Id like to tell yall a bit about the cave we used to explore, about 25 miles east of Guthrie, Texas. Last I heard, it is no longer open to the public. It is a young, limestone cave with numerous tunnels and with large sinkholes in the hilltop above it. Known as Batemans Cave or Seven Mile Cave, we generally took six to eight hours exploring, in and out; that was about all the exercise that any of us could stand. The rocks and water were very hard on flashlights and woe unto anyone who didnt take extra flashlights and batteries with them. Getting out of there without light would have simply been impossible. There were tunnels that we never explored. Some of the tunnels were quite large but most of them were very small, requiring you to crawl, duck-walk or crouch low to negotiate them. In some places, you needed to be a contortionist to get through. Being small and slender helped a lot. My friends and I always went in at the river end and never knew where the other entrance was, although we had heard about it. This cave is very complicated and I found it easy to get turned around in there. In some places, you would come to big rooms which might have as many as seven tunnels going out and they would all look similar. Going in at the river end, you started out wading knee-deep water which soon became neck-deep. That spring-fed water was very cold, no matter how hot it was outside. I dread to think what would happen to anyone who got caught in there during a downpour because you could see that the water sometimes completely filled some of the lower tunnels during a big rain. Scary! Some parts of the cave, like the bat cave, were high and dry all the time. Exploring this cave was an extreme physical challenge and many who tried it were unable to keep up. Only those who were extremely physically fit were able to complete a full days exploration. Any smokers who attempted the cave usually had to go back out because the bat cave portion produced a high ammonia smell (from the bat droppings, which were three or four feet deep in places) which was hard for anyone to take but it would have smokers hacking and coughing right away. Many times we had to escort them back to a more ventilated part of the cave, where they would have to sit for hours until we picked them up on our way back out. Some portions of the cave did breathe and the air there was good. Being a young cave, there are no stalactites or stalagmites like you see in Carlsbad Caverns, for example, but there are some beautiful formations there, just the same, which were quite beautiful to behold. Gracefully carved tunnels with water-beaded archways shone as if covered with thousands of diamonds. One portion of the cave contains a siphon, which means the roof of the cave descends into the water, so you have to hold your breath and swim under water through a two foot tall opening for about 15 feet to get into the next room. This feature stopped a lot of people, so we tried to tell people what they would find in there, beforehand, in order to cull out those who were faint of heart... I usually hauled out a large trash bag filled with bat droppings to fertilize my flowerbeds and garden. In many places, the droppings and my backpack had to be pushed through ahead of me because of the tight squeezes encountered. Bat guano is some powerful fertilizer and you have to apply it sparingly in order to keep from burning up your garden. One last note, the cave is very unstable and many times while we were in there, we would find sections that had caved in since our last visit. In some portions of the cave, none of us were inclined to bump the walls or even to yell; it just looked too unstable...
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 17:14:37 +0000
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