Spelunking Pictures

I'll post more online some where

Sean's Spelunking Advanture

Sean just returned from vacation in Jamaica, checking out dirty dingy caverns and other similar places. He's still editing his comments, so there may be more to come. His words are better than mine, so here they are.

Posted by Sean McCarville
Unnamed Cave
We parked just past a small rural auto shop (two guys in the hills with a roof and a monkey wrench – on second thought I’m not sure they really had a roof) and backtracked up the road just a bit to find a path leading to what we thought would be Falling Cave. The trail was not surprisingly overgrown, and I was glad to be wearing long pants but was still a little uncomfortable with the hard hat (and headlight) I was wearing. Crossing a small stream I slipped on a wet rock and took a pretty hard fall on to a log. My side it still a bit sore from the fall six days later. Now I’m quite paranoid thinking either my boots have lost all their traction or these rocks are somehow far more slippery than what I am used to on the Blue Ridge Mountains. We follow the stream up the hill (paranoia continues) and reach the entrance to the cave. Everyone probably says this but it seemed like it was straight out of a movie. Two bats flew out of the cave. No one else saw them, and there was a sparrow's nest near by, but the two creatures I saw looked and flew like bats. I wish I could get a second look to be sure.

The entrance was perhaps eight feet tall by eight feet wide, rocky and had a stream of water flowing out and down the hill. My guess is it was about a quarter of the way up the hill, maybe 20 meters from the bottom. As we went in it narrowed quickly and the water got deeper quickly so we had to place our feet on either side of the cave walls to walk along which was difficult to do since all my footsteps were under about a foot of water. About 35 feet into the passage we got to a waterfall that was about 6 feet high and we had to climb up, which was nerve wracking (remember my earlier fall in the stream), but relatively easy. Again the cave narrowed and the water got deep very quickly to the point that it was up to my chest so I really could not see where I was stepping. I only remember about a foot of air space between the water and the roof of the cave. The other guys thought it was cool that they had found a huge crawfish in the entrance to the cave but I was just hoping I didn’t feel anything crawl up my leg. After another 35 feet we got to and area with more breathing room and a split. There was a small tributary coming in on the right and a five foot climb on the left. We tried the left first. This climb was drier and much easier but the cave narrowed so quickly after that, we were afraid it could take too long to get out if the water rose and trapped us in (by we were afraid I mean they were concerned, since I was mostly afraid of slipping again but other than that was just along for the ride and negotiating emotions of “this is fucking crazy” with “this is really cool” and having one of the times of my life. We decided it was only safe to go further in the dry season and headed back. Drew decided to explore the tributary, which I could not believe, and I saw him disappear into the hole which reminded me of Whinny the Poo getting stuck in Rabbit’s hole after eating too much honey. He tried to call out what he was seeing but since he was blocking the entire hole I could only hear muffled noises. Eventually he found a larger room and was able to turn around and come out. Yuan got a great photo of him coming out of the tributary. Then it was back through the deep water, down the waterfall, though the first part, and out. Turns out the cave wasn’t Falling Cave, instead it was a small unnamed cave.

Marta Tick Cave
It was a 5 kilometer or so ride on a barely existent road from the house we slept in to the trail leading to the cave. The trail was much easier to get through as another larger group had recently gone through. The JCO members were disappointed to learn a group of tourists had been taken up to the cave to see the bats. I could not help wondering if they realized I was little different than a tourist but felt no need to share that insight with anyone. After a half hour hike up and down a couple hills through the thick forest we arrived at some large jagged boulders. Most of the stone in the “cockpit” region of Jamaica was limestone and had been eroded by water into jagged Swiss cheese rocks. We climbed up the boulders and continued up the hill for a bit until we could see the entrance to the cave above us. Again it was a scene out of a movie with the forest and vines around us and everything else. We climbed up to the entrance which was quite wide, perhaps seven feet tall by 20 feet wide, and looked into a beautiful room about 20 feet high, 40 feet deep by 50 feet wide filled with rocks, stalactites and stalagmites, and apparently the room received just enough light for some greenery to grow. It looked like moss at first to me but also a little small shrubbery if I remember correctly.

