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  Beyond Mammoth Cave

  A Tale of Obsession in the World’s Longest Cave

  James D. Borden and Roger W. Brucker

  Southern Illinois University Press

  Carbondale

  Copyright © 2000 by James D. Borden and Roger W. Brucker

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  18 17 16 15 5 4 3 2

  Frontispiece: A typical vertical shaft in Kentucky, formed by vertical flowing water seeking master base level.

  Photo by Art Palmer.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Borden, James D., 1957–

  Beyond Mammoth Cave : a tale of obsession in the world’s longest cave / James D. Borden and Roger W. Brucker.

  p. cm.

  1. Caving—Kentucky—Mammoth Cave. 2. Mammoth Cave (Ky.)—Discovery and exploration. I. Brucker, Roger W. II. Title.

  GV200.655.K42 M253 2000

  796.52'5'09769754—dc21

  ISBN 0-8093-2345-1 (cloth : alk. paper)

  ISBN 0-8093-2346-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 00-021610

  Printed on recycled paper.

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

  ISBN-13 978-0-8093-9038-0 (electronic)

  Dedicated to the memory of

  Bob Keller

  Ralph Powell

  Barbara Lipton

  Roberta Swicegood

  John Bridge

  James Quinlan

  Frank Reid

  Fred Benington

  Joe Kulesza

  Omne ignotum pro magnifico.

  (Anything little known is assumed to be wonderful.)

  —Tacitus

  Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind.

  —The Rolling Stones

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  Authors’ Note

  Introduction

  1. Blazing Glory and Blind Ambition

  Roger Brucker Tells of the Thrill and Envy

  2. Roots of a System

  Jim Borden Seeks Involvement in the Longest Cave

  3. Beginnings

  Jim Borden Discovers the Search for a Long Cave Is Not Easy

  4. A Way In

  Jim Borden and Jim Currens Find a Cave

  5. Small Rewards

  The Roppel Cavers Grind It Out Through Tough Cave

  6. Reunification

  Bill Walter Returns to Lead the Way to the Big Cave

  7. Roppel-Mania

  Roppel Cave Explodes North

  8. Transformation

  The CKKC Goes Big-Time

  9. Treasures Beneath Doyle Valley

  CRF Cavers Try to Expand the Big Cave into Joppa Ridge

  10. The Legacy of George Morrison

  Cavers Follow in the Footsteps of the Old-Timers

  11. The Abyss

  Roger Brucker and Lynn Weller Drop into Richard Zopf’s River

  12. Run for the River!

  River Adventures and the Brass Ring

  13. The French Connection

  A Nude Swim and a Farewell Send-Off

  14. Fortuitous Intersections

  Roppel Cave Explodes North—Again

  15. Stress Fractures

  Roppel Cave Spreads Out and Tempers Wear Thin

  16. Power Play

  A Gasoline Spill Changes the Rules

  17. Secret Trip to Morrison Cave

  Diana Daunt and the Bruckers Infuriate Everyone

  18. Further Separations

  Worn-out Cavers and Outside Pressure

  19. House of Cards

  A Breakdown Pile and Political Chaos

  20. Comfortable Ignorance

  The Roppel Cavers Try to Ignore Painful Problems

  21. A New Entrance to Secret Passages

  Growing Complexity and Changed Relationships

  22. Gasoline on the Fire

  The Control Freaks Find Themselves Out of Control

  23. Stark Reality

  The CKKC Surrenders to the Odds

  24. Swallowed Up

  A New Beginning

  Afterword

  300 Miles to 365 Miles . . . and More

  Participants in the Mammoth Cave–Roppel Cave Exploration, 1972–1983

  Glossary of Caving Terminology

  Index

  Color plates

  PREFACE

  This is a very personal story of obsessive cave exploration in the world’s longest cave. It is told from two points of view by two central participants who are separated by more than a quarter of a century in age and outlook. The big cave sucked us in. For long periods of time, it was our lives, sometimes to the detriment of family, friends, and jobs. But we are satisfied. When this story began, Mammoth Cave was just over 144 miles long; when it ended, the world’s longest cave was over 300 miles long—and was predicted to reach the 500-mile mark.

