Feature article
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Appalachian Caverns a 'wild' underground trip
By Doug Janz
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The “wild tour” of Appalachian Caverns can be a big thrill or a chance for your nerves to get the better of you. That’s basically what cave owner and tour guide Roger Hartley told me before we headed down into the earthly bowels of Blountville.
“You’ll get dirty, you’ll get muddy and you’ll get wet,” he said. “You’ll crawl through a space only 7½ inches high. If you get claustrophobic, it can be a challenge. You might not want to do it.”
Well, what the heck. I don’t get claustrophobic, but listening to him calmly issue these warnings, I started to wonder if it was enough to make me nervous. I soon realized that, because I was forging ahead despite a bad cold, sore throat, sneezing fits, etc., I should avoid the 50-some-degree water, but otherwise, it was time to get it on.
My previous caving experience consisted of a short crawl through some of the caves at Natural Tunnel State Park in Duffield, Va., but that didn’t involve the complete squeezing of my body into a space with less than an inch to spare. So this promised to be one step closer to the true cave exploration experience of bona fide spelunkers.
The Appalachian Caverns, about a mile from Tri-Cities Golf Club, are a legitimate attraction, well worth the admission fee ($7.50 for adults, $5 for kids ages 4-12, free for toddlers), and the wild tour seemed a bargain for $25 ($20 for big groups).
There’s a 1970s kind of look to the building, which actually encloses the main entrance to the caverns. From the gift shop, visitors go through a door, down a ramp and through another door, and step into the gateway to the underworld. “We’ve never lost anyone in the cave,” Roger told me, then paused for the punchline: “I know exactly where they are.”
Hartley has become a cave buff, if not an expert, since he bought into this operation. “It was purely an investment,” he said. But things have changed; now he loves venturing into the caves every day, soaking up more knowledge and telling others about the place. His goal is to make the caverns accessible, while at the same time preserving the natural state as much as possible.
Cave systems cover the region. “In our area,” he told me, “if you don’t live over a cave, you’re probably within a mile of one.” There are stories about how Appalachian connects to Bristol Caverns, and if you know the right turns and you have enough time and experience, you can enter in Blountville and come out in Abingdon, Va. I wondered if the cars at Bristol Motor Speedway roared around on top of a cavern; it was only two or three miles away.
Roger’s advice to me, after he gave his “disclaimer” speech, was to wear clothes you don’t mind ruining. So down we went, sporting hard hats and lightweight headlamps.
Wild tours take about 3½ hours. The first part of our tour was the only tough part. He disappeared into a tiny hole near the main entrance of the cave, wriggling head-first. Charles Manson couldn’t fit into that, I thought. But I followed, scooching along on my stomach, hands in front of me, just a few inches to spare. The space tightened to the point I could feel the cave pressing on both my back and chest.
The secret was to relax and keep wriggling patiently and steadily. There is no hurrying, and you can’t outmuscle a tight cave. I felt almost stuck a couple of times, but eventually we wriggled through another tight spot and emerged filthy and breathing hard.
“People get stuck when they tense up, because when people panic they puff up,” Hartley said. “It’s animal instinct.”
That was the end of my “wild” part of the tour since I was too lame to go for the wet exit. We spent most of the rest of our tour leisurely strolling the designated pathway. Roger talked and I sneezed a lot. But it was fascinating. The lighting and walkways are first-class. Tours stay within the 10-acre property but passages lead far beyond that. “There are 78 known openings people can get into,” he said.
The cave contains thousands of amazing rock formations. Depending on the lighting and your perspective, you can see all kinds of shapes, like staring at clouds. I learned that the main chamber is more than 1,400 feet long, that the rocks contain manganese, iron oxide and calcium carbonate, and that most of the surfaces are still “living,” i.e. dripping water and still growing or changing.
The cave walls were created basically in two ways: fast, from violent collisions caused by earthquakes, or slow, from the passage of water and air. Bones of the mastadon, caribou, snub-nosed cave bear and giant armadillo, among others, have been found here — some 8,000 years old. The cave was used by American Indians, Civil War soldiers, moonshiners and all sorts of hunters.
There are also plenty of bats, mostly small ones — “Chicken McNugget size,” Hartley says. There is a huge “bat chamber” visitors can crawl into that often houses thousands of bats. We only saw a few along the heavily-trafficked, well-lit main pathway. They were solo, hanging from the ceiling, sometimes close enough to touch, and didn’t seem to care about us. “These bats seem to know we’re not going to disturb them,” Roger said.
We could have exited via a 50-foot mud crawl, or walked waist-deep through frigid, flowing water. There is one passage that’s mostly underwater (up to about five feet), with a low ceiling and only a small air space. Walking through about five or 10 feet of that must be like trying to escape the sinking Titanic. One watery exit route contains snapping turtles, which boast a jaw more powerful than even sharks. Hartley said he doesn’t take people that way.
Outside, basking in the sunlight, we hiked around to see the openings that served as exits. They were peaceful. Roger found the skull of a small animal in the water. “This’ll keep me occupied for hours,” he said.
As I left, Roger and I shook hands, and for a split second I thought I detected a trace of malevolence in his grin when he said, “Definitely come back when you’re feeling better and we’ll do the whole tour.”
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Doug Janz writes about outdoor adventures in the Tri-Cities and beyond for GoTriCities. E-mail him at DouglasJanz@aol.com.
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