Raccoon Mountain Caving

As a young adult event, Lee and I planned a caving trip.  Originally, there was going to be ten of us, but due to the instability of college kids there was just five.  We met at the church early in the morning to drive to Raccoon Mountain in Chattanooga.

Once we arrived at our caving area, we paid and got our gear on.  We made sure to pick a cave that would be a little more adventurous than walking on a nice paved path the whole time. Many of our previous trips have been that way and it was less than exciting.

We met our guide and headed down the path to the cave.  The cave started out open with handrails and lights, but we quickly went off the beaten path.  It didn't seem bad at all in the beginning, it was actually really fun.

Then we got to the first tight spot.  Goodness, I started crawling through and got in the tight spot and almost started panicking.  It was a long crawl and I couldn't see the opening.  Tiffany was in the same situation I was and started panicking a little as well.

As a leader of the group, her panicking helped me calm down as I calmed her down.  We worked our way through and made it out the other side.  Our tour guide was pretty awesome.  Instead of being really strict, he pretty much took us wherever we felt like going.  One of our favorite spots was where we were basically sliding down a really steep spot that had a small creek flowing below.  As we were climbing down, our guide told us "Don't step in the water, I want to show you something."  The words were barely out of his mouth when we all hear "Splash! Splash! Splash!". Nick slipped and splashed all through the water.  It stirred up all the mid and we missed the creature our guide was going to point out.  We were all like "Thanks, Nick....".  But, it's okay. It was a really tough spot to get down and he was the first to go.

Our guide told us about a spot called the "birth canal" and asked if we wanted to go.  I was not thrilled with the idea of that, but everyone else wanted to go and I didn't want to be alone so I went along.  That name was definitely fitting.  Tiffany and I went first.  It was a long, extremely narrow spot we had to climb through.

The thing was, I couldn't crawl at all.  I just had to lift myself up on my toes and pull myself forward with my hands.  There wasn't enough room to actually crawl.  I couldn't even lift my head up to look forward because there wasn't enough room for that with the helmet.

The aggravating thing with that was that some of the guys were too big to get through and had to go around.  I could have gone around!  The next place we encountered was the 10 cent squeeze.  It was a small hole that had a turn at the bottom.  You couldn't go straight through.

That was a rough spot because you had to put one arm straight forward and push with the other arm.  Lee tried to get through this one - his shoulders were too broad.  He had to go around this one as well.

We had to climb around all over the place, but our last "attraction" was a slide.  It was scary from the top, but it was fun going down.  The guide caught our feet as we got to the bottom so we didn't keep going right off the edge.  We all went down pretty smoothly except Adam.  I don't know what he was doing, but he flew down that slide.  It was hilarious.  He was fine, and we found our way back to the group path and headed out.  It was a long trip and we ended up being completely covered in mud, but it was lots of fun.  We made our way to the bathrooms to change and wash off some and went to find some food.  We found a Thai place in Chattanooga and Adam of course go the spiciest level offered.  I believe this is the only Thai place that has beat Adam with spiciness.  He couldn't finish his meal.  He still wants to go back to conquer it.  We were worn out and headed back to the church.  It was a quiet trip back.  I'd highly recommend the trip, but I probably won't go again.  Those tight crawls were a bit much for me.  Overall, I really enjoyed it and I'm glad we went.