If you’ve been following my travels from the beginning, you may remember that Mammoth Cave National Park was the first place I visited when I started driving last year, when I was still figuring out how to live the life of a homeless tourist.  That initial visit was nice, but somewhat underwhelming, primarily because the guided tours were all booked out by the time I arrived at 9am, and I could only wander around in the most open part of the cave in a self-guided way.  But the cave system is the longest in the world, and since that first visit I’ve been convinced that I must have missed something more impressive.

Since I was in the area, I decided to give it another shot, and pre-booked a four hour guided walking tour.  According to the National Parks web site, the tour is described as follows:

Grand Avenue Tour

This physically demanding trip will give you an excellent idea of the size and complexity of the Mammoth Cave System. Learn of the cultural and natural history of the cave and how they are interwoven as your journey takes you through some of the most dramatic passages in this “mammoth” cave. Walk through a variety of caves as you encounter gypsum lined passages, narrow canyons, steep underground hills, large rooms and areas with dripstone formations.  This tour includes the entire Frozen Niagara Tour route and all of the Domes and Dripstones Tour except for the 280 stairs descending the vertical shafts at the entrance.

Age Limit: 6 and over
Duration: 4 hours
Distance: 4 miles
Total Stairs: Nearly 700
Difficulty: Very Strenuous
Tour Time: 9:00

It was well worth doing the guided tour this time, and although it wasn’t for the out of shape, I wouldn’t call it “very strenuous.”  Although you’re constrained to going the pace of everyone else, you also get to see a lot more, and the ranger guiding us was excellent, able to answer any question about the caves.  We started out with a bus trip of several miles to get us to the cave entrance, then entered the gates to the underworld…

I used my low light filter again, so my pictures look like we walked through an active volcano, but the temperature was a pleasantly cool 56 degrees the whole time we were underground.  Unfortunately, I lack real photographic skills, so few of the pictures came out well, so I apologize in advance for the quality of these.  The first parts of the cave were quite dry, with few formations, but we learned about how the caves were formed by water carving through the limestone, and how they’re still being explored.  According to the web site: “The total surveyed extent of Mammoth Cave currently stands at over 627 kilometers (more than 390 miles) with potential for a 1600 kilometer (1000 mile) system.”

At spots along the way, our guide would stop to explain what we were seeing, when it was discovered, the uses of the cave, and to answer any questions.

The safe paths we walked on were mainly created by the CCC, but in several places we could see the paths that earlier explorers and tours used.  In the picture below, you can see the narrow path clinging to the wall on the upper right, which apparently used to lead to an “exciting” bridge.  We followed the much tamer paved path, which was still steep and damp enough to make me grateful for the handrail!

One of my favorite parts of the tour was the walk through the underground slot canyons.  This isn’t a particularly good picture, just the best I was able to get.  They were similar to the slot canyons I saw out west, only you look up at the cave roof instead of the sky.  In some places these were quite squeezy, and one of the larger members of our group mentioned that that stretch of the cave was known as “fat man’s misery.”  I suppose we were on a schedule, but I could have wished that the tour slowed down a bit through this area, as I really can’t get enough of these types of canyons.

There were a couple of places to set down along the way, and at one point they turned out all the lights so that we could experience the total darkness and silence.  The guide told a story about a young man that was lost in the caves for a couple of days without light, and he was only found because he was banging rocks together.  He said that he was doing that because the silence was so oppressive and terrifying, not as a signal to his rescuers.

The final part of the tour was though an area called Frozen Niagara, and true to form, I got terrible pictures.  There were a couple of very large dripstone formations, and I think the Frozen Niagara Tour would be a very nice shorter tour to go on someday.  The smaller formations were also lovely and dramatic though.

I’ll admit, now that I’ve seen Carlsbad Caverns, it’s hard for any other cave system to impress me.  But Mammoth Cave is well worth seeing, especially on the guided tours, and I’d certainly come back again to do the Frozen Niagara Tour.  I still haven’t seen any bats either…