A Landowner Invited Us to Explore Their Tennessee Cave!

23 minutes ago

2 min read

A Tennessee landowner recently reached out and invited me to come check out their cave, and of course, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity! I rounded up a group of my lady caving friends… plus a few token males who decided to tag along.

This is a spring cave, so timing our trip for low water was important. The cave has several water sections, including what we cavers affectionately call “ear dippers” , which are those low spots where you have no choice but to get your ears wet!

We made our way into the cave and were immediately greeted by waist-deep water before crawling through a body tube to reach the rest of the passage. Not long after, we arrived at our first waterfall. The way forward from there wasn't straightforward, so we backtracked and climbed up into an upper passage where the cave continued.

Robby and Vello did a great job rigging a handline that helped everyone make the step up to the next level. From there, we faced about 1,000 feet of crawling and stoop-walking before the cave finally opened up into some much more comfortable walking passage.

Eventually, we reached a second waterfall where the passage above became too low to continue. Even though we didn't push it to the bitter end of the cave, it was a fantastic trip with a great group of cavers, plenty of water, some challenging passages, and a beautiful Tennessee cave that I'm grateful to have been invited to explore.

A huge thank-you to the landowners for trusting us with access to their cave and allowing us to experience it!

As always, please respect private caves and landowners. Many caves are on private property, and access is by permission only.

#Caving #TennesseeCaving #TAGCaver #CaveExploration #Spelunking #CaveLife #WomenWhoCave #TennesseeCaves