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.