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I was surprised to see this on HN! A story, if you'll permit... I visited two of Ackerman's caves (Spring Valley and Temple of Doom) in May of 2002. It was a f
by jamest 6y ago
I was surprised to see this on HN! A story, if you'll permit...
I visited two of Ackerman's caves (Spring Valley and Temple of Doom) in May of 2002. It was a few days shy of high school graduation and summer was starting to arrive in Minnesota.
My future Firebase co-founder, Andrew, and our high school classmate, Bob, made the drive down there one Saturday. Bob had been a sort-of pupil of Ackerman's, helping him explore and map the various caves he had found.
The day started innocuously enough with a visit to the main Spring Valley Cave that the article references as being previously owned and equipped to give tours. Bob took us off the steel gantry-ways and into some side passageways and chambers that were rarely trafficked.
It was the second cave, Temple of Doom, that was the more, ah, interesting experience. It has only recently been discovered and wasn't fully mapped yet. We popped open a man-hole cover in the middle of a corn field and dropped down a ~50 foot steel ladder. From there the cave descended in a spiral, with the passageway barely able to fit a human. Bob, typically the most composed human I knew, occasionally burst into fits of expletives, followed by silence. "Uhhh... Bob, everything OK?". Descending a 20-30 degree downward slope with inches to spare on every side, occasionally getting stuck, and with no way to turn-around was hair-raising.
After some undetermined period of time we finally got to the bottom of the spiral. At this point, Bob announced we could either brace ourselves between two sheer, very wet, rock faces and climb up ~100 feet without ropes, or go back the way we came. So... up the rock faces we went. Fortunately nobody slipped.
I can still viscerally feel the elation of emerging into bright afternoon sun of the corn field, grateful and relieved to be uninjured.
This was one of the several intense and bonding experiences Andrew and I had together, and perhaps contributed to why we kept working together despite some early startup failures.
As for Bob, he kept on spending time with Ackerman, until one day he was buried alive by a cave entrance collapse. Ackerman dug him out with a backhoe, but he was a little more wary of caving after.
- janlaureys 6y agoNever thought I'd get sweaty hands from reading a Hacker News comment but here we are. I'm not claustrophobic at all but no way in hell I'm ever doing any spelunking voluntarily.
- theshrike79 6y agoSpelunking and cave diving stories are always horror stories to me. I'll _never_ understand how "And then we had to take off all our gear and scoot forward by pushing with our bare toes for 30 minutes to reach the next cave" is perfectly normal for some people...
- m463 6y agoI was watching this Studio Ghibli movie, The Red Turtle, which is a very calm animated movie with basically no words. And the guy swims through an underwater cave and gets stuck for a moment. just a silly animated scene. ...but in that moment I went from relaxed to heart in my throat.
- dhosek 6y agoThere have been a couple horror/adventure films about people in tight caves. I will never watch these.
- cad1 6y agoYears ago I visited Mammoth Cave, KY. There I learned about cave explorer Floyd Collins. He was trapped in a cave in 1925 and the incident attracted wide attention. I started reading about Collins and this is still one of the most terrifying reads for me. I cannot imagine being trapped so tightly, underground with no light and for so long. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/544782/1925-cave-rescue-that-captivated-the-united-states-floyd-collins https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/544782/1925-cave-rescue-...
- callahad 6y agoHah! Similarly surprised to see this here. I spent a little bit of time with John back in the summer of 2007 during a research project at the University of Minnesota. I had just finished my full cave diving certification and got roped into an attempt to push past a sump at the end of Coldwater Cave in northern Iowa. It was unfortunately unsuccessful; after a few dozen feet underwater the passage cinched down to just a few inches wide. Oh well. The article captures well the cold war between Ackerman and the Minnesota DNR; I was warned not to mention John's name when helping survey part of the DNR's Mystery Cave, and the article says John still hasn't managed to get access to the cave's unsurveyed areas, 13 years later. Then again, when the DNR blocks you from a cave's public entrance and you respond by hiring a well-borer to drill a private entrance across the road... well, it's not the most friendly of relationships. Photos of that whole process at http://www.cavepreserve.com/goliath.html http://www.cavepreserve.com/goliath.html. If I recall correctly, John took a some pleasure from the fact that the DNR can't access the full extent of Goliath's Cave under their property without first trespassing into passages that he owns. And indeed, the property line is prominently marked on the map linked from that page!
- Joof 6y agoHeya, I haven't gotten out to most of the western US apart from a bit of TAG and Mammoth / Fisher Ridge. Working on that cave diver cert :D. jeffrharrison@gmail.com
- cpach 6y agoWow. That story was chilling. Did Bob survive the collapse?
- plants 6y agoThat said, anyone reading this shouldn't let this experience deter them from trying caving at least once. Caving is one of the most underrated and obscure outdoor sports, mostly because it's really hard to go caving without an "in" to the caving community. Caving can be safe and extremely fun if you are going with someone in a local grotto (i.e. caving club), and not all caves have a "spiral passageway barely able to fit a human". If you feel unsafe at any point, no one is going to make you squeeze through that foot-wide and thirty-foot-long tunnel. There is also obviously a big emphasis in caving communities on safety, such as wearing protective gear and bringing twice as much light/water as you think you'll need. Many areas I've been caving (in Virginia/West Virginia) also have amateur cave rescue volunteers if something does go bad (although they should absolutely be a last resort).
- garyrichardson 6y agoMy heart is racing and I'm sweaty just reading this. Caving is not a hobby I plan on exploring.