Cave #42: Snail Shell Cave

Jack and I woke up at 7:30 this morning and headed out, stopping first at Waffle House in Hermitage for a quick breakfast then heading down 840 towards Murfreesboro to meet John, Joe, and Mason at the SCCi Snail Shell Cave Preserve. John had organized the permit, and we all made it to the parking area at roughly the same time. After taking about half an hour to get ready and get our gear together, we started toting kayaks down the trail to the sinkhole entrance, which is several hundred yards away.

I had been to the edge of the sinkhole late last year just after dusk, so I didn't get a good idea of the size of it back then. It's about 125 feet across and drops about 90 feet into a large open area at the bottom. Basically a large section of the cave collapsed here a long time ago, and so you can go upstream or downstream from here. Both ways go for miles.

Our goal today was to go upstream. So Jack, Mason, and I headed down into the sinkhole while John and Joe stayed up top to lower the kayaks down. To walk down to the bottom of the sink you go down a narrow trail counter-clockwise around the sink. I wouldn't call it dangerous, but it was a little intimidating to Mason, who just turned 8 yesterday, but once Jack started helping him out he quickly got the hang of it.

Once we got down there Jack and Mason explored the downstream passage a bit, and reported seeing a lot of crayfish and almost a dozen black and spotted cave salamanders.

Jack and Mason at the Upstream Entrance

John rigged up a rope along with a rappelling rack and the the five kayaks started coming down the side, along with a large canvas bag of oars, life jackets, and other assorted gear. While we were getting the kayaks positioned in the water just inside the upstream entrance, I pushed Mason's kayak along a rock channel and it slid just enough that it hit the water and started going down the passage. So then I had to get mine in the water and go fetch his. It was the first of several misadventures for Mason and his kayak that day.

Soon we were all ready and we took off down the passageway. I've been on almost seventy cave trips now and this was by far one of the best experiences I've ever had. The passageway is 8 to 10 feet wide and about 15 feet over the water, which is not super deep. There's almost no current in the water right now since the water level is down, and it made for a very easy float. It twists and turns a bit so you have to watch out constantly or you'll get too close to a wall, but it goes for about 2400 feet with no obstacles whatsoever.

Jack, Joe, and John getting ready at the entrance.

Eventually we came to a small pile of breakdown in the water so I stopped and scouted it out since I was in front. It looked to keep going so we started portaging over it at that point. As soon as I got in on the other side and went about 10 feet, I could see we probably weren't going much further in the kayaks since there was a solid wall of breakdown ahead. While I was waiting on the others, Mason suffered his second incident of the day when Jack accidentally hit him in the lip with a paddle. Fortunately it was not very hard and no real damage was done.

Once we got to this second point, since I had already slipped once and gotten pretty wet I got out in the waist deep water and helped everyone else get out and was marshaling the kayaks down below. At one point John started calling me the Harbormaster since was trying to get kayaks stacked up and tied off to something. I eventually got them grouped up and roughly tied off and we started exploring beyond the breakdown.

The Harbor

At that point in the cave it makes a sort of loop, and Joe and I went off to the left where there was some really nice flowstone formations that Joe took this picture of me in front of.

Alan admiring a really pretty flowstone formation

Eventually we reached another deep stream passage with no other ready ways to go. It probably would have been possible to portage the kayaks to this part of the stream, but it would have been pretty labor intensive and gnarly at best. So we decided to rout at that point. I got back into the water at the harbor and helped everyone get into their boats, then just decided to wade my kayak across. Turns out there was one deep spot and so I was swimming with my kayak and Swaygo pack for a bit.

Once we were headed out Joe wanted to snap a picture of us so we all turned out our lights. After that we all left them off for a long while except for Jack who was in the lead. It was pretty cool paddling for so long in the dark. John had something on the back of his helmet that glowed slightly so that helped as well.

The picture Joe took as we were heading out. It is a great representation of the size and appearance of the passage that goes on for almost 2400 feet back to the entrance.

Once we got back to the entrance, Mason and I explored a bit of the downstream side of the cave. He was trying to show me something in the water and I slipped and we went down together on a flat rock. I did all kinds of contortions to keep from landing on top of him and managed not to, but he still hit his knee pretty hard and I could tell he was in some pain. He's a real trooper though, and we after we got back on our feet we explored another 100 feet or so before we came back. That side has some really nice semi-dry rimstone dams.