  So who cares about these caves? We do. We have always been explorers. Both of us have vivid childhood memories of madly wanting to explore the cliffs and creeks around our homes.

  I, Roger Brucker, taught myself layback climbing in 1933 when I was four years old. I climbed over a board fence to discover a world of giant rocks among whose dark recesses I crept. I had found the hidden place! Within minutes (probably), an adult head appeared over the top of the fence. I don’t remember the words, but the message was clear: Don’t you ever do that again!

  Of course, I paid no attention at all. Each time I explored was more thrilling than the last. Those rocks were mine, my world. I also discovered that exploring involved sneaking off when nobody was looking and slipping back before anyone noticed I had gone.

  I, Jim Borden, was four years old in 1961. Trails, mysterious and endless, stretched from my house under arching tree branches to distant hills. One day I spied a large tree house in a huge oak. It was wonderful beyond all my dreams. This big tree house was mine because it was discovered by me!

  “Don’t you ever go back there!” said my mom. “It’s rotten. You’ll fall and be killed.” I went there all the time. My imagination fired into orbit from that tree house. And when a friend set a fire that burned the forest down, I learned that exploration is risky.

  To explore Mammoth Cave, we did some neat things and some nasty things. Here we tell all. Other cavers, honest or crafty, may disagree with our version of this story, but we can only present the facts as we know them. So this book is not like its predecessor, The Longest Cave by Roger W. Brucker and Richard A. Watson. In 1973, they wrote in the third person; in this book, we write almost exclusively in the first person, indicating the speaker at the beginning of particular chapters as needed. They showed their manuscript to many of the participants in order to incorporate corrections and amplifications in their book; we showed our manuscript to only a few friends and enemies.

  Some cavers have colossal egos and a limited appreciation of the contributions of others. Even we have been characterized this way! A few may try to promote themselves by downplaying others. And even we have been accused of this! We’ll just have to let the readers decide. So let’s get to the damn cave!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  We are grateful to the hundreds of cavers whose work we describe herein.

  For extraordinary assistance, we thank the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior, and park superintendents Joseph Kulesza, Amos Hawkins, Robert Deskins, Frank Pridemore, and David A. Mihalic. As protectors and interpreters of most of Mammoth
Cave, they made the exploration possible and have provided material and moral assistance. Their encouragement and personal help can never be repaid.

  We thank the Cave Research Foundation (CRF) and its president, Patricia Kambesis, and the Central Kentucky Karst Coalition (CKKC) and its president, James Wells, for access to records and editorial assistance.

  Landowners on whose properties the various cave entrances are located have our grateful thanks for letting us come and go. Thanks to John Logsdon, Jerry Roppel, Bill Downey, and Elroy and Marilyn Daleo.

  We thank cartographer Patricia Kambesis for her preparation of maps that help make our story understandable and for her extraordinary effort in assembling hundreds of miles of cave surveys from multiple individuals and organizations. This compilation made drawing the maps possible.

  We thank Linda Heslop for her creative illustrations, without which our story would be far from complete.

  For the several black-and-white photographs, we are indebted to Art Palmer. We thank Bill Eidson, David Black, Ron Simmons, Paul and Lee Stevens, and Pete Lindsley for use of their color photographs.

  If it weren’t for the nagging, cajolery, encouragement, and editorial guidance of Richard “Red” Watson, this book would not exist. He has been a faithful friend to both of us through thick and thin. We thank him.

  For editorial and critical assistance, we thank Rick Olson, Ron Bridgemon, R. Scott House, Karen Willmes, Peter Zabrok, Leonard B. Taylor, Patricia Porter, Stanley Sides, Richard Zopf, and Elizabeth Winkler. We gratefully acknowledge the professional editorial assistance of Carol Burns at Southern Illinois University Press as well as that of freelance editor Julie Bush.

