Spelunking: Crawling Through Underground Caves

I'm going to tell you a story about my experience crawling through underground tunnels and caves like being a worm. It's called Spelunking.

There wasn't even room to turn around. The only direction was forward. And that was done by pulling myself with my elbows on the ground.

One sure gets a great deal of exercise crawling their way through tight cavities under the ground.

There's a name for this and it's called "spelunking." The sport is also known as caving, and it's not always under such claustrophobic conditions.

Caving involves any type of underground discovery escapades. Anyone can do it, both professionals and people like me who didn't know a thing about what I was doing.

According to Wikipedia, Spelunking refers to amateurs who don’t have the proper knowledge or training for the sport of exploring caves.

I experienced spelunking almost 20 years ago when I was away at a singles resort, which was a camp for adults in Connecticut.

I never had a problem with small spaces. Claustrophobia was never an issue for me. But I was very naive. So I happily went along for the fun of it for a day of caving, just as happily as I now share with you in this week’s HubMob topic.

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The literature that advertised that singles resort mentioned that anyone who wanted to go caving that weekend needed to bring really old cloths, things that can be thrown away afterwards rather than trying to wash them.

The spelunking event I experienced was very different from walking through a spacious cavern. It was literally penetrating a small underground cave. I remember it so vividly.

That morning after a hearty breakfast, our leader took seven of us in his mini-van to a spot several miles away where the cave was. As we approached an overgrown area in the wilderness, he pulled the van right up to the spot where the cave entrance was.

We all got out and looked around, but none of use could see anything that resembled a cave entrance. Our leader brought us over just a few feet from where he parked the van and pointed to a hole in the ground along some rocks.

That’s it? We all looked at that hole, and two girls said they would wait for the rest of us to come back out. They decided to sit by the van.

Four of us decided we’d go along with our leader, who said he would go first and that we should follow one at a time. He asked who wanted to be last and he gave that trusted fellow a bunch a candles and matches. He told him to light the candles one by one along the path as we continue through the cave.

The lit candles were to find out way back. Sort of like dropping bread crumbs, but something we could see in the dark in case our flashlights went dead from getting wet.

Crawling in...

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Our knowledgeable leader went in upside down and the others followed.

It seems spelunkers have a personal approach as to how they get started. When it was my turn to go in I felt more comfortable dropping my legs into the hole and going in right side up.

The tunnel turned horizontal very quickly and I found myself going through a wet, muddy, cavity, with water dripping everywhere.

The fellow with the candles entered right after me. He did it the right way. Head first, like everyone else. Stupid me. I ended up pushing myself along feet first for quite some time, trying to keep up with the three others in front of me. They had it a lot easier pulling themselves along elbow by elbow.

The guy behind me took his time finding dry spots where the water wasn’t dripping to position each candle. So he didn’t mind that I was slowing him down.

The Belly of the Beast

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We finally got to a larger opening after crawling underground through a tunnel for some time.

As I approached, the leader and two others were actually almost standing. Well, crouching anyway. But it gave them a chance to stretch.

I couldn’t wait until I edged my way to that space. Once I got there, the leader announced, “This is the belly of the beast.” I truly felt like I was in an animal’s stomach all right.

We all had a fun time looking around with our flashlights. This cave didn’t have any stalactites hanging from the ceiling as one might expect to see. I guess the water didn’t contain any minerals in that area that would have formed the stalactites.

So obviously there were no stalagmites either since they form bottom up from the minerals from the dripping stalactites. However, there was a pool of water over in one area that was accumulating all the dripping water.

Over in one corner was a cavity in the wall that looked like it went straight up. I looked in and pointed my flashlight up into the opening. It was so high that I felt like getting in and standing up. I felt better being able to stand erect, if even for just a moment. When I came out, everyone else wanted to do it too.

We had out fun and it was time to head back when out leader said we need to return before the candles die out. We really didn’t need them except as a guide back. The tunnels branched off in various directions and there was no other way to be certain that we were taking the correct path back.

As we came back to the entrance I could see the light of day shining down. It had been raining and the sky was cloudy and hid the sun. But we were so used to the dark that the subdued light of the cloudy day still bothered our eyes for a while. Nevertheless, I think we were all glad to come out without any mishaps.

The girls took cover in the van during the rain and were glad to us. Once we got back to the camp and left the van, some of us decided to run over to the lake and jump in to wash the mud off, cloths and all.

I was walking with a friend from the van when we came to a muddy puddle. Yeah, it definitely had been raining. I stepped around the mud to avoid it and my friend said, “You’re all full of mud anyway! What does it matter?” That gave us something to laugh about.

As we amused ourselves of the silliness of it all, I knew that we were lucky nothing had gone wrong. Even though we had a leader who seemed to know the cave quite well, we really were not prepared in the proper way.

We should have been wearing hard hats at the least. And there are hard hats or helmets on the market that have lights attached right on them so you don’t need to drag a hand-held flashlight through the mud.

I know now why professional cavers call us spelunkers.

Copyright © 2010 Glenn Stok