When I could still go caving 30+ years ago, I wanted to visit Ellison's and drop Fantastic Pit, yeah... 586 feet free, that would've been fun.
But I was too busy discovering/exploring/mapping caves in California to ever make it to Ellison's Cave.
In fact, I was working in a cave I discovered in Sequoia National Park that was 900 feet directly about another cave some friends had discovered several years before, Hurricane Crawl Cave.
The small group of NSS cavers I was working with had an M.O.U. with the Natl Park Service to explore and map any caves we discovered, and we gated Hurricane at their request after we finished our survey and drafted a map of the cave.
As it's a hazardous cave with a stream and deep vertical drops, it is now a locked closed gated cave, and only vetted cave explorers and scientists are allowed in.
I was hoping to make a vertical connection between the two caves via a pit I hoped would be deep enough to shatter the depth record of Fantastic Pit, but my health ran out before I could make that connection.
Perhaps some day a determined caver will continue the work I was doing and find that connection pit.
Might be some primordial fear letting itself be known to me, but when it comes to caving, I can't help but read the "Fun" here as using the Dwarf Fortress definition of "fun".
Thanks for sharing this story. I love when I can learn a little more about the experience of something fascinating like Caving but that I don’t have any personal experience with through someone’s comments on HN.
How does one get into Caving or become a “vetted cave explorer”?
Join a local caving group\club (grotto in the US I believe). Pretty much the only way, unless you happen to know an experienced caver that you can tag along with.
not OP, but I just find caves fascinating. You can be wiggling through small passage for hours and hours, and then suddenly find yourself in a cavern large enough to fit an airliner that not even the most powerful lights can see the other side of. There are passages that are completely white with flowstone, others with enormous crystal pools, others with formations that seem to defy gravity, and others with bones of prehistoric creatures (and of course most of them which are just boring old rock\sand\mud).
Also, cavers are just fun to be around. It takes a certain type of person to want to go and get wet, cold and muddy in the dark for hours or days at a time.
That sounds incredible! (Even though I could never do any spelunking) I have only been in one cave really, and what amazed me was the supreme silence. Like hear your own heartbeat silent.
Caves are a major frontier right in our (karst) backyards. They were discovering huge new caves in the 2000s in WVa. Major mapping efforts were a lot of fun. Project cavers would dig all weekend hoping to open up a new passage (and they did). I stopped when white nose syndrome showed up in the bats and it was possibly spread by cavers.
white nose is scary. I’d imagine this happens to the bats a lot. they live so densely that these kinds of epidemics are almost inevitable. looks like this time it was cross-oceanic human contact that kicked it off though
"[...] the two deepest pits in the contiguous United States: Fantastic (586 feet) and Incredible (440 feet).[2] These two pits lie on opposite sides of the cave. Nearby and parallel to Fantastic are Smokey I (500 feet), Smokey II (262 feet)[...]"
That's the most confusing statement either. "A and B are the two deepest, with C nearby (being deeper than B)"
It is poorly written. I assume it’s because Fantastic and Incredible are “unobstructed, free fall pits” and Smokey I is partially obstructed or not a clear vertical drop in some way.
Used to take creative writing classes there in college. It’s beautiful, just make sure to wear clothes you don’t mind getting covered in mud and try not to go after a big rain because it will flood. Temperature is around 70 year round and it’s mostly hiking. Take a headlamp and a friend, tell someone where you are going, and have fun. Really incredible experience.
But I was too busy discovering/exploring/mapping caves in California to ever make it to Ellison's Cave.
In fact, I was working in a cave I discovered in Sequoia National Park that was 900 feet directly about another cave some friends had discovered several years before, Hurricane Crawl Cave.
The small group of NSS cavers I was working with had an M.O.U. with the Natl Park Service to explore and map any caves we discovered, and we gated Hurricane at their request after we finished our survey and drafted a map of the cave.
As it's a hazardous cave with a stream and deep vertical drops, it is now a locked closed gated cave, and only vetted cave explorers and scientists are allowed in.
I was hoping to make a vertical connection between the two caves via a pit I hoped would be deep enough to shatter the depth record of Fantastic Pit, but my health ran out before I could make that connection.
Perhaps some day a determined caver will continue the work I was doing and find that connection pit.
"Caving... it's like Fun, only different."