Bat Roost
There were two tunnels leading away from the first room. We started with the one on the left that led to the bat roost. The entrance was grand, it was large and after a few turns we were inside. After perhaps only 30 feet the bats were flying around us, the cave was getting much darker as we were further from the entrance, and I was being dive bombed by a handful of bats that were either panicking and flying toward my headlamp or trying to scare us off. The ground was completely guano at this point and was very soft under my footsteps. A few times I looked up and could hardly comprehend what I saw, clusters of bats flapping their wings, and after a few moments I’d have to turn my light away out of fear the entire group would break out of their cluster and start flying around (perhaps at me). I wasn’t sure if the bats had been flapping their wings all long or only started when I looked up at them. I tried to look up twice more and finally decided not to do it again. At this point the cave seemed to split although either way led to a much larger room that was the main bat roost. The bottom of the room was about 10 feet deeper and the ceiling may have been 5 feet higher. I can’t even guess at the number of bats except to say it was in the thousands. Our group leader headed into the main cavern to get a better look, I was quite content to stay just on the edge. At some point about this time I started to wonder why thousands of gnats would be living in a cave with bats that would eat them. I realized then the gnats were there because of the guano, and therefore there were also spiders and other bugs which could eat the gnats, in effect a whole eco system was possible in the cave because of the bats. Shining my light down I saw a fleeting glimpse of a bunch of shiny stuff that disappeared, some kind of bug, no doubt, that burrowed into the guano away from my light. I noticed one of my companions had turned off his headlamp and was no longer bothered by the gnats. I turned my light off, waved my hand back and forth a few times and they were gone. It was somewhat quiet although there was some noise from the bats, and I realized I was squatting down in a cave in the darkness in guano, with gnats and bats above me, and spiders, crickets, and who knows what else below. We did a little more searching for invasive species (other than ourselves and headed out). The JCO members were please the roost was still healthy and fairing much better than some of the others which have been disturbed to the point they are hardly remaining intact.

Second Tunnel – Marta Tick Cave
The second tunnel in the Marta Tick Cave (the first being the Bat Roost) immediately descended about 5 feet, turned to the right and quickly became a crawl through the mud (at least it was red mud and didn’t look like guano). Someone had left a rope that was tied at the entrance to the cave and ran along side us. At some points we had to crawl flat on our bellies and thinking back it is remarkable I didn’t experience any claustrophobia at this point or any other. The cave remained rather wide, more than 7 or 8 feet wide in most places so that may have made it easier to deal with. After 60 feet or so we got to the first obstacle – a hole about 14 or 15 inches in diameter we had to fit through. The only way I could do it was to lie on my right side, stick my left arm through while keeping my right arm at my side, and then pull with my left arm, inch along with my right shoulder which was underneath me, and push with my toes. I could move forward a few inches at a time with this method and made it through ok. The cave then turned a to the left for the second section. More crawling in parts, but also some places with 3 or 4 foot ceilings and stalactites. This section ended with another small hole to squeeze through. The third section started to get larger and we could stand after a while. We got to a place with a steep climb which looked difficult. The other guys had noticed split back just a bit so we took it instead. It went down and after a bit got to the toughest hole of all to get through. We all made it and went on for a bit and it started to open up, we even saw a bat fly by, I have no idea how it was able to navigate without getting lost. In this area I first saw stalactites growing in odd directions, some with hooks or barbs or spindles, some with hooks going in all directions. Apparently no one knows why this sometimes happens. There seemed to be many places to climb up, but they all dead ended or become to small to pass so we headed back. When we made it back to the climb we decided to give it a try. Yuan was able to make it up and tied off a rope. With the rope the climb was pretty easy. It was about a 25 foot climb, although the ground sloped down away from the bottom, so depending what you call the bottom it could have been a 35 foot thing. We climbed around up top and got to a real treat, a lot of white. I guess it was all stalactites and stalagmites but one part of it looked like some kind of wave. We went on into another room of all white, from which you could climb down into one more room of all white.

We headed back, down the rope taking it with us of course, back through the passages and belly crawling and out. While it was great, I could not wait to get out of the cave as I got closer to the exit.