Jack started heading out of the sinkhole almost as soon as we got out of the water, and John and Joe headed up to get ready to do some hauling. Mason stayed down in the sink with me and pretty soon the rope came down and we started hooking up the kayaks. The first three went up just fine, but while Mason's blue kayak was on the way up and we were hiding under the ledge we heard someone yell something from up top and then a slight thump. Then a blue kayak fell out of the sky and hit the rocks almost in the center of the sinkhole, landing with a loud thump!

I looked right at Mason after it landed and his eyes were wide and I thought he was going to be really upset. I walked over and looked at it and it only had a dent in the keel near the bow. He was relieved and I shouted up that everything was OK. Joe was about to come back down but I yelled up and told him there was no reason to come back down, but just send something else I could use to attach the rope to the eyehole since the handle was now missing. They sent down some extra webbing and an extra locking aluminum carabiner. I ended up using the carabiner to attach the canoe to the rope, which was probably the safer option anyway.  We later found the broken handle and the small rope had just snapped. Joe and John told me later that the kayak got stuck at the upper lip and when they yanked on it hard it came up and stayed on the ledge for half a second before going back over the side. John was quick to yell "Roooocckkkkk!" which is what we heard but couldn't make out.

Soon enough we had the rest of the kayaks and the bag of gear headed up and we all got back to the vehicles safe and sound. Joe, Jack, Mason, and I had the traditional Mexican food after the trip in a nearby restaurant.

Cave #18: Camps Gulf Cave (Second Visit)

The Nashville Grotto had originally planned to visit Camps Gulf Cave in Van Buren County, Tennessee on July 13, 2019 but the trip leader decided to change the date to the next Saturday. I had been looking forward to going and had already gotten a permit for that day online, so when my friends Zeke and Calla told me that some people from the Spencer Mountain Grotto were also going to go that day I decided to go with them and still plan on going the next Saturday as well.

My trusty "Cave Mule" Jack decided he didn't want to go to the same cave two weeks in a row, so I headed out of the house by myself about 8 am and met up with the group at the parking area just after 10 am. Marion O. Smith, Zeke, Calla, and four other people from the area nearby were already there. They waited patiently while I got ready, then we headed up the 3/4 of a mile trail to the cave entrance.

I had visited the cave over 12 years earlier, and the path up to it seemed to be less of a road now and more like a well hiked trail. We knew there was a group of people from Georgia Tech somewhere ahead of us, but we didn't see any sign of them on the way up to the cave.

We wasted no time heading into the cave, and were soon headed up the hardest part, which is the climb up through the breakdown to the first big room. The Georgia Tech group had left a hand line at one of the more exposed climb ups, so that made things a bit easier. It wasn't nearly as hard as I remembered from 12 years ago when I was about 35 or 40 lbs heavier and in worse shape than I am now.

The relaxing sounds of Marion's grumbling followed us up through the pile of breakdown, and some of the folks were having more trouble than others. At one point while he was about to come up through the narrowest spot Marion said "whose blood is this?" We didn't know, but that part of the cave is basically a cheese grater, so it could have been anybody's.

Eventually we all made it up to the top of the breakdown in the first room. Off to the left and down below we could see the Georgia Tech people sitting around near the stream passage. We never got any closer to them than that. After a while Marion and his friend June headed back out of the cave, and the rest of us continued on towards the register and the second room. We spread out a bit but eventually we all made it to the third room, which is the furthest I have now been in the cave. Once I got to that point I felt like I was probably approaching my limit for the day, so I sat about halfway up the huge pile of rocks in the third room for a bit while Zeke and Paul and his son went looking for something they were calling the Tennessee Rock.

Zeke takes a break deep in the cave to try to call John Hoffelt for directions.

After we made it back to the second room, which has a large stream passage on one side, I decided I wanted to try to make it back to the first room by going that way, instead of climbing back over all the breakdown again. Zeke opined that he thought it might have a good bit of water, which might even require swimming. I decided to give it a try anyway, and Zeke also decided to come along since he had never attempted it either.

We headed down towards the stream, crossing over a large patch of mud which contained a lot of organic debris like dead leaves and the like. We looked out over a long lake that stretched down some large borehole. It wasn't clear enough to see how deep it was, so Zeke said "I'll head down there and see if I can tell how deep it is," and started climbing down the rocks.