  Accounts used in this book are from various sources, but most of the information is from the memories and correspondence of the authors. Additional information was obtained from conversations with the participants.

  Details of specific trips were obtained from the unpublished official trip report logs of the CKKC and the CRF. Those organizations throughout the period covered in this book required each party leader to prepare a detailed narrative report describing each trip. These files represent the most extensive contemporaneous record of who did what and when.

  We also consulted the personal journals and memoirs of Pete Crecelius, Pete Lindsley, Lynn Brucker, and Darlene Anthony. Some of the information about Don Coons and Sheri Engler’s secret work in Morrison Cave is from “In Morrison’s Footsteps” by Don Coons and Sheri Engler, NSS News 38, no. 6 (1980): 127–32, 137, and from “In Morrison’s Footsteps” by Don Coons and Sheri Engler, Caving International 12 (1981): 28–37. A summary of the Proctor Cave–Morrison Cave connection with Mammoth Cave appeared in “New Kentucky Junction” by Roger W. Brucker and Pete Lindsley, NSS News 37, no. 10 (1979): 231–36. A summary of the Mammoth Cave–Proctor Cave–Morrison Cave connection with Roppel Cave appeared in “The Joy of Connecting” by Roger W. Brucker, together with “The Roppel-Mammoth Connection” by Jim Borden and Pete Crecelius, in the NSS News 42, no. 2 (1984): 105–9.

  Background information about organizational policy was obtained from the CRF and CKKC archives or from public information published by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior. Mike Dyas and Bill Mixon prepared several synopses and analyses of the policy, politics, and events of the central Kentucky cave scene. These were circulated privately to the participants and appeared in whole or in part in one or more NSS Grotto publications. These were helpful in refreshing our memories on several points.

  Historical information was checked against two books: Robert K. Murray and Roger W. Brucker’s Trapped! and Roger W. Brucker and Richard A. Watson’s The Longest Cave. Some details of the discovery of Proctor Cave are from William Stump Forwood’s 1870 book, An Historical and Descriptive Narrative of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. Additional historical information is from reminiscences of John Bridge, Stanley Sides, and local residents obtained by oral interviews.

  Some data used for the maps were provided by Joe Saunders, the Detroit Urban Grotto of the NSS, and Don Coons. We thank them for their contribution.

  Our acknowledgment would not be complete without pointing out that none of the named organizations or individuals necessarily endorse the viewpoint that this book presents. This is not an “official account”: it is our personal story of how we experienced this grand adventure.

  AUTHORS’ NOTE

  Caves are fragile. Their features may be thousands or even millions of years in the making. Cave animals are rare. They live precarious lives on the knife edge of ecological balance. Both cave features and cave life can be destroyed through ignorance on the part of cavers who do not understand the fragility of underground relationships. Irresponsible people have taken stalactites that will never grow again. They have killed bats by entering and disturbing habitats at a time when food supplies were low. Caves are unique places for adventure and discovery, but before you enter a cave, we urge you first to learn about safe and careful caving. Please contact the National Speleological Society, 2813 Cave Avenue, Huntsville, Alabama, 35810-4431. They will guide you to a safe and fulfilling adventure in caving.

  INTRODUCTION

  Mammoth Cave National Park is located about one hundred miles south of Louisville, Kentucky, near Interstate 65 on top of an upland area known as the Mammoth Cave Plateau. This upland is part of a two-hundred-square-mile region of interior drainage called the Central Kentucky Karst. As in the limestone karst region of Yugoslavia (where the name “karst” originates), rainwater runs off the surface and plunges underground through sinking creeks and sinkholes. The water eventually drains through hidden passages into the Green River and Barren River.

  Nearly three hundred feet of Mississippian limestone was laid down about three hundred million years ago. Perhaps two million years ago, water began to drain through the network of cracks in the rock to form the caves by erosion and solution. Enlarged cave passages consist of vertical shafts, which divert the surface water into the underground streams, and horizontal tubes and canyon passages, which carry water to the river-level spring outlets. The upper levels of these caves are abandoned drainage systems, whose waters have drained to successively lower levels of the cave as the Green River lowered its bedrock floor.

