Mammoth Cave National Park - 2018

We started by heading to Mammoth Cave National Park in Mammoth Ky.  The tour we picked was a 2 mile, 2+ hour hike down the natural entrance.  We booked this online thinking it wouldn't be crowded.  We were wrong.  These tours have the most people on each tour; about 120 people per tour.  Amazingly, it didn't seem crowded as some other tours we did with way less people.  We were lucky and got a very knowledgeable tour guide too.  She started out talking about what to expect.  She said you had to go up a fire tower of about 300 or so steps at the end of the tour.  After saying that she gave examples of why you might want to rethink the tour.  Like the one I remember was "If you got winded going from the parking lot to the visitor center, you might want to rethink this tour." She then said if you couldn't make it out and they had to rescue you, it could take 8 to 12 hours to do it.  Also she stated if you got hurt, the closest hospital was 2 hours away and a good hospital was 4 hours away.  Towards the end of the tour, she talked about the fire tower again and said they have landings all the way up, so if you got tired, just stop on one of the landings and start pointing at something.  No one would know what you were pointing at and wouldn't know you were just resting.  Great tour guide.  Alright, so I've been saying (at least to myself) that if you have seen one cave, you seen them all.  I have to change that now.  So now I'm saying is "if you seen one cave of that type, then you have seen it all of that type."  At least for now that's what I'm saying.  So this was a dry cave (similar to the Grand Canyon Caverns in AZ.).  But this cave was mined.

They mined one of the ingredients for Saltpeter.  They used to hollow out logs and used them to bring down water from the surface and also used them to haul out the ingredient back to the surface (not sure how this was done, other than they used the logs.)  The pictures are of the logs and pits they used to create the ingredient from bat poop I think.  These are the original structures from the mining age.

She talked about this one slave that gave the tours.  He knew this part of the cave well, but never got past the bottomless pit, until some rich guy would give him a really good tip if he was taken to a place that no one ever been before.  So the slave grabbed a plank and took him to the bottomless pit (spoiler alert, it's not bottomless, it's about 150 feet deep), put the board over it and scooted over to the otherside.  After that, they came to a small area filled with sediment.  The slave pushed that away and eventually they came to a large room with stuff people was throwing down from the surface to see how deep it was.

Like the bottomless pit

The small area that was filled with sediment

The small area that was filled with sediment

If you look at all the pictures (here is one), you will see writing on the walls.  This was encouraged to do back in the day...well, for a price.  They would take their candle and get it close to the wall and write stuff with the soot.  Remember, the slave was giving the tours and he needed money so he could buy his freedom.




Here are some pictures of the Fire Tower.  But before I show you them, she talked about a man they found dead, but completely intact down to the skin.  They estimated his age to be around 4000 years old give or take a few months.  Since it's a dry cave, there is no creatures that can live down here, so they don't deteriorate.

 


After our tour ended, we took a trail to the right back to the parking lot.  No one else took it, so it was a peaceful walk.