Terry McClanathan, Jeff Moore, Alan Cressler, Yuri Schwartz, Tatiana Kahn
We soon took off to drop our next 100 fter, the descent into the Lost World. Terry had arranged a photo trip into Lost World Caverns, the show cave, about 6 months ago. After meeting with the owner, we drove up the hill to the pit entrance where Terry rigged a rather elaborate display of rope between massive Ash trees to provide a freefall. I was first down. I was rather surprised to see street lights inside the cave. After an 80 – 100’ drop down a widening crack, I emerged into a large, decorated borehole and landed on a wooden plank. Once ready, I radioed up to Jeff and Alan and I blinded Jeff with light as he dangled near the ceiling to the left of a large stalagmite. I wanted to photograph the wild part of the cave first so we followed the tourist trail, hopped the railing, and descended and ascended breakdown to a small hole atop the breakdown slope. From there we traversed over more slick breakdown.
I was beginning to notice that all footing in this cave is slick. Even the tourist trail seemed rather slick. The muddy breakdown route to the first room was extremely slick because the mud was so worn and packed down from multiple wild, commercial trips. We eventually T’d into a larger, decorated room. There were a couple photo opportunities here but I decided to go further. We climbed a breakdown slope to the right and soon crested the top of a breakdown mound overlooking another large room. I set up my first picture up here. Alan and Jeff fired bulbs below. After that shot, we continued ahead and ascended a steep climb-up. I wondered if anybody actually used the hanging extension cord as a hand line. I saw nothing else that I wanted to photograph this way so we went back to the first room where I set up two shots. After that I decided we’d done enough and we explored a little way down the other passage and then headed back to the tourist trails. We toured around the commercial cave and then hiked out the impressive tunnel. For some reason they had long ago trenched more than 90’ into the ground from the surface to the cave, laid supports, and filled the trench back in to make a tunnel. It was a pretty long and impressive tunnel with enough elevation gain that I bet the tourist complain. The owner was kind enough to provide us burgers later and after that we eventually went to bed.
Lost World
A large room with pretty formations in the undeveloped section of cave.
A rather sketchy climb-up. I hope people don't actually use the extension cord.
Lost World
Alan descends the slick, muddy climb-down.
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Lost World
Another large room decorated by many formations.
The opposite side of the room from the previous shot.
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