I decided to just come along myself and was following pretty close behind him. As I was hopping over some rocks right on the edge of the water, I slipped and went feet first into the water.

"You ok?" asked Zeke.

"Yeah," I replied. "By the way the water is deep. And cold."

I just started swimming at that point and a few seconds later Zeke jumped in and immediately started complaining how cold it was. It's not like I didn't warn him or anything.

We swam for about 50 yards, occasionally running into rocks under the water and sometimes just barely being able to touch the bottom. We hauled ourselves out of the water on a very large bank of mud. Zeke was able to climb up it fairly easily, but it took me a while to traverse along one bank and reach a much larger mud bank that lead up to a horizontal crack that presumably led towards the first room.

At this point things got pretty comical. I spent the next 15 or 20 minutes trying to get up this bank of mud, but my legs were getting weak and I was wet and it was one of the most miserable, slippery situations I've ever been in. At one point Zeke found a triangular rock and we tried to dig out some foot holds, but it was so slippery that I couldn't even stand in one place without slipping and sliding back down towards the water. Eventually I made the decision that I was wearing myself out and I'd better conserve what energy I had left, so we made the swim back across the lake and back up towards the first room.

It had been quite a while since I had to swim in a cave, and it wasn't until the second trip back across the lake that I remembered the best way was to grab my Swaygo pack by the closing buckles with my left hand and stretch it out in front of me and kind of side stroke with the other hand while kicking as best I could with my boots on.

I had to stop a few extra times on the way out of the cave because the arches in my feet cramped up, but eventually we made it out and that 3/4 of a mile hike feels like 3 or 4 miles when you're coming back down after a long cave trip.

Marion and most of the others were waiting impatiently for us at the parking area. They had just about decided to take Zeke's truck and drive over to Rumbling Falls to pull some rope, but we got there just in time to stop their dastardly plan.  Calla, Zeke, and I headed back into Sparta for some much needed Mexican food and Dos Equis.

I got home and I was bruised, sore, bleeding from several spots,and my feet were still cramping pretty badly. What a great freaking day it was! I can't wait to back again this coming Saturday.

Cave #28: Kennamer Cave

I've been easing back into caving the last few months, taking Jack to some of the caves I've visited before, but itching to get into some new caves. I had been in contact with my old friend Gary Barnes from the Birmingham Grotto, who took me on my first wild cave trip to Sinking Cove back in the summer of 2000. We had planned to go to a few caves, and the destination changed a few times until we settled on Kennamer Cave in Jackson County, Alabama.

Gary pulled a permit from the SCCi website, and we decided to meet up in Woodville sometime before 11am on Saturday morning. Jack and I left the house right at 8am and after only one stop we made it to Gail's Diner in Woodville about 10:20. Gail's Diner is not much to look at, but the service was fast, super friendly, and not very expensive.

After a quick breakfast and a few cups of coffee, we loaded up and headed up to the SCCi Kennamer Cave Preserve a short distance away. The road is pretty rough and probably in worse shape after all the recent rain. My truck is not 4WD, but it had no trouble getting up to the parking area. I probably wouldn't take a car up that road, though.

After we parked, we spent some time gearing up and I loaded up my Cave Mule with most of the stuff. Gary joined in on the fun and gave the Cave Mule about 75 feet of rope to carry as well. About 100 feet from the kiosk there was a pretty loud waterfall and we went over and took some pictures of that.  Then we got started up the trail right at Noon.

Now before we started the hike, there was some question about the length and difficulty of the trail up to the main entrance of the cave. Gary thought it was about a mile with 1000 feet of elevation gain. Mark Ostrander who is the property manager told me it was about a mile with 300 feet of elevation gain. By the time I got back to the truck, my pedometer was reading me having walked 4.75 for the day, and I did very little walking before I got there. When I got home I did some research using the topo map mode on Google maps and I think the parking area is about at the 600' line and the cave entrance is roughly at 1100', so it's about a mile and 500 feet up according to the map. I think my pedometer read higher because I was taking shorter steps slogging up the trail which was covered in wet leaves.

