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The beauty of caving 700 spelunkers are expected to join the bats in Carter Caves for the 22nd Crawlathon By DAVE LAVENDER - The Herald-Dispatch Sunday, January 19th 2003
OLIVE HILL, Ky. -- Elaine Harris stretched out her arms, her fingers webbing the slick, wet cave wall in her best Spiderman pose. Her body bent over a large pool of water, Harris froze with fear as her husband, teen-age kids and friends broke into laughter, shining flashlights on her. "I’m going -- just don’t tell me to go," Harris said before inching her way past the water and joining the rest of the group in a cramped, dark, creek-carved tunnel of Laurel Cave at Carter Caves State Resort Park. For the past 12 years, Millersport, Ohio, residents John and Elaine Harris and their two kids, Scott and Brian, have vacationed from Florida to the Smoky Mountains with now McCordsville, Ind., residents, Dean and Sheri Stotler, and their three kids, Jeremiah, Bryan and Rebekah. A couple Saturdays ago, the families were underground, wading streams, climbing, getting muddy and exploring Grayson native Dean Stotler’s old stomping grounds. They’re beating the rush. Filled with an estimated 200 caves, Carter County will become caving central next weekend, Jan. 24-26, as more than 700 cavers from the Eastern United States are expected to gather for some serious slithering during the 22nd annual Crawlathon. Crawl and they will come Headquartered at Carter Caves State Resort Park, whose lands hold 20 caves with six open to the public, the Crawlathon was started by former park naturalist John Tierney and current park naturalist Sam Plummer. The park personnel were, from the start, assisted by a pack of loyal area cavers, many from the Flatwoods, Ky.-based Eastern States Speleological Organization, founded in 1968 at Marshall University. The first year, 39 people attended the Crawlathon, a weekend-long event started to draw people to the park in winter since few folks were taking advantage of the fact that caves stay about 56 degrees year-round. Featuring 88 different trips, the Crawlathon serves up something for children and beginners who can slide through the Squeeze Box O’ Rama, visit commercial caves such as Cascade or X Cave and go to learning seminars like "Caving: Let’s Do it Right" and "Caving for Kids." On the expert end, cavers will venture out and down under for day-long trips. They can canoe to hidden caves on the six-hour Tygart’s Creek Regetta, learn how to chart a cave in "The Joy of Sketch," learn "Vertical Self-Rescue," and crawl and climb their way through "Extreme Burchett," a six- to seven-hour trip in a popular wild cave, which lies just off the state park land on private property. Coy Ainsley, park naturalist at Carter Caves, said the event is unique in that it caters to all levels, a fact that has helped the Crawlathon become a winter magnet among the teen-age set of area Boy and Girl Scout troops. "The level-two trips are what are the most popular among the ages 10-to-15," Ainsley said. "It gets them in the cave for two or three hours. They do hands to knees crawling, get muddy, possibly get a little wet and get a great experience out of it." That eco-education continues on all levels as the Crawlathon has always included some of the world’s foremost experts in cave exploration and in preservation of the fragile cave ecosystems. On Friday and Saturday nights, the Crawlathon convenes at the lodge where experts give presentations including to name a couple, "Carter County Cave Issues" by Horton Hobbs and a "Caving Out West" presentation by Hazel Barton. Saturday night, Washington D.C.-based author of "Beyond the Deep," Barbara Ann Ende, who went a mile deep in 1994 exploring the Huatla Cave System in Mexico, will teach a cave charting class and speak. Venturing Down Below There are an estimated 15 to 20 miles of caves at the park now, Ainsley estimated, and more are being created all the time. On a hike through Box Canyon, a 3/4-mile trail that snakes up, through and around limestone cliffs at Carter Caves, the frigid chill of winter blankets bare hardwoods and limp rhododendron leaves with silence. Then you hear the water, the constant smacking and dripping and splattering of water, rushing downward, into the ground, boring into the cracks of limestone and slowly carving out caves. At the foot of Box Canyon lies the commercial Cascade Cave, which will be featured in a beginner’s tour, and an expanded "Cascade Gone Wild Tour," during the Crawlathon. Cascade is a great place to see water work its natural wonder with its arched double karst window which takes folks outside to see the stream which also flows through the middle of the cave’s lake room. Kenny McCoy, who’s worked at the park off and on since 1970 and full-time since 1993, blends bits of local history, geology, sociology, and humor into his 1 1/2-hour walk. Coming back into winter’s cold, McCoy still is fascinated by the world below that blurs time and distance. "It’s about a quarter of 12,," McCoy tells his tour group of five as he is putting on his black, furry earmuffs. "We’ve been walking over an hour and we’ve come a hundred yards -- only in caving." A Family Affair It is that inexpensive and true escape from time and the real world above ground, that brought the Stotlers and Harris families to explore Laurel and Horn Hollow two wild caves that can be toured year-round for free. The rambling requires only a permit checking cavers in and out of the Welcome Center for safety reasons. "I have always wanted to go through a natural cave that is not all lit up and with smooth, sandy paths," said Elaine Harris, whose family had taken several tours at Mammoth Caves National Park. Ann Honaker, of Catlettsburg, and her husband, Bob, know that feeling. They were curious about caving, joined the ESSO Grotto around Christmas 1970 and have been active ever since. They are two of the nearly 90 volunteers it takes to help the park put on the Crawlathon. Many lead caving tours, others do the real dirty work -- staying behind while folks are out tramping about having fun. Although Ann’s knees no longer make it possible for her to crawl back into Burchett’s and the other wild caves she knows well, she said it’s nice to be able to tell folks registering what they are in for and if their skill level matches the trip they want to sign up for. And to turn them on to a whole new world that lies beneath. "The caving world is unique," Ann Honaker said. "It’s something that people don’t really think about." |
