East Tennessee State University - Buccaneer Yearbook (Johnson City, TN)

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Al Photos by Kim Reece AIR BANDS 25

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24 STUDENT LIFE

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SPELUNKING FOR THE FUN OF In Sullivan County, somewhete outside Bluff City, there's a posture. it's a posture just like so many others in East Tennessee, but if you follow it Out towards the South, it comes to an end. There's 0 sheer drop, hundreds of feet of limestone wall, to the ground below. it's not a solid well, though. There are two gaping holes in that wall, holes that lead down to the inside of those beautiful rolling hilts. Equipped with expendable clothes, two floshiights and some strange devices known as carbide lamps, we descend- ed into the subterranean lobyrinth known as Morrell's Cove. The lamps, I should say, burn 0 gas given off by com- bining with calcium corbide. I had brought about a quart of the stuff, which is 0 lot. There were four of us: myself, my photographer, her and the for- Coker, C stoiwart fellow who was 0 good man to have at your side going well, or when they were going friend Ted Hali midabie T. Cecil when things weren't great, for that matter. The lower entronce was a dead end, with no way of get- IT! ting past the stream that flowed into it, so we went into the upper. it sloped shorpiy down into 0 large chamber that curved out of sight into the left. inside, we discovered that the Curve straightened out into 0 long room, so long that our lights couldn't reach the other end. The first few hundred yards or so were pretty easy going. We had a smooth floor of dried mud, curving only slightly downward, with the ceiling about 7 feet high. It was a bit oiorming to see huge slabs of rock that had opporentiy peeled off the roof and fallen to the floor. We could even see cracks in the roof where the next layer was getting ready to come off. . It was about here we storted to see bats clinging to the woils and ceilings. We counted 10 in all. We didn't bother them and they didn't bother us. We kept seeing what looked like side passages. Usually, reflecting off water Graduate and Medical School Students STUDENT LIFE though, when we tried to follow them, they deod-ended otter a few yards, We shone our lights through 0 large crack in the floor and sow them an underground stream, no doubt, maybe the one from the other entrance. It was 40 feet below, though, and there was no way to get to it. A bit later, Tony shouted he had found 0 way down Through a very tight squeeze- twisting crowiwoy, we found our way down to a chamber, long and consisting entirely of o ten-foot wide stream and a thirty-toot wide beoch. it went back in the direction that the other entrance had been. We nodded in satisfaction and went back to the main passage. About this time, we began to run into characteristic cave for- mations, staloctites, staiogmites and columns. It took noture literally millions of years to eat Morreil's out of solid limestone. The resulting formations look 0 lat iike melted wax, but it took that wox a very long time to melt. We came to 0 place where 0 huge column, probably hunn dreds of thousands of years old, almost entirely blocked the passage. The easy path ended, ond we found ourselves picking our way across a floor strewn with jumbled heaps of boulders. The ceiling was about 80 feet above our heads.