Rachel S. is an engineer who has helped discover many miles of previously-unknown cave passage.

Caving’s not nearly as dangerous or crazy as it seems. People who don’t cave tend to believe the clickbait titles. There’s a caving fatality in the US maybe every year or two at most. When you think of how often people go splat while climbing or skiing — caving pales in comparison. But still, you’ll see people literally say shit like like, “You should carry arsenic tablets, so if you ever get stuck, you can just end it.” It’s pretty ridiculous and disappointing people have such a negative outlook on the activity.

One of the very few times I’ve been in an “Oh shit” situation was when we were doing an exploration push in this limestone cave in Jackson County, Alabama. We were doing some aid climbing to get into a new passage that we were hoping was going to cross a vertically inaccessible area. You get to use a drill as much as you want. No one’s coming back to repeat it because all subsequent access is done via fixed ropes, so you just drill in a bolt ladder as you go and clean the route after. Cave conservation’s foremost of a lot of stuff we do. You get involved with the local caving clubs first, learn everything you need, where to step, how to move. Unlike any other space on the planet, one person can walk through something and fucking destroy it forever. But we’re not doing that to the point of saying, “We’re going to use shoddy, tilted out cams stuck in a crack full of mud for protection,” because a rescue is far more impactful than an exploration push. 

So here we were at a big overlook in a huge room of a cave. We’ve aid climbed across the ceiling towards a mysterious black hole in the center of the rotunda.  The lead we’ve accessed doesn’t turn out to be big, only about the size of a refrigerator box, but we can see that it keeps going and we physically fit. I go into the crawl first with my caving partner, Michael, who’s following. The crawl sucks, but we made it into this new space so we gotta map it, we gotta see if it goes anywhere. We shimmy a good bit to get away from the lip of it, because we have a 170-foot drop into nothingness below us, until we’re far enough away from the edge and we can safely shed our harnesses and vertical gear.

One of the kicks of exploring caves, you never know what’s ahead until you go there. I mean, you actually do know what’s ahead, it’s just more rocks, mud and dirt, but it’s different, it’s new rocks, and new mud, and new dirt. Based on the geology, we know that there is 200 vertical feet of limestone above us. There could easily be another giant room, or endless mazes of passage, or another huge pit just around the corner.  There is simply no way to know until you look. We gotta push it to see what could possibly be there, even if it’s slithering and crawling to the bitter end. Trying to map through passage the size of a refrigerator box sucks, your body’s taking up most of the passage so taking compass readings and distance measurements is awkward at best. But it keeps going.

There is always the chance that it yawns open into massive passage, but, it didn’t seem like we were going to be getting lucky. It’s finally getting small enough where I tell my partner, “Stay here, I’m just going to see how much further it keeps going.”

This is a brand new passage. No one knew it existed until we bolted our way over to it. My buddy stays back near where we dropped our vertical gear off and I go ahead. It gets low enough and annoying enough that I’ve taken my helmet off and am holding it in front of me to give my head enough clearance to look forward. Most people probably can’t remember the last time they belly crawled. It’s slow, especially when you’re getting snagged on random stalactites you’re trying to squeeze past. It’s been a good ten minutes. This stupid crawl keeps going. All the while I’m thinking to myself, “Can it just end already, or go ahead and pop up into  nice walking-height passage?” But, of course, it keeps going as a dumb crawl. It’s less than a foot tall, as wide as my shoulders.

One of the things about caving that I like is that I can’t just give up. I’ve never been good at running because you can just stop running whenever you want — you never have to be running. In a cave, no matter what, you’re still in a fucking cave. If you have a bad time, you’re still in this cave until you get yourself out. There is no eject button.

Another ten minutes goes by. Finally, I'm getting to a part where I think it might be ending. The floor drops down eight inches and for the first time I can sit up. Of course, there’s a puddle there. I think, “Why would there not be a puddle in the one nice spot?” Caves tend to be comical like that. It looks like the passage might still go around the corner, but I’m not sure. I’ll just crawl into the puddle and, if it doesn’t keep going, I can at least turn around. I look down the passage and I’m seeing that it teeters off around the corner and just dead ends. Disappointment is frequent when you’re caving.

People who don’t cave often ask, what happens when you can’t keep going forward? You literally crawl backwards. It’s not that hard, but it can be really annoying. It’s far more convenient if you can turn around, especially when exiting this particular crawl requires mounting a rope 170-ft off the floor. Any caver worth their salt can get into their harness and get on the rope in a crawl and in pitch blackness, but its always nice if we don’t have to.

This space where the floor drops down seems just large enough to turn around, even though that means sitting hips-deep in a puddle. But when I sit down, it’s not quite as tall as I was hoping. I’m too scrunched up to scooch my butt back and get my legs out from underneath me to send them the other way. Conveniently, the ceiling wasn’t totally solid. It had a channel running through it, a slot from when the passage was smaller and younger. This is all solid bedrock, mind you, not a chossy jumbled gueatine of broken rocks. I can kind of cock my head up there, since my helmet’s off, and that gives me enough space that I can sit up fully and flip my hips around. Success, I think. I don’t have to crawl the whole way backwards. 

So I put my head in this little gap in the ceiling, flip my hips around. That works fine. I go to pull my head back down out of this little ceiling channel. My head doesn’t come out. What the hell. 

It's got to come out! After all, I got it in there! I’m scratching my face on the rocks. Shit. This really sucks. I’m stuck and I’m sitting in a puddle of water. Thermally, I was fine until I was hips-deep in cold water. I begin to tally the logistics to get to me and weigh it against the options for getting out. To get to where we were is about 200 feet of rope work. But first someone has to know there is a problem in the first place. My caving partner is way back at the start of this crawl. He can’t hear me calling for him. He might wait an hour before checking on me. Dammit. If I can’t just pop my head out of this, they’re gonna have to go back down a few hundred feet of rope, get my hammer drill, and start chiseling.

I'm like, “Maybe it’s because I shifted my shoulders weird when I flipped my hips around.” So I flipped my hips back. Still nothing. Can’t get my damn head out. It’s stuck at my jawbones. I can’t scooch it forward. Head’s not coming down. I can actually turn my head to face the other direction, but I can’t pull it out because of the constriction at the bottom. And of course, I’m sitting in this puddle of water, and my helmet’s trying to float away. Please don’t, helmet. You’re the only light I have.

Sound travels weirdly underground. Sometimes you can hear sound way off, but in a small passage like this, it doesn’t travel far. I was at the point where I’m hollering at Michael, “Yo, I need an adult. I’m in need of assistance.” Can’t hear me at all. No fucking clue I’m just sitting here cheek-to-cheek with the rocks and Michael is just hanging out, less than 100-lateral-feet away none the wiser.

The frustration grows but it is accompanied by the acute awareness that I got myself into this and I will surely get myself out. Afterall, how are they going to have to get me out? I don’t want a hammer drill going off three inches from my eyeballs. All I wanted to do is turn around. Was that so much to ask? Once again, I flipped my face both ways. I flipped my hips both ways. My fucking head's not coming out. It’s a solid 15 minutes, maybe more. 

And then, finally, I managed to find the exact spot where I popped my head up. I yawned my jaw in just the correct way, like a damn snake, and popped it out.

Michael's back at our vertical gear and when he sees my light slithering up to him, says “Did it go?” 

I'm so fucking done for today.

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