caving

Colossal Cave at Night

THIRTEEN PEOPLE EMERGED from a hole in the ground into the night. They were the latest survivors of the Ladder Tour at Colossal Cave, although one woman was limping and had a rather grim set to her mouth. "Unbelievable," said a member of the group. "I've never been in a cave where you actually had to do something." Colossal Cave, a dry limestone cavern about 25 miles east of Tucson, has attracted humans since prehistory, and tourism since 1917. The usual daytime tour of the cave is 45 minutes long and takes visitors down walkways into chambers and grottoes adorned with massive sta-lactites and stalagmites. In the very early days, you could pay your two bits and swing by a rope into the cave's six-story depths. By the late 1930s, flagstone paths and handrails installed by the Civilian Conservation Corps made the going safer and easier.

But there was another tour you could take until the 1950s, a tour up and down the passages not improved upon by the CCC, and up and down the ladders that made the small spaces and back byways accessible to the adventurous. In 1997 this Ladder Tour was re-instated.

For one and a half hours, people on the tours climb up child-size ladders into tiny openings in rock ceilings, duck-walk up and down passages with sandy floors shifting beneath their feet, hug walls, and shuffle along narrow ledges. As an added treat, some Ladder Tours end with five minutes of sitting in the complete dark. Then, if you're lucky, you may feel the breeze of bats flying past your face. You gotta love it, and they do. "It's a big rush for them," says guide Scott Ware. "It's closer to wild caving."

For some the tour can be just a little too close to those rope-swinging days.

"We say that it is a little bit more strenuous than the regular tour," says John Flettre, cave manager.

The tour comes with warnings: Tour flyers call for the physically fit and agile and only those 12 years old and up. Size does matter. You have to fit through the holes, and you have to want to make that squeeze. There also is the "No claustrophobics, acrophobics, or dark-fearing people" restriction.

People have been carried out of the cave on stretchers, but only five in as many years, and they were on the regular daytime tours. They had become faint, not with the experience of the otherworldly crystal growths and the flowstone of the Kingdom of the Elves and the Silent Waterfall. Nor were they immobilized by the rocky pro-file and pompadour of Elvis or the stone eagle. They were floored by the first-time discovery of their fear of small, closed-in places. Others have knocked themselves silly on outcroppings despite guides' cautions to "watch your head."

Flettre admits the sight, infrequent though it may be, of someone coming out of the cave bloodied is a bit off-putting to those waiting their turn to go in.

But not this night. The brave company of nine and their four guides went forward and into places few have seen before. Their duck-walks up the sand-floored tunnel led to a hole where they could see the fossilized shell in the ceiling, the remainder and reminder of a time when this land was under the sea.

While some kept their eyes glued to the skinny cat-walk upon which they maneuvered like tightrope walkers, others gazed up to etched limestone and the aerial passageways. The view and the sensation were like being in the belly of a prehistoric beast.

The "wow, wow, wows" mixed with a few "ow, ow, ows," as one tour participant slipped, slamming kneecap-first against a particularly nondescript hunk of rock. Resisting the urge to call out, "Go on without me, boys.

Save yourselves," she mustered on, holding her own in the short parade into the Earth.

Grown men hunched over, almost crawled along some of the passages. One woman faced the tour's first small hole chanting, "I'm afraid I'm going to get stuck. I'm afraid I'm going to get stuck." Then came a silence followed by the cry, "I am stuck." But she was soon unstuck and back in the line.

Before the tour began, Flettre said the group would see things the daytime visitors did not. And on this night, almost all who saw the almost secret pathways and caverns and formations came back to the surface saying they would do it all again. Waiting for them was a barbecue dinner set up on a veranda, also built by the CCC when $1 a day was acceptable pay for work in the bowels of the Earth.

However, the lady with the game leg left early, notepad and pen in hand. Her recommendation is this: For those who love caves and up-close experiences, the Ladder Tour is a must. For others, the greatest thrill of the night may well prove to be seeing that light at the end of the last tunnel. Now, let me go massage my knee.

WHEN YOU GO

Colossal Cave Mountain Park is about 25 miles east of Tucson. Take Interstate 10 east from Tucson to Vail-Wentworth (Exit 279), turn north, and follow the signs for about seven miles. Colossal Cave is open every day; call for hours. Admission for day tours is $7.50, age 13 and up; $4, ages six to 12. The Ladder Tour for ages 12 and up costs $35 per person including the barbecue; by reservation only. For more information, call: (520) 647-7275.