Descent into S.P. Cave

DESCENT

It's dark, damp, dangerous, and soul-constricting deep in S.P. Cave near Sierra Vista, and only the Forest Service can take you there I slowly wedge sideways through a dark 12-inch slit between damp and muddy limestone walls. My head, protected by a lighted hard hat, is unnaturally twisted so I won't get it stuck in the narrow passage. The high humidity makes me break out in a sweat that trickles from my right temple into my eyes, and my anxiety over the constricted space in this cave is simmering in my mind like water ready to boil. By breathing deeply and concentrating on the movements of

DESCENT

I wouldn't have recognized the cave entrance if I had fallen into it ... a two-foot hole that opens to black nothingness....

my companions, I eventually get control of myself. Then the passage opens to a netherworld. Brooding lesser god Pluto, a star of my childhood nightmares, lived in a place like this in dank darkness, below the Earth, where I imagined he kept poor Persephone, abducted to reign with him in the Underworld. "Look at this!" Jerry Trout, cave specialist with the Forest Service, flashes his strobe light onto a wondrous white wall of stalactites, their leading edges a frozen cascade endlessly falling toward the cave floor, nearly touching the stalagmites that reach up from the ground. They are mesmerizing, these fairylike formations in an otherwise black world. I turn 360 degrees so the miner's lamp on my hat and my flashlight reveal all of it. We are in S.P. Cave within an area of the Coronado National Forest. The fiveroom cavern is rated by speleologists and geologists as one of the most beautiful in the Southwest with a veritable kaleidoscope of strange and wonderful geologic formations.

feet down into the cave and later climb up the shaftlike entrance. Finally, having a psyche that could withstand tight closed spaces would be to my benefit. The guidelines were drawn by Trout at the request of Coronado National Forest officials. You can't go down into S.P. without us, they said. Once you get there, you can't move off the cave's marked trails. You can't touch anything. You can't take anything. You can't leave any signs you were there. And, most importantly, you can't divulge the location of S.P.

My expedition companions include two avid cavers from Tempe, free-lance photographer David Elms, and several guides: Forest Service officials and caving volunteers.

There were precautions and covenants connected to this late-winter trip. These included carrying at least three light sources (two as backup) as well as water, a light backpack, and my own food. Also, I had to be strong enough to rappel 40 While the potential danger posed by an unescorted trek through the 3,000-foot cavern is a consideration, it's not the primary one. The fragility of S.P. is the chief concern. Estimations are that it could be as old as 200,000 years, and its "decorations" the crystallike fairyland formations throughout the cave can be destroyed by the slightest contact.

We arrive at the cave entrance near noon after a brief "do-don't" lecture by Trout at the Forest Service station outside Sierra Vista. Not an experienced caver (S.P. is my first such adventure), I wouldn't have recognized the cave entrance if I had fallen into it. It is a twofoot-by-two-foot steel-bolstered square hole that opens to black nothingness.

Before descending, we arrange and check our gear, particularly the headlamps strapped around our hard hats and the flashlights each of us carries in our packs. I'd been warned beforehand that there's no danger as dire to a caver asWith light, you can make your way out. Without it, you are lost and vulnerable to injury - and even worse calamities . . . .

DESCENT

I'm drenched in perspiration and anxious... I try to stay calm. After five hours down in S.P., I want out."

Continued from page 6 being without light. With light, you can make your way out. Without it, you are lost and vulnerable to injury — and even worse calamities.

Tempe caver Neal Berg straps and buckles me into rappelling gear and explains how to lower myself down the 35-footwide shaft. With my back to the edge, I step into empty space.

Rappelling down the face of a mountain is an edgy adventure in and of itself. (See Arizona Highways, May '92) It seems so unnatural at first, hanging from a rope and stepping down a mountain wall. It's a great feeling when you touch the ground because it means you did it; you're finished. Your knots didn't come loose; your strapping didn't slip; and your rope didn't fray. It's over.

Rappelling into a cave is different. But for the dim light cast by your miner's lamp, you can barely make out the face of the shaft wall as you step down it. Also, you know that mastering this shaft is just the beginning of hours of hard work, not the end of it.

At the bottom I am met by Hans Bodenhamer, a Forest Service specialist and Robin Williams look-alike, who grew up in Sierra Vista and has been caving since he was a child. We talk about cave exploration as the others in our group make the descent.

"Caves are incredibly fragile," he says, explaining why traffic in S.P. is restricted. "You can't do much with a cave once it's gone. You can't re-create it. You can get a species of animal almost on the verge ofextinction and still bring it back. But, once you trash a stalactite, you can't bring it back. It's gone."

"You seem pretty passionate about caves," I say.

"Obsessed," he replies.

He grins and offhandedly tells me there aren't any bats in S.P., but there are carnivorous crickets.

