Raccoon Mountain 2002
If you have ever gone to tour a cave before, then you know that it can be quite a sight. With all of the different rocks and formations to look at, who wouldn’t want to go? Well, guess what; even with all of that stuff, you haven’t seen anything yet.
In Raccoon Mountain cave of Chattanooga, Tennessee, there are some breathtaking sights in the "tourist tour." Now, before I go any further with this, I want you to know one thing; for us Boy Scouts, the tourist tour just isn’t enough. We have to get down and dirty to be satisfied, and that’s just what we did. We donned our flashlight helmets, put on our gloves and pads, and went into the cave.
Raccoon Mountain cave didn’t seem like anything worth putting gear on for. It was just one of those caves with all the lights and paths. Sure, it was cool and all, but it just wasn’t what we thought it would be. Then, our guide stopped us in front of a small crevice only about two feet tall.
"Turn on your flashlights and follow me" he said. He told us to call him, "Badger." Then he got down on his hands and knees and began to crawl. This is where we entered the unseen part of the cave. The part without lights. Raccoon Mountain Cave stretches for miles.
All caves have to be explored and searched without the light or electricity that people have to install, and that is called spelunking. That is exactly what we did. After everyone was through we continued on. In doing so we crossed a narrow bridge, climbed up about ten feet of slippery rock using only a rope, and went through one of the most narrow passageways in the whole cave; the "Birth Canal". This name was chosen with good reason because some of these passageways were but a foot and a half in diameter. To give you an example of how small that is: two of our Scouts lost their pants while crawling through. I know, the way this sounds it seems that it would be easier to be small, and for most of the cave it would. There is only one part where that is a problem, and that is the canyon.
After some more crawling, and the pulling up of some pants, we came to the canyon. The canyon was, in some places, up to 35 feet deep and was very long with many turns and tricky maneuvers, not to mention slippery walls. We all got out without a scratch.
This is when we came to the slide. The slide was a steep slope of polished stone which was of course, very slippery. We slid down with our hands out in front of us because at the very end, if you didn’t catch yourself, you would smack into a large stone wall. As you guessed, none of us had that happen to us.
After a little more crawling we came to a small room with no more passageways. Would we have to crawl back the way we came? After everyone was caught up we found out. Badger quickly turned around and dived into a barely visible hole no bigger than a car window. Unsurprisingly, most of our Scouts were diving in there after him.
We made our way back the way we came, though this passage we had just dived into cut the distance we had to travel in half.
We left the cave and came into the light. We were filthy! Every ounce of clothing we had on was covered in red clay. This made us very proud.
We had our picture taken and hit the showers. Once we were all clean we fixed and ate a hardy, warm meal of hamburger-helper. Unlike the norm, most of us went straight to bed. The few that didn’t hit the sack were mostly adults and they played one of the Troop’s favorite games, Hearts. Some Scouts were up playing cards with them and some were playing cards in their tents.
The next morning, after a good night’s rest, we had a breakfast of omelets and packed up. We left no trace. We crammed into the cars and went home. Luckily for us, this is an annual trip.
Richard R - 3/29/02