This story comes up more often than one would think. So I figured I should write it down.
It goes back to about 16 years ago when I just entered Boy Scouts. The troop I was in thought it would be a good idea to take the new scouts on a caving trip. We were all ready for a new adventure and were completly on board. We even partnered up with the Atlanta Spelunking Club for our trek. We drove a couple hours north of Atlanta on a Saturday morning. We arrived at a State Park and proceeded to a campground. We arrived about noon and decided that we would set up camp after the trip into the cave. So we just grabbed our water bottles, a granola bar, and got outfitted with a harness, headlamp, and a helmet. We’re all feeling pretty psyched at this point. We’re 12 and wearing professional cave exploration gear…who wouldn’t be excited?
So we walk about 15 minutes into dense woods to arrive at a pile of boulders. None of which are stacked high to create the mouth of caves misleadingly placed in TV and movies. There was about a 2.5 foot hole in the ground. One that I would figured was a hole a komodo dragon or bear lived in and would have wisely stayed away from. I wish I would have trusted that instinct.
We dropped into the cave/hole around 11 am. It was the most lit room due to the mouth of the cave letting a little light in. The first cavern was awesome. Stalagmites, stalactites, bats hanging, big rocks to climb on and play on. We were loving it at this point. Next we passed through a skinny passage called “Pancake Squeeze” I had exhale and shimmy to make it through. 4 people couldn’t make it and were sent out of the cave. It was in fact very skinny and angled weird. We traversed more caverns and made our way through some particularly small tunnels. One tunnel in particular was called the worm tube. If I’m remembering correctly, it was about 3 feet in diameter and about 2 fee of that was water. So you basically had to lay on your back to do a crunch for a 150 feet to keep from drowning. Fun for the first 2 minutes. Now is a good time to mention that the cave is a constant wet, chilly 58 degrees. You don’t really get cold as long as you are moving. Take note that half of the trip is 12 year olds like me and the other half is professional spelunkers. We weren’t moving very fast. In fact, some of the guys had hypothermia, some were in shock, some were crying uncontrollably. I was not part of any of the above, but I was scared. A lot. I wanted out, I wanted daylight. I wanted clean water. I wanted the 2 inch thick coat of mud all over my body off of me. I wanted heat. I wanted water, I wanted food. I ate my granola bar early, because we were only supposed to be in the cave for 2-3 hours.
So 8 hours later we reach a cliff. This cliff used to be a tunnel, but an underground river had washed it away. The river was 80 feet below and flowed straight toward the center of the earth. Very dangerous, and clearly fatal. The professionals decided that we shouldn’t go on. So we traversed the same terrain, in reverse order. It took another 9 hours to get out. We were fatigued, tired, cold, hungry, thirsty, dirty, and just flat out over it. We were in the final cavern where the mouth of the cave let a little light in. It was 3 or 4 in the morning. The only light that was in was from the emergency rescue vehicles flashers. Blue and red danced across the walls and stalagtites. The first crew of rescuers was already in the first cavern looking for us. It was now 14 hours PAST the time we were supposed to be out. The people that got sent back from the pancake squeeze thankfully noted the time.
The kids with hypothermia and that were in shock were taken to the ER. I probably should have gone too, but I just wanted to go home. I called my parents and they knew to expect me at 4:30 in the morning, dirty and broken. I left my gear in the garage and got straight in the shower. Shoes and clothes on. Dirt washed off of me for 30 minutes straight. I hadn’t even started to scrub. I got out of the shower probably an hour later and went right to bed. I woke up and took another shower. I actually took 4 showers that day. All which enormous amounts of dirt would fall off of me in. Dirt penetrated every single part of my body. It was ridiculous. The following Monday was my first normal shower where rivers of mud didn’t pollute my shower floor. That first shower was the best shower I’ve ever taken.
On a lighter note, in that dreaded tunnel, my friend Zach kept yelling at me to stop kicking him in the head. I wasn’t kicking him at all, but instead a bat kept flying into his head. I found this to be the only funny part of the excursion.
