Underground hiking

Like 100 years ago Mammoth Cave is a popular tourist destination. Every year, hundreds of thousands of visitors led by the park rangers walk through the endless galleries and chambers, one ranger in uniform in front, another in the rear. Nobody should get lost in the cave. Quite different routes through the cave are offered - from the short trip to the entrance area up to eight hours of a wild cave trip following the steps of the first explorers.

The participants of this "extremely strenuous" trip must not exceed a chest perimeter of 41 inches. Because of the narrow passages in which they would be stuck otherwise.

The four-hours "Lantern tour" gives the best impression of how the cave visits were run at the turn of the century. With petroleum lamps as only sources of light, visitors hike along the vast "Main Cave" which is several miles long.

The history of Mammoth Cave is the main topic of this tour. The guide stops again and again, in order to explain historical remains.

Pipes and ruined timber constructions witness the activities of the first European settlers who penetrated into the cave at the beginning of the 19th century. Not driven by curiosity, but for quite practical reasons: The settlers needed gun powder. From the mountains of guano deposited by bats over hundreds of thousands of years saltpeter could be made - an important ingredient in the production of black powder.

Black slaves were sent underground to do the job. Time witnesses describe the scenery as almost infernal: blazing fires, biting smoke, between them hard working exhausted men.

In 1812, production was given up, it was no longer profitable. Elsewhere gun powder was cheaper.

But the owner of the cave had a new idea: He wanted to show his cave to paying visitors. He had people to do that: The black slaves who knew the cave better than anybody else, got the task of guiding the guests through the underworld.

The black guides became rapidly the brand name of Mammoth Cave which was praised in advertisements as "the longest cave of the world" which nobody could prove, but which could not be disproved either. Working underground, once loathed by the slaves was now a desirable and highly appreciated job to them. Because in this world they had the saying. At the surface the white slave owners decided over right and wrong. Underground everything was different in every regard. Down here the black guides could even make even their own money.

The guides were allowed to keep the tips the guests gave them. Therefore they invented always new attractions, in order to impress their visitors. Masterfully they threw burning torches up to incredible heights, in order to illuminate large chambers. Nerve-strong explorers among the visitors were led across deep pits into passages which few humans probably had seen before. The guests also loved to leave theirs signatures in the most inaccessible places. Thousands of inscriptions decorate even now the ceiling of "Gothic Avenue", seven feet high and more.

A highlight of the trips at that time was the "Star Chamber", where tips must have been plentiful.

Tips are taboo to nowaday rangers. But apart from this, the impressive show in the Star Chamber is the same exactly today as it was described by a visitor 100 years ago:

"The guide collects our lamps and vanishes with them behind a jutting rock. Then comes the marvelous illusion. The roof seems lifted to an immense height. Indeed, we seem to gaze from a canyon directly up to the starry sky. A meteor shoots across the vault. We behold the mild glory of the Milky Way. Suddenly the guide breaks in upon our exclamations of delight by saying "Good night. I will see you again in the morning!" He plunges into a gorge.

We are in utter darkness. The silence is so perfect that we can hear our hearts beat.

Presently a glimmer comes from another direction, like a faint streak of dawn. The aurora tinges the tips of the rocks; the horizon is bathed in a rosy glow; a concert of cock-crowing, the lowing of cattle and other barnyard sounds, answered by the barking of the house-dog, seem to herald the rising sun; when the ventriloquial guide appears, swinging his cluster of lamps and asking how we liked the performance. Our response is a hearty encore."

The hike continues, through enormous chambers in which in former times large quantities of prehistoric remains were lying around. Several thousand years ago, indians with torches penetrated up to 2 miles into the cave, in order to dig for gypsum and other minerals. The remains of their torches, baskets and sticks had been preserved well over thousands of years in the dry cave climate, but ignorant visitors burned the historic testimonials in order to warm themselves.

The ceiling becomes lower. The soil is covered with rock debris. Finally a wall of chaotically lying rocks blocks the way. "Ultima Thule" the place is called - the end of the world.

Until 1908 the cave visits ended here, reports the ranger. But then a German visitor named Max Kaemper together with his black guide Ed Bishop found a way through the obstacle. Max Kaemper squeezed himself through wobbly rocks and arrived in a large hall. "Ultima Thule" was not the end of the cave, it continued further, to gigantic depths.

He named the chamber "Kaemper Hall" - after himself. An impressive pit in it was named " Bishop's pit " in honor of his guide.

The next even larger hall got his sister´s name. And the next chamber, still larger, was named "Violet City" after the cave owner´s wife.

Violet City is the spectacular highlight of the Lantern tour. The petroleum lamps are not sufficient to illuminate the huge hall. The true dimensions can only be suspected. By the upper end dripstone formations can be seen. The approaching lamps illumonate series of stalactites hanging down from the dark, curtains and cascades of calcite. Through an artificial tunnel the tourists leave the cave.