easier tour to see if caving is to your taste, it might be worth a try. You get suited up with kneepads, helmet, and headlamp and do a bit of scrambling and a few short crawls including the Test Hole. The Test Hole is early in the tour and requires a short crawl leading to a ledge you have to squeeze up on. If you pass that test, you're okay for the rest of the tour. The longest crawl is the Chert Crawl, which is hands and knees crawl over a rough chert floor, for which you'll need those kneepads!
Is this tour for you? It's a little tougher to answer for this tour than for others because it is different every time. The difficulty may be anywhere from about a 6/10 to a 10/10 compared to similar wild cave tours. At its toughest (i.e. they do Sharon's Lost River, No Name, and a canyon walk), it's as difficult and scary as any of the guided wild cave tours in the parks. But, those tours only happen with an especially strong group. They tend to tailor this one to the group. No matter what, however, this tour is long and will test your claustrophobia. I personally find the tight sections to be much less scary in person that I think they're going to be. This one's a classic - if you're interested at all, go for it!