  How are limestone caves made? Four things are necessary and sufficient in Kentucky: (1) a source of water over a long period of time (rainfall is about fifty inches per year); (2) rocks with cracks (the limestones have abundant joints, bedding planes, and faults); (3) rocks that can be removed (roughly two cubic miles of rock have been dissolved or transported away); and (4) a place for water to drain (the Green River and Barren River). Caves are created only if all four requirements are met.

  A special set of circumstances accounts for the great lengths of the cave systems in this part of Kentucky. Covering the soluble, cracked limestone is a caprock layer of tough sandstone that resists weathering. Sometimes a thin, impermeable shale layer at its base prevents groundwater from penetrating to the limestone below. This combination of sandstone and shale acts as a cap or roof that diverts runoff water to the edges of the ridges. This concentrates the waterflow along a narrow front. Funneled underground at the edges of the caprock, the descending water dissolves vertical shafts that resemble the insides of grain storage silos.

  Such aggressive, high-energy vertical flows of water underground are responsible for removing more than 90 percent of the missing rock from this karst region—a karst chainsaw ripping away the landscape. Water flowing horizontally through cave passages has removed less than 10 percent of the missing limestone.

  Under the resistant sandstone caprock on the tops of ridges, miles of horizontal cave passages are protected for a time against the most aggressive rock removal.

  These are the caves we explore.

  All the caves in the Central Kentucky Karst are connected, but the connections may be hidden behind rocks, down tiny crawlways, down vertical shafts, or even beneath the surface of the water in the base-level stre
ams such as Echo River in Mammoth Cave. People may or may not fit through the connections. “Connecting caves” means that cavers find elusive natural connecting passageways rather than make their own by tunneling or blasting.

  About 2500 B.C., aboriginal Americans began to explore Mammoth Cave, Salts Cave, and Lee Cave in what is now Mammoth Cave National Park and mined mirabilite salts, gypsum, and selenite crystals. Ancient people explored as far as two miles into the caves.

  Prior to the mid-1950s, cave discoveries were usually fortuitous and infrequent results of exploration. Most old-timers just followed the cave. Sometimes they abandoned the search when the passages ended in breakdowns, piles of rocks produced by the collapse of the ceiling and walls that barred further progress.

  During the fifties, a group of explorers—who founded the Cave Research Foundation in 1957—began to see distinctive passage patterns in the cave maps they plotted from their surveys. The patterns gave insights that were the key to connecting these caves. Principles discovered through years of CRF work were then applied with spectacular results to find more miles of cave passages than anywhere else in the world.

  These explorers swept into mile after mile of new cave after their initial connection of Unknown Cave to Crystal Cave in 1955. In 1960, they found the connection between Colossal Cave and Salts Cave in Flint Ridge in Mammoth Cave National Park. The following year, CRF explorers found the connection between Floyd Collins’ Crystal Cave–Unknown Cave and Colossal Cave–Salts Cave in Flint Ridge.

  The stage was set for a series of trips in the summer and autumn of 1972, culminating in the discovery of a connection between the Flint Ridge Cave System and Mammoth Cave on 9 September 1972. The cave’s combined passageway length was 144.4 miles, 72.6 miles longer than the second longest cave in the world, Hölloch Höhle in Switzerland.

  John Wilcox, the leader of the CRF Flint Ridge–Mammoth Cave connection trip, built his breakthrough trip on the discoveries of many explorers, starting with the ancient aboriginal Americans on the Mammoth Cave end and Floyd Collins on the Flint Ridge end. (Collins, a farmer and cave explorer, began caving when he was only six years old; at the apex of his career, he discovered Floyd Collins’ Crystal Cave in 1918. On 30 January 1925, he became trapped in Sand Cave. For more than two weeks, rescuers tried to reach him, but their struggle ended on 16 February when the rescue shaft broke through and Collins was found dead. The story was one of the most sensational media events of that time.)