So the upper-middle-aged guy and the two old farts trudged up the old logging road/trail, while Jack the Cave Mule set a blistering pace and pretty soon disappeared from sight. After about an hour and two short rest breaks we made it up to the hollow where the main entrance is and I started yelling for Jack. The trail, by the way, is very well flagged so it's pretty hard to get lost going up there.

Jack came back down the trail and said he left the pack and the rope next to a hole in the ground, but he didn't see the cave entrance. When Gary and Andy caught up they told us the hole was, in fact, the Dug Entrance, but that the main entrance was just around the corner of a bluff where the stream was flowing.

Jack and I went to check out the main entrance, which was taking a lot of water. It looks vertical but Gary said it can be climbed down but he probably would never try it with that much water going in. I can tell you the entire area around this entrance is amazingly beautiful. It's worth the hike up there just to see that, regardless of whether you go in the cave or not.

After a final gear check and a quick snack, we got ready to go in through the Dug Entrance. It's a hole that's about 2.5 feet in diameter, and it drops down a few feet then turns a bit then goes down about 4 or 5 more feet before it takes another sharp bend. It's tight on me. Not super tight, but enough that I was having to squeeze a bit at a few spots.

Gary went in first and then I went in, followed by Jack. Andy came in last. At the bottom the slope levels out for the most part, but it's very low passage that's about a yard wide or so. It's covered with fist size and smaller rocks. In some parts I could crawl on my hands and knees, but a lot of it was belly crawling. Also, about 10 feet down that passage a stream comes in so you're crawling in about 3 inches of flowing water that is very cold. My first thought when I hit that spot where I had to belly crawl through water was "Oh man, this is gonna suuuuck."

The problem is that I usually cave in shorts and a t-shirt and I never got any real caving knee pads and I've never used elbow pads. My knee pads are just carpenter knee pads that have a solid outer surface and some nice gel packs on the inside. They're usually pretty good for a short hands and knees crawl, but they don't stay in place very well.

So fairly quickly I realized that I was going to get very cold, and my knees and elbows were going to suffer greatly. As we pushed on down this tunnel of misery, Jack said he couldn't see Andy anymore behind him. Apparently Andy saw that belly crawl through the water and decided to rout then and there. He's much wiser than I am.

After about 75 feet we got to a spot where it opened up a bit, and there was a small dome off to the left that also had a small stream coming out of it. Ahead of us was a short serpentine section and then a hole that Jack said looked like it went down 20 to 30 feet with all the water going with it. This area of the cave was also covered in huge cave crickets. I told Jack they were just waiting on one of us to expire so they could feast like kings.

We had a quick pow-wow there and decided we were already getting cold and we weren't really equipped or ready to deal with a tricky climbdown so we decided to rout at that point. Gary and Jack went ahead of me and I started the crawl back to the entrance. This was the point where it really started to suck.

On the way in I was headed slightly downward and the water was helping me slide along a bit. Now I was going back against gravity and the cold water was really starting to get to me. I would snake my way up a bit and at the tightest, lowest part I just kept telling myself "six more inches. Just go six more inches. Now go six more inches." I wasn't in any real danger, but it was hard. I had to stand at the bottom of the climb-up after I got out of the water and get myself together for a minute or two before I got out. My arms from the elbow to the wrist looked like ground hamburger at this point. Will definitely get pads before I go back. Jack just planked the entire way up and down the tunnel and emerged completely unscathed.

The wind had picked up a little outside by then and it never really got into the 50's like they had predicted in the weather forecast. I just got my stuff and started walking down the trail so I wouldn't lock up too much. Again, I'm in much better shape now so it wasn't really a problem, but I did wish I had a light jacket at that point. I guess losing 118 lbs of insulation has made me a bit more susceptible to the cold than I used to be.

After we got back down to the vehicles, we changed and followed Gary back towards Guntersville. We made a quick stop at Sauta Cave which I had never been to before. It's a short walk back to the viewing platform they've built outside the closed and gated cave. During the summer you can stand there and watch a large number of bats exiting the cave, but when we were there it was quiet and peaceful but the stream was flowing pretty fast out of the cave.

Then we headed over to Camp Maranantha to eat dinner with the rest of the Birmingham Grotto. I saw some old friends and made a few new ones. It was a great day, even without seeing very much of the insides of a cave. On the way home Jack and I enjoyed a radio show we found that was playing Blue Grass music.

Jack at the main entrance of Kennamer Cave.