Wild Caving Experience in Mammoth Cave, KY

When we arrived at Mammoth Cave we noticed that there was a wild cave tour scheduled for the Saturday & Sunday, at first they had said that the tours fully booked, but when we came back the next day the ranger at the ticket office told us that there were two tickets left. But after we purchased the tickets I started having doubts about a tour that involved crawling into tight spots, through dirt and wading belly down through water. But we had booked the tickets and Wahid was confidant that I would be able to do it.

Cave Crickets

So on Sunday the 12th of November at 9:30 in the morning we gathered at the visitor centre. I felt kind of nervous about the whole thing, but Wahid was thrilled and looking very much forward to the whole thing. The first part was dead easy, because we had to descend via a number of stairs into the cave. But soon enough we came to the first challenge, we had to crawl into a hole and crawl to on our hands and feet for a pretty long stretch. I was wondering what I had gotten myself into, was this really fun? We were provided with knee pads, but they came off almost immediately. But going over the rocks you really need some sort of protections. But in really tight spots they kept slipping off below the knee and were more of a nuisance then good protections. And they made it even harder not to get stuck.

Then we got to a part that was called The Bare Cave, accordingly someone had lost their clothes there, because the spot was so incredibly tight. And for a moment I thought I was going to get stuck there. But I made it and I was not the only one having trouble there. Then we came to a hole that was called the Birth Canal, this hole was going straight down and you had to go head down. It looked a lot more scary then it was in reality after that we ended up in the Fallopian Tube, which was kind of long and very narrow. Up till then I had been ok with it all, but in the afternoon I was getting tired and we had to do some tricky stuff still.

One of the last tricky things we did, called Lover's Leap, you could choose which route you wanted to take, the lower side was slightly wider, but rougher and wetter or the upper route, which was a lot tighter. It did not look that much tighter for what we had done before so I went for it, but once I got in the hole I could not move around that much and my feet had no grip behind me. The only thing I could do was to get a hold of a rock or something to pull my self forward. I finally managed to get my head and shoulders of the tight area were I discovered that I had no room to climb out. It was a sheer drop of a couple of meters. So I was hanging face down, still with my legs in the cave and had to lower myself down and at the same time grabbing a rock on my left side in order to block my self from falling face down. Some of the others tried to encourage me, but I was so focussed on getting out that I could not listen to them. I have to admit I was shit scared and I did not enjoy that one bit. Somehow I managed to wiggle my legs beside me on that tiny ledge and from there I could move further on the ledge and finally jump down. Luckily we did not have to do much of crawling after that. We walked along very narrow canyon walls for quite a while and had a look at some of the domes in side the cave. By that time I had developed a huge headache that I could not wait to get out of the cave. So when we finally we finally got out I was so relieved. It was a nice experience, but I think that I will think twice before I do that again though. The trouble is that Wahid enjoyed it immensely so he if already talking about another tour. Something neat happened though when we drove back on the bus to the visitor centre. A Red Tailed Hawk was sitting right on the road and when we came near he started flying right in front of the bus. The hawk was so close, it was awesome. A little bit further down the road we saw some deer standing near the road side. Hunting season had started the day before and for some reason they seem to know that they have to get their behinds in the national park in order not to get shot. A large number of bucks had been sighted in the park, when normally they are never seem, is not that weird?

While writing this piece for the Blog I do not feel so good: my muscles are sore and my knees bruised and I think that I never will do this again, but who knows when all the pain is gone……..!