Throughout the trek, Bodenhamer and Trout explain facts and prevailing theories about cave development, noting that one of the most controversial points is how long it takes for a cave such as S.P. to form. What geologists used to believe was fact, in terms of dating a cave, now is speculation, Trout says.

A 52-year-old retired high-school teacher, Trout also has a strong fascination for caves. He says he first got "the bug" for cave exploration when he was in the seventh grade. He grew up in New Mexico near Carlsbad Caverns National Park and in a young friend's house happened to see photographs of a magnificent cave. He asked the friend's father if the cave was part of Carlsbad.

"No," the father said. "This cave's right here near us."

Trout, who later became a geologist, explored that cave and has been an enthusiast ever since.

After retiring from his teaching job five years ago, he became a full-time cave specialist for the Forest Service. There's a story he likes to tell about the dating controversy: "From 1924 to 1988, there was a visitor's sign above the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns that said Carlsbad was at least 260 million years old," Trout says as we muck through gluey mud and darkness toward S.P.'s three main rooms. "In 1988, the sign was changed to read 7 to 10 million years old. Then, for a little while, the sign read that it was 2 million years old. Now the sign is gone."

In short, he says, geologists don't know how long cave development takes. And, while some believe that cave decorations such as S.P.'s beautiful icicle-looking stalactites take years to form, Trout says that through photo-monitoring, he has watched a stalactite grow several inches in a matter of days.

We make it to S.P.'s Big Room, where we stop to eat lunch and wait as photographer Elms readies his cameras and strobe lights for a photo session.

This room teems with stunning formations: glistening stalactites, stalagmites, and strange-looking curly helictites. There are flowing white "curtains" draping entire walls in huge delicate folds, and sparkling mounds emerging from the ground, embedded with gemlike limestone crystals.

If S.P. weren't so humid often near 100 percent it would be easy to imagine that these glistening spears and knolls and drapes were ice formations in a snow cave.

Around bites of his sandwich, Trout explains that the small front portion of S.P. just below the entrance shaft probably was discovered in the 1920s. It wasn't until 1969, though, that a group of caving enthusiasts from Virginia now known

WHEN YOU GO

simply as "the Virginians" discovered the magnificent rooms of S.P.

Since then, Trout and Bodenhamer explain, there has been ongoing conflict among Southwest cave enthusiasts about access to S.P. One faction, believing that the more people visit it, the sooner the cave will be destroyed, several times illegally sealed the entrance behind six feet of concrete, which the Forest Service had to remove with dynamite.

Elms times his strobes at last and asks us to shut off our headlamps and flashlights so he can control the amount of light that strikes his fantastic geologic subjects. Between strobe flashes, there is heavy absolute darkness. After a few moments, it begins to feel oppressive, a stifling blanket I can't crawl from under.

In minutes, I become increasingly uncomfortable. I'm drenched in perspiration and anxious. I've never had an attack of claustrophobia, but, then, I've never been 90 feet underground in a cave before. I try to stay calm, breathing deeply.

But, soon, not even the breathing helps. After five hours down in S.P., I suddenly want out, then realize with despair that it'll take at least an hour of scrambling through those slitlike passages and along slippery mud trails before I'm once again aboveground.

It appears that I am the only one in the group who feels the least bit panicky. The others seem tranquil, stimulated by the thrill of being beneath trillions of tons of earth.

Elms, who also takes well to being down here, needs at least another coupleof hours to finish his work, I discover. But I can't wait that long.

DESCENT

"I'm ready to go," I tell Trout, blaming my discomfort on impatience. He confers with Bodenhamer who says he'll lead. In a few short breaths, we're inching through the chambers and slits, passing up our packs and gear to each other when we slither into the narrowest passages. Finally, at the level just below the entrance shaft, I glimpse the opening. It's nearly dark outside, but some faint light manages to break the blackness of the shaft above us, and I'm anxious to get to it. The safest way to get up the cave face and then through the opening, says Bodenhamer, is to use a rope walker. Fastened to a climber and above by rope, it basically creates midair "stairs" each time a climber's legs lift at the knees.

Bodenhamer attaches the device to me and explains the stepping process that will get me to the top. I scurry up as fast as my knees will bend. In minutes, I'm climbing out.

Later, Hans Bodenhamer says he never saw a novice climber make it up that shaft so fast.

Like Persephone, I think, hastening up from Hades.

The Forest Service does not permit unescorted trips into S.P. Cave. To tour the cavern, you must be accompanied by a Forest Service guide, and you must make advance arrangements for the trip by submitting an application.

For more information about guided tours into S.P., contact Jerry Trout at the Forest Service office in Sierra Vista: (602) 378-0311. He will explain the application process and equipment requirements for the trip.

To learn more about caving in Arizona and throughout the country as well as the addresses of regional and state caving groups, write the National Speleological Society Inc., Cave Ave., Huntsville, AL 35810. Information also is available from Venture Up, 2415 E. Indian School Road, Phoenix, AZ 85016; (602) 957-9351.