The True Fright of Cave Exploration

Imagine yourself standing before a dark pit on an open plain. The entrance to an underground world which swallows light long before you can see any end below. What’s down there? How deep is it? Will a wire and mesquite ladder be long enough to reach the bottom? If it is not, what then?

50 years later: Is that mesquite and wire ladder still strong enough to hold explorers? Spoilers: it was. What about 60 years after that? We may never know if it can hold anyone, but that ladder is still there.

My dad has stories about growing up in Carslbad New Mexico that involve an array of adventures which leave me surprised that he made it into adulthood. Some of those stories involve exploring caves in and near the area which is now known as Carlsbad National Park. These early stories might have been part of what lead him to into the Park Service. In fact, his first ranger job was with Carlsbad.

However, stories from his park service career are for another day.

I wanted to focus on two anecdotes from his earlier years, when he and several of his friends set out to explore some of the most fascinating, and risky caves on earth. The first story comes from a cave known as Deep Cave, which is within Carlsbad National Park, the second might come from a different cave, (I forget) but they are both compelling examples of what I truly think is frightening about cave exploration. The danger that comes from caving in general, and the risk of the known.

The other day, dad found a video online of cave exploration in Deep Cave on youtube. The video is posted by a man named Derek Bristol who has his own website about cave exploration, and lots of other videos as well. His video on Deep Cave was my impetus for this story. Here is a link to it: Exploration of Deep Cave.

When dad showed me the video, it reminded me of two of his more harrowing anecdotes about his early days of cave exploration. The first comes from Deep Cave, and features the previously mentioned wire and mesquite ladder. (seen in the video at: 3.34) Deep Cave is, as you might expect, deep. And the only way to enter it is to drop down a tall cliff. Jim White, it’s original explorer, (and worthy of his own article) came to Deep Cave sometime in the late 1890’s and probed it’s depths after building a ladder out of local mesquite branches and wire. Tying it off, he used it to get into the cave. At the time he would have been exploring with a kerosene lantern, barely enough to illuminate his immediate surroundings.

Half a century later, his ladder was still how people entered and exited the cave.

During high school, dad and several of his friends explored Deep Cave. With old carbine lights as their only equipment, they hiked down to the drop off which, according to him, required walking on a slick slanted shelf, risky in it’s own right. Then they took turns, one by one climbing the rickety ladder installed fifty years before. “From the top, the people down below looked like ants.” This took them to a remarkable cave which I will not try to describe here. (See the video)

What I want to focus on is the ladder, which even back then had broken rungs, and which they needed to climb back up to leave the cave. Which is when one of dad’s friends froze on the ladder, forcing dad to climb up behind him, and talk his friend the rest of the way up. Wondering the whole time if the ladder would hold their weight, and with nothing behind them but a pitch black maw which would swallow them if it did not.

Entering a cave is, by it’s very nature if taking a risk. Slick floors, ceilings which my fall (this is rare, and not a big concern usually.) Crevasses and pits of unknown depth. Caves do not have to be confining to to be terrifying. When we enter a cave, we come face to face with a pitch black world unlike the one to which we are normally accustomed, a maw threatening to consume us whole.

But caves can be confining too.

Dad’s second story might come from Deep Cave, or another cave in the area. But it involves a cave crawl in a time before helmet and kneepads were common requirements for caving. He and his friends found a narrow passage during one of their explorations. A low tunnel leading to parts unknown. Taking the lead, dad had to crawl, and eventually slide on his belly, pulling himself along, wedging and contorting himself through openings barely wide enough for a human teen. Entering any of these passages for the first time is a risk. Will they become to narrow? Will there be room to turn around? Will they open up?

The hopeful reward is a connection to a another room, or the discovery of new vast passages or chambers, at the end of the crawl. But sometimes these tunnels simply narrow out, becoming too tight for anyone to continue. And sometimes they open up in unexpected ways. Reaching a narrow hole, dad wedgeds his head and shoulders through. The opening was so small he had lost his light, and could not see much behind him, or anything in the darkness in front. Worse, He could not feel the floor beneath him. Having pressed through the opening he grasped not a cave floor but an empty expanse. He saw nothing but darkness. The bottom could be just beyond reach, or it could be thousands of feet below. But wedged as he was, he could not retreat, and his friends could not pull him out.

