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Mammoth Cave National Park is the world’s most extensive cave system. At present, there are 395 miles of passage ways. The park is still continuing to discover more passages.
At Mammoth Cave, a number of ranger-led tours were offered for visitors looking for different difficulty levels ranging from “Easy” to “Very Strenuous”. We can’t go inside the caves by ourselves. The rangers will lead the hike or spelunk with a group of per-determined number of participants.
There are two spelunking tours. The one we registered, Introduction to Caving, is a strenuous 3 ½ hr tour spelunking for approximately 2 miles, crawling and climbing at 195 feet below surface. The Wide Cave Tour is a more advanced 'very strenuous' 6 ½ hr spelunking tour.
Before the tour started, all participants had to be made aware of a few precautions to preserve the caves at their natural state as much as possible. One of them is to protect the bats from getting White Nose Disease that can be transmitted from spelunkers who have been in other caves before. This was strictly enforced by the park. Further more, there is absolutely no personal hiking equipment allowed; so we can’t carry our headlights or backpacks. Over-the-ankle hiking boots are mandatory but will have to be de-contaminated before entering the cave if you had visited another cave before, and again after the tour. The park provided us with an overall, a helmet, headlight, knee pads and a pair of gloves. We were not allowed to carry anything into inside the cave. Camera was not recommended as we would have to pass through some very narrow passages. Chest or hip measuremnt must not exceed 42 inches; otherwise, we cannot physically pass through the small cracks between limestones. As I didn’t have a disposable camera, I didn’t take any pictures at all. The pictures shown here were the pictures I took of the Wild Cave Tour participants the next day. These were the same outfits we were provided.
We entered the cave from the New Entrance, and finished spelunking at the Frozen Niagara exit. As there won’t be any GPS trace underground, I just measured an approximated trace following the highway from the New Entrance to the Frozen Niagara Entrance. The ranger guided us along and explained safety rules and how to use the three points contact; feet, hands, bum, team communication, body weight shifting while climbing uphill and downhill and detecting potentially unstable stones and dangerous situations.
A lot of crawling, kneeing, bending, climbing and sliding happened during the three and half hours of the tour. In the last section we had to crawl up a tiny key hole where a stone was wet on a puddle of muddy water. We had to get our body totally wet lying flat on our stomachs, then get our head coming out first with hands barely holding on slippery small holes on the rock to anchor, raise up the left knee to give us a little more push, and use the upper body strength to slowly pull ourselves out of the tiny hole.
This was a demanding tour, but we all learned a lot from the experience. During the tour, we saw bats, cave crickets, and a tiny blind tadpole/fish like organism swimming on the small streams inside the cave. The rangers also explained to us the different cave formations of cave colonial corals and gypsum.
To experience how dark the cave was, the Ranger asked all of us to turn off the headlamp to feel what complete darkness was like. It was much darker than a dark night, and no matter how long we stayed in darkness, or how hard we try to see, we just were not able to see our own hands right in front of our eyes. I just wonder why would some animals and fishes choose to live under this extreme condition. Why would they live all their life in total darkness?
Mammoth Cave National Park is the world’s most extensive cave system. At present, there are 395 miles of passage ways. The park is still continuing to discover more passages.
At Mammoth Cave, a number of ranger-led tours were offered for visitors looking for different difficulty levels ranging from “Easy” to “Very Strenuous”. We can’t go inside the caves by ourselves. The rangers will lead the hike or spelunk with a group of per-determined number of participants.
There are two spelunking tours. The one we registered, Introduction to Caving, is a strenuous 3 ½ hr tour spelunking for approximately 2 miles, crawling and climbing at 195 feet below surface. The Wide Cave Tour is a more advanced 'very strenuous' 6 ½ hr spelunking tour.
Before the tour started, all participants had to be made aware of a few precautions to preserve the caves at their natural state as much as possible. One of them is to protect the bats from getting White Nose Disease that can be transmitted from spelunkers who have been in other caves before. This was strictly enforced by the park. Further more, there is absolutely no personal hiking equipment allowed; so we can’t carry our headlights or backpacks. Over-the-ankle hiking boots are mandatory but will have to be de-contaminated before entering the cave if you had visited another cave before, and again after the tour. The park provided us with an overall, a helmet, headlight, knee pads and a pair of gloves. We were not allowed to carry anything into inside the cave. Camera was not recommended as we would have to pass through some very narrow passages. Chest or hip measuremnt must not exceed 42 inches; otherwise, we cannot physically pass through the small cracks between limestones. As I didn’t have a disposable camera, I didn’t take any pictures at all. The pictures shown here were the pictures I took of the Wild Cave Tour participants the next day. These were the same outfits we were provided.
We entered the cave from the New Entrance, and finished spelunking at the Frozen Niagara exit. As there won’t be any GPS trace underground, I just measured an approximated trace following the highway from the New Entrance to the Frozen Niagara Entrance. The ranger guided us along and explained safety rules and how to use the three points contact; feet, hands, bum, team communication, body weight shifting while climbing uphill and downhill and detecting potentially unstable stones and dangerous situations.
A lot of crawling, kneeing, bending, climbing and sliding happened during the three and half hours of the tour. In the last section we had to crawl up a tiny key hole where a stone was wet on a puddle of muddy water. We had to get our body totally wet lying flat on our stomachs, then get our head coming out first with hands barely holding on slippery small holes on the rock to anchor, raise up the left knee to give us a little more push, and use the upper body strength to slowly pull ourselves out of the tiny hole.
This was a demanding tour, but we all learned a lot from the experience. During the tour, we saw bats, cave crickets, and a tiny blind tadpole/fish like organism swimming on the small streams inside the cave. The rangers also explained to us the different cave formations of cave colonial corals and gypsum.
To experience how dark the cave was, the Ranger asked all of us to turn off the headlamp to feel what complete darkness was like. It was much darker than a dark night, and no matter how long we stayed in darkness, or how hard we try to see, we just were not able to see our own hands right in front of our eyes. I just wonder why would some animals and fishes choose to live under this extreme condition. Why would they live all their life in total darkness?
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Cape City, mammoth cave
Cape City, mammoth cave
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