Norm's Rambo Cave Exploration

I’ve always thought of cave exploration as something I might like, but I didn’t like the idea of bats, bugs and slippery rocks in the dark. Well, there were no bats, no bugs, no slippery rocks, but Mother of God, were there other hazards I was unaware of!. This particular cave happens to be the largest in the world that is commercially accessible in terms of the depth of descent. For starters, we had to harness up and rappel straight down over 300 ft. I had rappelled in Arizona once, but that was off of a cliff and my feet were always in touch with terra firma. In this case, it was me, the rope and nothing for 300 ft. That was the easy part. We landed inside a gigantic cavern with a river running through it. Our mission was to follow the river upstream until it emerged out of the cave.

Along the way, we did a lot of technical climbing using ropes and safety harnesses; we worked our way in the dark with only our headlamps for light. In many areas we had to grab onto rock handholds, and reach across gaps with our legs spread as far as they could go to keep moving forward. About a third of the track was in water, usually knee to chest high, many times over our head in a swift current. Had to keep grabbing onto side walls where ever I could. My finger tips were raw at the end of the trip.

One of the scariest experiences involved sitting above a hole about 3 feet across that went straight down for about 10 feet into a pool of water. They had everyone turn off their headlamps and we had to jump down one at a time in the dark. After doing that, I was ready for anything they could throw at me. As we moved on, we were climbing up waterfalls, jumping into pools, squirming on our bellies under boulders, climbing tall ladders, and jumping from rock to rock in the underground river.

It took us about 4 hours to cover about a mile through this cave and when we emerged, I was exhausted. I have done a fair amount of hiking before (have never done any technical climbing), but this was about as tough a climb as I have ever encountered.

My original concerns about bats, bugs and slippery rocks? Well, in New Zealand, the only bats live in trees. We never saw any bugs, but we did see thousands of glow worms that light up like stars in the night sky hanging from the cave ceiling, and they live on flying insects. I had to ask the question, if we don’t see any bugs, what are the glow worms eating? It turns out, they are cannibals – no insects, no problem, they eat each other! As for slippery rocks, the water current is so strong, no moss can grow on them and because it is totally dark, algae doesn’t grow either. So all of my concerns were misguided. But had I ventured into one of these caves alone, I think I would have emerged with a full load in my pants.

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat!!!!