So he was left with no choice but to ask his friends to “push.” and they did. He slid through and fell… only a few feet before hitting the ground. Fortunately for him, his plunge into the unknown was short and survivable. (Fortunate for me too.) But this isn’t always the case. My dad and his friends followed in the the wake of other explorers like Jim White, but they made a few of their own discoveries as well, and also, fortunately survived despite the risks they took.

It is these risks which makes Caves truly terrifying. They are inherently dangerous and invariably unknown.

Caves are unknowns, and when we probe these unknown spaces we face danger. In New Mexico, Jim White, who also explored and popularized Carlsbad Caverns, encountered pits, slid along narrow ledges, and pushed through narrow crevasses. In Kentucky, Stephen Bishop used a ladder to cross Mammoth Cave’s bottomless pit, and mapped miles of twisting passages which easily could have gotten him lost. And Floyd Collins wedged himself into impossibly narrow spaces hoping to discover remarkable connections. They each faced the unknown in hopes to discover alien worlds of darkness and surprise. And at least for Floyd the risks caught up to him.

But caves aren’t just risky because they are unknown. The are risky because they are wild.

Even for those of us who only follow in the footsteps of the explorers, caves can still be risky. We build ladders and bridges over bottomless pits, but that doesn’t mean the darkness can’t swallow us. The ladders may fail, bridges are imperfect. We slide through previously explored crevasses, never knowing if or when a sudden shift might make the passage impassible. We face the darkness not knowing for certain what may be starring back. We carry light into the darkness, but know that those lights may go out.

So, should we be scared when we go into caves today?

We should be aware of the dangers, and then chose how much cave exploring we want to do based upon our level of comfort.

If the idea of entering a cave is terrifying in and of itself. You do not have to. Channels like Derek Bristol’s bring this otherwise dangerous and unknown world to us. (And admittedly a lot of the exploration on his channel takes place in caves with such limited access that most of us will never be able to visit them even if bravery is not an issue.) And I encourage you to check it out, because although it wasn’t the focus of this blog, there are a lot of wonderous rewards waiting within the caves around the world. They are beautiful.

If you choose to brave a cave, but don’t really want that much danger, we live in fortunate times.

Many modern caves have tours which tours mitigate most of the dangers in cave exploration. Mammoth Cave and Carlsbad Caverns both have tours for visitors with basically any level or no level of cave exploration experience. I don’t think they’ve lost a guest in decades (:-P) There are other caves with tours for beginners too.

If you you want to go a little more off the beaten path, there are plenty of commonly known, but less developed caves out there. Just know what you are getting into before you venture into these caves. Be aware of the risks and don’t take more. (Caving has developed a lot since my dad and his friends were crawling through narrow passages which might drop out from under them, and there is no reason to rely upon a century-old ladder when modern Caving Equipment had improved dramatically.

Caves are far safer for explorers and tourists alike. In Derek Bristol’s video, you can watch spelunkers rappelling alongside the wire ladder, which still hangs along the wall going into Deep Cave. The lighting in the video alone is more than Jim White, or my dad and his friends ever could have dreamed of seeing in the cave. In other videos on the channel, you can watch cavers walking along narrow ledges, but safely tied in to prevent falls. But this doesn’t mean cave exploration is always safe. Explorers in caves are well trained and at the top of the field, but they are still basically rock climbing and cave crawling in environments which might be hours, days, or weeks away from rescue if something goes wrong. So explo

The true fright of any cave is that when we enter them, we are staring into the unknown, and taking ourselves outside of our normal realm, (by putting us inside another.) We are placing ourselves into a world of inherent danger, where the ground could drop out from under us, trap us in an inescapable embrace, or even collapse. We are stepping into an unknown darkness and if our lights our extinguished, we might not be able to find our way out.

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A particularly scary image if you know the story of Sand Cave.

Caves aren’t just scary if they may contain ghosts, they are just scary. But it’s the type of fright that people have been facing as long as there have been people,

Neither Jim White or Stephen Bishop, nor my dad and his friends, were the first first to explore their caves. People have been exploring caves as long as people have existed— probably always probing a bit of the fear, and definitely taking a risk every time. Caves can be scary, but they can be beautiful and fascinating too. But that’s a story for a future blog. Today, spurred on by a video dad shared with me, I just wanted to focus on two anecdotes which highlight why caves are scary to me. And to take a short break from ghosts.

Ghosts…

More about them soon!!!

(((note: Apparently, I finished this article and never published it last week… Woops.)) I think I’ll publish it today, and let it linger for a couple days before I release my next.