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The Lost Sea is a huge underground lake in Sweetwater, TN -- the world's second largest. This place is only a few miles from where we're staying at Hiwassee College while we work at Vonore Elementary with AmeriCorps. I'll calm down on the links now. Our tour was a 3 hour excursion into the depths of this enormous cave system. Throughout its history it's been a meeting place for Cherokee Indians to hold their councils and smoke their peyote, a hideout and saltpeter mine to make gunpowder for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, and the "Cavern Tavern", a speakeasy where moonshine was distilled and drunk during Prohibition. We began by climbing up a hill (outside) and walking down 132 man-made stairs laid into rock. This was the natural entrance to the cave; in the 1970s a more convenient entrance was blasted into the cave because the stairs were a little much for some people. But not for us and our trusty guide Joe. : ) The stairs climb down almost 100 feet and curve around to fit the opening of the cave. At the bottom is a wide opening with a 60+ foot ceiling, and a room that continues in 2 directions roughly south and east. There are lots of lights and there are port-o-potties around, so it didn't feel real cave-y yet. But it would. We went south maybe 100 yards lateral, and probably 20 or 30 feet downhill. It was somewhat steep. Then we went steeper down to the east, where there was a nice fenced walkway built into the cave. Everything was lit and we could see interesting things like Civil War graffiti left by confederate soldiers, and some small green plants that were brought in accidentally on peoples' clothing. Not much lives in the cave naturally. We were led around several of these paths and shown different rock formations including anthodites, stalagmites and stalactites, and columns, where the stalagmites and stalactites have grown together. There were lots of really cool formations. Eventually we were led down to the lake, which is stocked with rainbow trout. We were excited at first that there were fish in it, thinking that they'd be some bizarre species of fish unique to this closed system, but they weren't. Nothing lived in the lake when it was discovered. The fish there now have to be fed by humans to survive, and they're very people-friendly. The guide said that people have caught them with their bare hands. Riding in the boat and watching how close they came to our hands in the water, it's totally believable. They used to have glass-bottom boats to ride on the lake, but now the boats have just one glass strip in the bottom. The lake is something like 800 feet long by 200 feet wide by 80 feet deep -- pretty big for a lake that's completely underground. There are lights along the wall under the water level, which make for nice glow. The fish look really cool illuminated from below. We rode all the way around the lake, just looking at the fish and the water and the cavern. In places the ceiling stretched 50 or more feet above us, in some places it was so close that people had to duck so as not to hit their heads. It was a nice relaxing little jaunt around the lake. Robo's crazy watch altimeter said that the lake was almost 200 feet below the level we entered the cave at, but a lot of that change was right at the beginning, when we walked down the stairs. After the lake we started walking back uphill toward the entrance. We stopped along the way for some serious cave crawling. The crawling here wasn't that bad. Nobody had any real trouble with it, though a few people on the team are claustrophobic. We crawled through 4 or 5 spaces and looked at some more formations and then came into a room they call the amphitheater. It's roughly round and one side of it slopes up at an angle conducive to sitting. This room and all the rooms after we began crawling weren't lit so we had to rely on our own lights. In the amphitheater we played a game called 'flashlight' where everyone surrenders their lights to the guide and he takes the biggest one and hides it in the dark somewhere in the room while we all make noise so we can't hear where he puts it. Then in total and complete darkness we crawl around looking for the light, and whoever finds it wins. It was pretty fun. According to Joe, after 2 weeks of total darkness a person would become totally blind. That wouldn't be as fun. We crawled out back to the main path after that. We returned to the junction at the bottom of the stairs and rested for a few minutes, and talked to some other people on their own tours in the cave. Most of them were spending the night there. Our group initially wanted to do that, but too many people (not including me) backed out, so we couldn't. But I guess that's pretty popular and lots of people do it. After our rest, we went crawling some more. By this time, we were all really dirty. The cave dirt and mud was all really heavy and sticky. And this second set of crawls we went on was in a wetter part of the cave where we all got absolutely filthy. At the end of this set we slid down a little embankment back into the big junction room near the entrance to the cave. After that we went into the hardest crawl yet.... parts of it are called 'The Meat Grinder' and 'Misery'. The crawls we had done before this could mostly be done on the knees or with just a little bit of on-the-stomach crawling. This last set was much more intense. For one part we had to crawl for almost 20 feet without so much as turning our heads while we pulled ourselves along on our stomachs with our hands. There wasn't even really enough room to move your legs to propel you forward. Right after that there was a smallish opening where you could almost stand up all the way, then you had to sorta sit/lean back against one rock face and bend your legs to fit under a low-hanging boulder and crawl like that another 15 feet or so. Right after that there was a tiny tight crawl even closer than the first one. It was exhilirating. I've never experienced claustrophobia, but this was the closest I've ever come. One girl on our team didn't go through, but everyone else did -- even Tricia who was absolutely terrified of the whole thing. She did amazing. At the end of those 3 intense crawls, we were able to stand up in a thin but tall rift in the rock. There's a gap or a channel that ranges from 6-7 to 20 or 30+ feet high, but never more than 3 or 4 feet wide over its 100+ foot length. It felt like it could have even been as long as a football field, but of course it's hard to tell when none of the 'normal' cues for judging depth or distance are there. And it's easy to exaggerate.... This channel went continually downhill, at varying slopes. I figure the bottom of it is maybe 10 feet or so lower than the top, maybe more. We had to crawl down it single file because it was so tight. But not very claustrophobic, because of the high ceiling. Even Tricia did fine with most of this. We started to get a tad nervous when everyone else got out of sight and sound ahead of us, though. I was helping Tricia in the back with Robin and we lost everyone else far ahead of us. We were separated from them for probably almost 5 minutes (an eternity alone in a cave, I assure you) before we could see any of their lights again. But we eventually caught up to them. The climb back up that rift was the highlight of the experience -- because we did it in total darkness. Everyone turned their flashlights off and we crawled and felt our way up it, holding onto each other and trying to describe everything to each other so we didn't run into walls or trip or anything. It was one of the coolest things I think I've ever done. It probably took 20 minutes or more for us to climb back up, and every step of the way required teamwork. It felt a lot like the trust walks I've done on SJC Camping Retreats, for those who know about that. It was a great sense of accomplishment when we crawled out of it back into another part of the room at the base of the stairs. What a rush!! Though I looked, I never did see either any Morlocks or Gollum. Maybe next time. : ) Post a comment in response: |
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