April 10-14, 2024
Mammoth Caves has been a national park since . The Visitor Center was well staffed with informative people willing to answer questions and facilitate good experiences. There was an exhibit with historical information concerning the involvement of women, African Americans, and Native Americans.
I am back from my cave tour. It was great. We are used to walking among many of nature’s landscapes, if only in the sense that we are familiar with them. Walking underground, in caves, is a different kind of experience. I visited Wind Cave in South Dakota and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico over the past year. My experiences were great at those parks, too, but they were different in some ways. (link to their blog pages) The under-Earth landscapes in each some similarities, as well as some differences.
The path today descended steeply, a depth of about 265 feet over a short distance. It had multiple twists and turns down a narrow space, often only one-to-two feet wide. I was thinking to myself, this is so unusual, to see rock layers carved out in a narrow manner, going down, down, down. Then it reminded me of a slot canyon. It was that kind of narrow, curving structure, but steeper, and with a different kind of rock surface. Slot canyons very often have smooth rock, almost as if polished in some places. This rock, visible layers of limestone, was rough in most places.
There is a metal walkway with steps all the way down. Some places were less than four to five feet tall. There was no need to crawl, but it in some places, it was a back-bending and twisting-to-fit activity. It was exciting, energizing, a novelty experience. Since there has been rain here for three days, there was a lot of water, too, trickling down the horizontally layered limestone walls and onto the walkway. The metal walkway allowed for water to pass through it.
The 90-minute tour was only about ¾ of a mile long, but it went through three different types of environments based on the involvement of water and pitch of the path. The entrance, as described above, was narrow, steeply downhill, and wet. It led into the second space, where there was little elevation change. This section had larger spaces, plenty wide, up to forty feet or so, along with higher ceilings, as high as ten feet in some places. It is dry in this section. There are layers rock above it, sandstone and shale, mostly impermeable to water. That is not the case in the first section, where the cave entrance begins in a sinkhole that collects water like a funnel pointing it downward in the cave. Upon entering the second section, there was a little amphitheater with benches in a “room” they call Grand Central Station. I am not sure why it is called that, as it is quite small. Our guide, Domineque, shut the lights out when we were seated there. Underground like this, when the lights go out, you cannot see anything, it is completely dark. You can’t see your fingers right in front of your eyes. It’s kind of thrilling and eerie at the same time.
The third section involved ascending along some wide sections with numerous formations. There were stalactites, stalagmites, and columns formed by dripping water. There were “ribbons” and “draperies” and by seeping water. There were some domes 50-60 feet high and some pits that went 50-60 feet down with water pools in the bottom. In some ways, this seemed to be more the more dramatic area in terms of cave wonders, as indicated by people taking more photos here of the various mineral-based formations. Near the end it returned to a narrow-path environment, though not like the slot-canyon dimensions of the descent.
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